The sea was cloaked in fog. Not the natural kind, but a living, pulsing veil of arcane mist that shimmered faintly with runic glyphs. The Compact fleet moved like ghosts through this manufactured shroud, each warship carved with ancestral banners—Shi crystal rigging glowing cold blue, Peng war-barges fortified with gold-threaded bone plating, and dragon-headed junks flown under the sigil of the Dongfang imperial elite. They sailed in coordinated phalanxes, spears of steel and fire aimed at Kun Island's vulnerable southern bay.
At the edge of that bay, the war council within the Celestial Bastion pulsed with urgency.
The War Council,
Su Mengtian stood beneath the vast dome of the State of Records Council Hall. Charts of celestial tides and oceanic leyline flows hovered in midair, rotating slowly as Hallmasters and department heads studied them.
"Report," Mengtian's voice was calm but edged with storm.
Kai Chan of the Hall of Echoes stepped forward, sleeves rustling. "Fog enchantments likely cast from a floating arcanum ship. They're using an ancient technique—Moon-Tide Weaving—but amplified by Crystal clan stones. Visibility reduced to two hundred meters across all flanks."
"And sonar scans?" Mengtian asked.
"Disrupted. They're using temporal noise pulses," added Xuan Le from Astral Command. "Every attempt at scanning returns our own echoes back—distorted. They've studied our astral arrays well."
Rao Lin slammed his hand on the oaken war table. "Enough shadow-games! Let them come ashore. The Hall of Valor will greet them with blade and flame."
Inara of Ironblood, seated beside him with arms crossed and expression stern, nodded. "We can bait their elite units into narrow passes through the southern cliffs. Burn the mist, collapse the rocks. We'll bleed them there."
Baojin, Hallmaster of Aegis, raised a hand. "Hold. We still lack full position data. What if their real aim is not the southern bay?"
Mengtian stepped forward, his coat billowing as faint arcs of thunder spiraled around his shoulders.
"They're probing for weakness, not committing yet. But they will," he said, pointing to the leyline convergence diagram above. "Because here is where their arcane fog loses grip. The leylines under Kun Island are uniquely resonant. If they don't seize the bay within a day, our resonance will scatter the mist. They're on a timer."
He turned to Xuan Le.
"Activate the Celestial Star-array. Phase Three coordinates. I want Kun Island's true location obfuscated for three days. Overlap illusions. Force miscalculations."
"Understood," Xuan Le said, already pulling scrolls from his sleeve.
Lightning cracked outside the windows.
Lan Qiu, Master of Tempests, stood near the open balcony, eyes closed, wind coiling around her like a serpent.
"I can scatter the forward arc of their ships. Tempest Vortex, localized. But... the backlash may cripple my senses for hours."
Su Mengtian stepped to her side and clasped her forearm. "I will shield your mind. You only need to open the gate."
She nodded, stepped into the storm.
Southern Bay - Stormfront,
Rows of peng-wood stakes and layered arcane wards had been set into the cliffs by Baojin's defense formation. Hall of Valor warriors waited in rows—rows of crimson-cloaked soldiers led by Rao Lin himself, helmet under his arm, black warblade across his back.
"They dare trespass under banners forged in deceit," Rao Lin growled to his captains. "Let them taste the thunder in our bones."
From the cliffs above, the wind howled.
Lan Qiu raised her arms and summoned the Maelstrom Protocol. Her hands moved in wide spirals, each motion traced by glowing tempest runes. The storm responded.
Down below, the fog twisted, then screamed.
Compact warships were flung to the sides, hulls screeching against displaced wind barriers. Soldiers shouted in panic. Lightning danced across masts, snapping flags in two.
In the heart of the chaos, Shi Zhenhai barked orders. "Stabilize anchor runes! Dispel quadrant three! Focus fire to the center!"
But before their spells could coalesce—a second storm struck.
Xuan Le's star-array shimmered into place above the island, forming a vast dome of mirrored constellations. From the outside, Kun Island now looked like an empty patch of ocean.
Council Hall, Kun Island,
As stormlight flickered across the stone walls, Su Mengtian stood with his Hallmasters and addressed them fully.
"We have three days. Use every breath. Inara—prepare fallback tunnels through Iron Hollow. Rao Lin, keep the enemy at bay, but conserve our elites. Let them exhaust themselves first. Baojin, reinforce all defensive wards. Lan Qiu, you are to rest. That was a masterwork."
He turned.
"Xuan Le—in three hours, leak falsified battle losses from our side. Make them think we are broken."
Ji Yeyan stepped forward. "And I?"
Su Mengtian looked at him and smiled faintly. "Unleash the Shadows. Let them whisper doubt into every admiral, every general, every Compact high-seat."
Later That Night – Highest Watchtower in Tianzhen City,
The rain was soft, almost melodic. Yueying approached the strategy balcony, her Snow Pavilion armor wrapped in a ceremonial white cloak.
Mengtian stood alone, watching flickers of green light beyond the storm.
"You never hesitate, do you?" she said.
He turned, his expression tired but resolute. "Only in dreams."
She stepped beside him. "I saw the way you moved in that war council. You weren't just commanding them. You were... leading like you had done it for a thousand lifetimes."
He looked down at his gloved hand. Lightning sparked faintly. "Because I have. In a life buried beneath war banners and sacrifice. But here, I refuse to lead into slaughter. This time... we must endure."
