Frost cracked under bare feet before dawn. The orchard roots held the night's chill like old secrets, but above them the first iron glimmered in dawn's bruised light.
Li Shen stood at the orchard's heart, Wolfchain banner snapping behind him on its makeshift spear pole. At his feet, the old blades lay in rows on rice straw mats — short swords, broad knives, axes repurposed from orchard wood.
They weren't sharp yet. But rumor would sharpen them soon enough.
---
One by one, the villagers stepped from the tree line. Men with sawdust still under their nails. Women with raw knuckles from goat ropes. Children holding sticks shaped like spears taller than their shoulders.
Yue Lan drifted among them like a pale wraith, her spirit threads brushing trembling fingers, straightening grips, whispering cold calm into wide eyes. Where fear pooled, her frost stitched it shut.
Master Tian leaned against an old trunk, staff across his knees. His breath steamed from his cracked lips like incense from an ancient altar.
"Show them spine," he rasped to Li Shen. "Then they'll find their teeth."
---
Li Shen stepped onto the straw mat. Drew his own blade — steel honest, edge whispering frost as it cut the dawn air.
He spoke low, voice carrying through the hush.
"None of you were born to swing steel."
A rustle of shuffling feet. Someone coughed. A child's stick tapped frost.
Li Shen's grin split the hush.
"Good," he said. "Steel doesn't care how you're born. It cares how you stand."
---
He drove the blade into the frost beside him. Straightened his spine, spread his feet shoulder-wide.
"Stand like roots," he called. "Show me."
Dozens of feet shuffled. Some wide, some narrow, some already sinking under nerves. Yue Lan's threads flicked — tapping ankles, nudging heels outward.
Li Shen moved among them — shoving shoulders back, booting boots apart, barking soft curses that cracked frost and fear alike.
---
"Grip!" he barked next.
Wooden sticks lifted. Rusty blades found old palms. A dozen axe handles wobbled like saplings in a wind.
Li Shen slammed the hilt of his blade into a trembling grip — barked at the boy whose fingers quivered.
"Knuckles white," he growled. "Thumb locked. If your blood doesn't run to your fingers, it runs down your blade instead."
The boy swallowed. Locked his grip. Didn't blink.
---
Hours dripped through the orchard like thawed sap. Sun crept higher, frost steaming off bent branches. Blades clashed dull against straw dummies rigged to old orchard poles. Axe handles splintered where they bit frozen trunks.
Yue Lan drifted through the rows — threads tugging a spearhead back in line, guiding a small girl's stick thrust away from her own foot.
Li Shen stalked up and down — bootsteps thudding in the churned mud.
"When your arms fail," he called, voice raw but steady, "your feet keep you standing."
He slammed a spear haft against his shin. Didn't flinch.
"When your feet fail, your teeth bite."
He bared his grin, frost steaming on his breath.
"And when your teeth fail—"
He slammed his blade back into the frost beside the Wolfchain banner.
"—the chain remembers."
---
By dusk, the orchard smelled of sweat and churned soil. Small blisters cracked. Big hands turned raw. No one broke ranks.
Roots found iron.
Rumor learned to swing.
---
When the sun bled into the ridge, Li Shen stood alone by the banner. Yue Lan coiled her threads at his feet, her hands resting on her knees, eyes bright.
"You believe they'll hold?" she asked.
Li Shen looked at the churned orchard — fresh footprints, snapped branches, rusty blades gleaming in dusk.
He grinned, all teeth.
"They'll break," he said. "Or they'll break the crowns first."
Above them, the Wolfchain banner snapped once — black silk singing rumor's first oath into the night wind.
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⚡ End of Chapter Nineteen — The First Drills
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