Frost clung to the orchard's roots long after the Fang's corpse fed them.
By dawn, the villagers spoke of the kill in hushes and sharp glances — rumor's spine had tasted poison and did not break.
But the crown does not mourn its dead with silence. It mourns with iron.
---
Li Shen stood at the orchard's crest, wind snapping the Wolfchain banner behind him. Yue Lan crouched at his side, spirit threads drifting through brittle branches to catch whispers the frost carried in from the north ridge.
Master Tian leaned against the old fence, staff tapping frozen mud.
"They come," Tian rasped. "I smelled them in my cough before I heard your children repeat it."
Li Shen didn't smile. He only squinted through drifting dawn fog that hid the ridgeline.
"How many?" he asked.
Yue Lan's threads flickered — sensing footprints the orchard roots could not drink fast enough.
"Not bounty men. Not tax guards," she said softly. "Old oaths. Bone-sigiled. The Pale Host."
---
At the name, Tian spat into the frost. The spit hissed like a curse.
"Dead men who never died," the old man rasped. "The Nine Heavens' dirtiest leash. They don't take bribes. They don't break."
Li Shen's jaw tensed. The Pale Host — rumor's oldest rival. Exiled swords, plague-blooded monks, gravebound assassins sworn to the crown's hidden bone order. A relic of the old empire, dragged back from salt pits when rumor needed choking.
---
Yue Lan lifted her eyes to Li Shen's. Her threads coiled around his wrist — a ghost's promise older than any orchard.
"Roots won't hold them," she whispered. "Not alone."
Li Shen scanned the orchard. The villagers stood scattered among bent trunks, blades cleaned but hands still raw. Children too small to swing iron hid behind straw dummies made to look like tax men.
If the Pale Host marched straight through the orchard fence, roots would snap under boot and blade alike.
---
He spoke then — low, so only Tian and Yue Lan heard.
"We break them before they touch the orchard."
Tian's laugh was a bark that rattled his cracked teeth. "Good," he croaked. "Roots that wait for frost to pass rot faster than rumor's tongue."
---
At dusk, the orchard hummed with quiet orders. Blades checked. Spears tied tighter. Rust hammered free where it could be.
Li Shen walked the rows alone. He placed his palm on each bent trunk — an old promise spoken with frost breath and calloused fingers.
When he reached the Wolfchain banner, he did not stop. He unhooked it from its makeshift pole. Rolled the silk tight. Bound it with a strip of linen once used to dress his side wound.
---
By midnight, Tian's Watch was quiet — but not asleep. Fathers with splintered axe handles waited behind boulders along the ridge path. Orchard hands crouched in pine hollows, frost caking their brows. Yue Lan drifted among them, spirit threads weaving frost sigils to choke footsteps and twist echoes away from the Pale Host's ears.
---
Li Shen crouched beside an uprooted pine, the rolled Wolfchain banner resting against his knee. His blade lay naked across his thighs.
To his right, Master Tian leaned against a trunk, breath rattling through a grin half hidden by frost.
"You bleed them here?" Tian rasped.
Li Shen's eyes flicked to the dark where the Pale Host's bone sigils gleamed faint white under a moon cracked by drifting clouds.
"No," Li Shen said. His voice was ice on iron.
"I break them here."
---
The Pale Host advanced single file — shapes draped in white and gray, bone beads rattling soft prayers around their throats. Swords wrapped in burial cloths. Faces hidden behind lacquered masks painted with crown runes.
The Host leader lifted a hand — fingers bone-thin, sigiled with salt ink.
He hissed one word that drifted down the frost slope:
"Yield."
---
Li Shen's grin cracked the hush like a branch under boot.
He rose, unfurled the Wolfchain banner. Black silk. White fangs painted over the old wolf's snarl. Beneath it, the Fang's stolen dagger stitched into the hem — a new tooth, rumor's fresh kill.
Li Shen lifted the banner high in his left hand. Blade bare in his right.
"Come claim your bones," he called. "Roots drink deep tonight."
---
At his flanks, orchard hands rose from snow hollows. Fathers. Mothers. Old salt miners dragging rusty hammers behind them like ghosts reborn with steel.
Above them, the frost wind caught the Wolfchain's new teeth — silk snapping like a howl.
---
Roots, rumor, iron. Tonight they would not break.
Tonight, they'd teach the Pale Host to fear hunger louder than any crown's hush.
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⚡ End of Chapter Twenty-Five — Banner of Bone
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