Yueying rested her head against his shoulder. "Then let me endure it with you."
Thunder rumbled.
Far across the sea, the Compact regrouped.
And Kun Island stood like a candle in the night—hidden but unwavering.
The sea groaned beneath the Compact's fleet, tides churning against the jagged stone cliffs of Kun Island as if nature itself sensed the treachery. Above, the skies remained a bruised, swollen black—lightning clawing behind veils of mist, a storm refusing to break.
Su Mengtian stood upon the Stormseer Platform with Lan Qiu and Yueying beside him, watching the spectacle unfold. Waves of enemy ships surged forward like a school of devouring leviathans, their sails painted in crimson and obsidian, each vessel reinforced with shimmering crystal wards.
Soon the Counterstrike was unleashed.
"Target their lead transports!" Rao Lin bellowed from the vanguard cliffs. He raised his greatspear overhead, its tip sparking with embers of battle intent.
Down below, Hall of Valor squads rode seaborne drake-skiffs, spears locked forward in their formation.
"Shield-lines! Form the Iron-Wall cascade!"
Inara's deep voice rang out as her disciples from the Hall of Ironblood deployed into overlapping stoneplate barques. Each barque slammed into the waves with disciplined precision, their metallic hulls forming a concave barricade that slowed the enemy's advance.
"Suppress their casters," Inara ordered through her command totem. "Their fog conjurers are masking too much."
A volley of spear-chains laced with runic threads soared into the mist.
Lan Qiu, eyes aflame with violet wind-sigils, stood atop her floating wind-disc.
"If we don't clear the sky, they'll use the fog to land siege beasts," she muttered through gritted teeth.
Mengtian placed a firm hand on her shoulder. "Unleash the Second Gale."
"I can't hold it for long, Mengtian," she said. "Not without backlash."
"You only need to hold it long enough. Rao Lin and Inara will seize the breach."
Lan Qiu inhaled. The wind around her shrieked. Her arms raised like an invocation. Tempest halos spun into existence behind her, and with a furious shout, she unleashed a vortex blast that tore the fog apart in sweeping arcs.
Compact warships spun sideways. One capsized. Another cracked in half.
Lan Qiu screamed—her aura flaring dangerously—then collapsed into Mengtian's arms. Yueying rushed to support her.
"She's alive," Yueying murmured. "But overdrawn. She needs silence and grounding."
"Get her to the Stormward Sanctuary," Mengtian said. "Go with her, Yueying."
Far behind the visible clash, Ji Yeyan moved unseen.
Within the fog lay shadow-streams—rifts woven into Kun Island's leylines by centuries of defensive cultivation. Yeyan danced between them like an echo on dark water, his breath quiet, his weapons sheathed.
His mission was to infiltrate the flagship of Shi Zhenhai and place a silence-seal upon their naval command relay. The seal would jam long-range commands for 10 minutes—just enough to disrupt chain-of-command during the critical moment of Mengtian's main counter-move.
Inside the ship, Compact captains barked orders, unaware of their passenger.
"Reform left pincer! Redirect magical focus to quadrant six!"
Ji Yeyan moved with surgical stillness, placing shadow warding glyphs at each of the six internal totem-pillars. When the final glyph activated, he whispered:
"Veil of Silence."
A sudden blanket of soundless void fell across the flagship's interior. Captains shouted—but no voice emerged. Commands died in their throats.
Then he vanished.
Shi Zhenhai, cursing under his breath, activated a private relay crystal.
"Deploy the hidden fleet. Send Peng Huoxian to flank their eastern bay."
In the far mist, secondary warships veered east. Compact had hidden reinforcements ready.
On Kun Island, Xuan Le watched the stars blink in strange sequence above.
"They're deploying a flanking maneuver," he said, eyes glowing. "I saw the distortion ripple."
Mengtian nodded. "Phase Two of the star-array. Mask our terrain's curvature. Let them think our coastline is still vulnerable."
Ji Yeyan's voice, barely a whisper, filtered in through Mengtian's ear-echo jade.
"Flagship relay is silenced. Move now."
He stepped forward onto the Skyhold Balcony.
"Form the Broken Spear line," he said. His tone was calm, layered with deep-cut authority from a thousand campaigns in his past life.
"Stage B of the wind illusion protocol. Redirect seawind along our eastern slope," he added.
"Yashara," he spoke to the Sanctuary of Beasts' director, "release the tidewyrms into the submerged channels. I want them breaching under enemy hulls by the fourth bell."
"And for our guests from the Compact..."
He turned to Xuan Le. "Initiate Stellar Reflection—phase three. Scatter illusionary signals of thirty-eight false Kun Islands into the mist. Let them burn their mana chasing phantoms."
Xuan Le smiled, raising his starmancer's brush. "With pleasure, Sovereign."
At the edge of the horizon, dawn began to fracture the sky.
More Compact ships now lay in ruin than afloat. Wind-beasts raged through broken sails. Shattered hulls floated like corpses. And still, Kun Island had not yielded a single inch.
Su Mengtian raised his hand. The sky answered with lightning.
From all across Kun Island, one sigil pulsed into the air—a spiral dragon woven in thunder and storm.
The sky itself cried a warning:
"To those who sail with treachery in their hearts—know that the storm remembers."
And thus, the true war began.