The plains of Shanjing were dust and silence.
Two days' march from the gates of the Zhong Empire, war had chosen its crucible. And in that wide-stretched land, shaped by wind and old blood, the battle line reformed.
The Zhong had come with fury—eight legions marching under banners of fire and gold. Their phalanxes bore dragon-etched shields, disciplined and cruel. Mercenaries followed in disordered rage: foreign berserkers, jagged-iron axemen, screaming chain-flail zealots. Auxiliary levies flanked them, and behind it all rolled siege towers, fire carts, and armored battering rams carved like the empire's ancestral beasts.
But the Gale had not come to be broken.
Altan stood atop a small ridge, staring across the wind-brushed battlefield. Behind him, the full force of the Gale Army waited—six legions, hard-earned and steel-tested. Three were veteran regulars from the Doru Cliffs and Blackwind Hollow. Two were fresh-formed, younger but not unblooded. They had seen fire, and not flinched.
The last was his own design—a legion of heavy cavalry, one thousand strong, forged from Stormguard elites and frontline warhorses. Not mere riders. Shock-troopers trained to strike like thunderclaps. Their armor bore obsidian trimming, their lances carved with the silent spiral sigils of the Stoneheart method. They were his answer to fire.
At both wings, two thousand cavalry moved beneath Gale banners—light riders under Khulan's command, scouts from the Qorjin-Ke, and strike formations shaped by Cloud Fang training. Burgedai's infantry held the central flanks, the Rootwake Battalion dug in with glyph-marked trenches and geomantic fault lines rigged to collapse. Between them, the Stormguard—Chaghan at their head—waited in absolute silence.
They moved with no flourish, only precision. Shields up, blades clean, every strike short and fatal. Where a Stormguard fell, his squire moved in without delay—dragging the body back, handing fresh spears or unchipped shields to the next. Squires did not fight. They watched, learned, and remembered. For every master who fell, a student witnessed the price of failure.
Above, hawks circled. Stormwake's scouts were already in position, beast-linked eyes watching every motion behind Zhong lines. Batu himself rode the ridge beyond the right flank, hawk on arm and speaking into the wind. He was son of Urgan, wild-blooded and sharp-souled. His voice echoed between pulses of breath-qi. "Mercenary pike formation splitting. Cavalry curling right. Siege carts shifting to inner path."
The signals came in patterns of eagle-shadow and mirror-helix, reflected through dozens of trained beasts. Batu narrowed his eyes, reading more than movement. He sent a signal.
Khulan glanced up as the eagle spiraled low. "Altan, right flank's soft. If we strike—"
"I know." He raised two fingers. A counter-order flickered down the line.
Then the drums began. The Zhong advanced in triple-rank formation, spears forward, archers at the rear. Siege carts crawled behind them, pushed by chained oxen. Their right flank swelled with mercenaries, howling like madmen, eager to strike.
Altan raised his blade. The order pulsed out—not shouted, but felt.
Burgedai's Rootwake infantry locked shields. Earth-runes shimmered under their boots. Glyphcutters moved between the ranks, carving invisible sigilfields into the ground—trios forming nodes of disruption, ready to scatter fire spells and dampen impact zones. Shamans knelt, drawing spirit-lines in the dirt.
The first volley came from the Zhong—a rain of fire arrows.
Guided Arc glyphs activated midair.
Gale archers, trained in the Painted Sight method, redirected the flaming sky. Arrows curved midflight, splitting and returning through gaps in enemy shields. The Zhong faltered. Just slightly.
And that was enough.
"NOW."
The ground trembled.
Buried Ember Glyphs detonated under the Zhong center. Trenches collapsed, folding entire front lines into dust. Then Rootwake troops surged—Burgedai at the point, his glaive flaring with Iron Echo. One swing crushed three men. The second, their ghosts.
The Stormguard moved next.
Chaghan led them in tight formation, bodies wreathed in the null-qi hum of the Stoneheart path. Fire magic broke across them like waves against obsidian. They breached forward in short, brutal bursts—punching through the left flank. No warcries. No words. Only force.
