The gates opened. The new arrivals flowed through in ragged lines, some looking up as they passed under the walls, as if expecting them to fall. Most just looked forward, toward the promise of not being hunted for a few breaths.
Chen Rui dismounted in the outer yard, knees nearly buckling with relief. She caught herself before she knelt, straightened, and bowed instead.
"Lady Li," she said.
"Captain Chen," Ziyan replied. "You bring trouble with you."
"I've been bringing nothing but that since the border fell," Chen Rui said. "Figured I'd bring it somewhere useful for once."
Ziyan's mouth quirked. "What news?"
Chen Rui's jaw worked. "The Emperor is dead. You know that. The capital's in hands that change every fifth day—one bannerman after another claiming the right to hold what's left. Xia has taken more cities than I care to count. Some surrendered. Some burned. Most surrendered after they watched the ones that burned."
Her gaze slid up to the walls, then past them, toward the heart of the city. "Rumor says you killed Zhang. That you've turned Yong'an into something that isn't his. That you're mad enough to tell both Qi and Xia to choke."
"Rumor talks too much," Feiyan said, reappearing at Ziyan's shoulder. "You passed three of my men's tests without flinching. Either you're very sincere, or very stupid, or very desperate. Which is it?"
"Yes," Chen Rui said.
Ziyan liked her for that.
"We don't have spare food for this many," Han said bluntly. "We barely have enough for those already here."
"Then we teach them to take it from someone else," Wei said. "Preferably wolves."
Ziyan looked at the new arrivals: faces hollowed by flight and fear, yes—but also backs that had not yet forgotten how to straighten.
"You swear to the Oath," she said to Chen Rui. "You and your people. Law first. Me after. You break it, my own knife takes your hand."
Chen Rui didn't even glance at the posted tablets. "We swear," she said simply. "Better law that bites than chaos that eats."
"Good," Ziyan said. "Find those who can still fight. Ren will put them where our line is thinnest. The rest go to the granaries and infirmaries. They work, they eat. Same as everyone."
As Chen Rui went to shout orders, Feiyan leaned in. "You just took in more mouths and more spears," she said. "Very on brand."
"It's a risk," Ziyan said.
"So is everything about today," Feiyan replied. "At least this risk breathes on our side of the wall."
By evening, the city felt different.
Crowded, yes. Tense, yes. But also… larger. The newcomers brought news, skills, songs, curses in dialects Ziyan hadn't heard since childhood festivals. They also brought stories of cities that had knelt and been treated as politely conquered, and of ones that had resisted and been wiped clean.
In the temple, the steward who'd tried to sell medicine now hauled bucket after bucket under the old healer's supervision. His hands blistered. He did not complain, because children saw him working and whispered about the law that made him do it.
In the market square, Chen Rui told a ring of listeners how Xia taxed farmers in the last province they'd taken: fairly for now, harshly where resistance had been strong. "They put grain in your mouth and coin in your hand," she said. "Then they tell you the price later."
On the wall, Ren Kanyu watched new watchfires bloom inside Yong'an's perimeter and recalculated.
At the north tower, as guards rotated and the lamps were trimmed, Ziyan stood with Feiyan and Li Qiang and watched the snow erase footprints on the stairs.
"Our numbers grow," Li Qiang said.
"So do theirs," Feiyan countered. "These are only the ones who managed to run."
"They chose this road," Ziyan said. "That matters."
"To you," Feiyan said. "Less to arrows."
"Arrows obey numbers," Ziyan replied. "People obey stories."
Feiyan's gaze flicked to the city below. "And which one are we telling tonight?"
"That this place is not a pen," Ziyan said. "It is not a battlefield someone else chose. It is ours. And anyone who comes wanting to live here—under law, under watch, under the same hunger—is welcome to carry a piece of it."
Feiyan's mouth curved. "You're making a kingdom out of whoever's stubborn enough to knock on your gate in the middle of a war."
"Yes," Ziyan said. "Is there a better kind?"
They stood until the cold bit their cheeks and the lamps burned low.
Outside, beyond arrow range, Xia's camp glowed like a patient wound. Inside, Yong'an breathed in and out, in and out, under new rules it had agreed to while the wolves were watching.
The siege had not broken.
But something else had.
Ziyan felt it in the way men saluted her now and then glanced at the law tablets as if remembering they were allowed to. In the way children whispered the Oath phrases when they thought no one listened. In the way Han, grumbling, had moved his bedroll closer to the gate instead of the keep.
The city was no longer just enduring.
It was becoming.
Morning would bring fresh assaults. Ren would try new angles. Xia's Emperor would send more orders written in tidy script far away from blood.
But tonight, while herbs boiled and snow fell and law dried on bamboo, Ziyan allowed herself one small, forbidden thought:
Even if they lost this wall, this battle, this city…
The road she had started might already be too alive to kill.