Every movement wasted nothing. A spear thrust slid under the ribs and twisted. A shield bash crushed bone and will. Blood gushed, steam rising from the dying. Behind them, squires darted in silence, replacing broken weapons, retrieving fallen bodies. There was no pause. Just motion.
"Calvary—wings!" Altan called.
Khulan's light riders swept from the right, feinting and reversing like wind-struck banners. The Zhong auxiliaries gave chase—only to be flanked by Stormwake's Qorjin-Ke scouts, owls and wolves guiding them through terrain no map recorded.
Batu himself led the intercept, slicing down through a mercenary officer with a spear cast from the saddle. His hawk screamed and dived. The enemy flinched. Batu was already gone, shadow behind horsehide.
Then came the hammer.
Altan's heavy cavalry charged.
One thousand riders. Not a gallop, but a quake.
They struck the weakened midline just as it tried to reform. Stormguard-trained lancers pierced through shields and bone. The impact shattered two formations, turning the Zhong surge into a grinding retreat. Altan led the charge himself, his qi wrapped in Eternal Harmony—a synthesis of all five elemental stances.
He moved like thunder compressed into muscle. Silent Vein activated. Every breath was a pivot. Every strike opened holes before they existed.
When he reached the rear guard of the Zhong midline, he dismounted in a blur—cutting through three elite sentinels before his boots touched soil. Blood sprayed, one head tumbling as another screamed and fell forward, gutted. Bones snapped under his boots.
Khulan met him again in the churn. "The right collapses! Their mercs are overextended!"
"Good," he said. "Pull back the bait. Let them chase."
She whistled once—sharp, low. Her cavalry peeled off, luring the berserkers into a narrow gorge carved the night before. Geomantic glyphs lit up.
Then the gorge imploded.
Cries rang out. Dust billowed. Hundreds lost in one breath.
By dusk, the field stank of blood and burnt oil. But the line had held.
No—it had advanced.
The Zhong horns cried retreat. Three notes. Bitter. Reluctant.
And still, the Gale did not cheer. They only breathed, bled, and stood.
Altan lowered his sword. "Let them go. They'll come again. But not the same."
Burgedai sat against a mound of wreckage, his arm slack. "We're still breathing."
Khulan dismounted and knelt, eyes scanning the field. "We did more than hold. We turned their charge into a grave."
Altan looked toward the towers of Shanjing, far beyond the smoke and dusk.
"We didn't break their back," he murmured. "But we've broken their rhythm."
The aftermath began with silence. The living walked among the dead. Stormguard squires moved like ghosts through the field, retrieving bodies, weapons, and broken banners. The fallen were carried with care. Enemy wounded were left where they bled.
Burgedai ordered Rootwake engineers to clear the collapsed trenches, retrieve what sigilplates remained functional, and rebuild the forward glyphlines. Khulan rode her blooded cavalry along the perimeter, checking for pockets of retreating enemy.
Stormwake stood atop a rise, eyes following the hawks circling above the distant trees. "Zhong remnants heading north," he murmured. "We won't need to chase them. They're broken."
"No," Altan said. "They're bleeding. Not broken. Yet."
As the sun dipped low, pyres were lit. The Stormguard knelt before each fallen comrade, offering one breath of silence, then rising again without word. It was their way.
The plains reeked of iron and smoke. But under the haze, the Gale still stood.
Inside the Zhong court, silence drowned ceremony.
Lord Ren trembled before the Empress Dowager, casualty reports in hand. "They have struck at our center. Our engines stalled. Entire units vanished into the plains."
The Emperor spat wine into the firebowl. "Send ten more legions, then."
But the Empress did not move.
Her gaze lingered west, toward the horizon unseen.
"We will not send more legions," she said, voice cold. "He is a master tactician in open battles. We will reinforce the capital walls. He will not take the city."
Her words were quiet.
But they fell like a closing gate.
And somewhere in the plains, Altan turned his eyes toward the capital.
He knew the war had changed shape.
The next battle would not be in the open.
It would be at the gates of an empire.
And he would be ready.