Ling An does not scream anymore.
It settles.
The blood dries faster than it should. Smoke hangs in layers, refusing to rise or fall, as if the sky itself is undecided about acknowledging what happened. Bodies lie where they fell, not piled, not arranged—simply abandoned by meaning.
I walk through streets that no longer remember commerce.
The Black Tigers move ahead of me in silence, boots finding paths between the dead with the ease of men who have learned how to ignore the human shape when it stops being human. They do not celebrate. They do not speak.
They understand this was not a victory.
It was a demonstration.
Zhou's banners are gone from the Eastern Tower.
What remains is… absence. Stone eaten inward, geometry broken like teeth knocked out of a skull. Whatever Wu Shuang and my father unleashed did not just kill—it removed.
Zhou learned something today.
They learned Ling An is not conquerable.
Only avoidable.
I feel the Presence stir faintly beneath my steps, neither restrained nor free—alert, attentive, no longer confused. It is aligning again, not to me, but with me, in the way predators align when they recognize another predator in the territory.
That frightens me.
Not because it feels wrong.
Because it feels efficient.
We reach the first objective.
An old administrative hall converted into a temporary Zhou command post before the slaughter. The Black Tigers slip inside, blades quiet, eyes sharp. No resistance. Zhou evacuated quickly once the horror began.
Smart.
They will remember that too.
I kneel beside a discarded map. Zhou's siege lines are still marked in ink—clean, careful, almost respectful. They had expected months.
They were planning to rule.
Instead, they will write reports explaining why they chose not to.
"Lord," Liao Yun says behind me, voice low. "Outer gates secured. Armories seized. No counterattack."
"They won't counterattack," I reply. "Not yet."
"Zhou?" he asks.
"The South," I say. "Zhou already learned fear. The South will try to use it."
I stand.
"Send the signal to the western cells," I continue. "Tell them to move supplies, not men. No banners. No proclamations."
He hesitates. "You're not taking Ling An."
"I'm abandoning it," I say.
That earns looks.
"This city is a carcass now," I continue. "Anyone who stays too long will rot with it."
Above us, the palace burns with light—not firelight, not torchlight, but ritual glow. Wu Jin still sits the throne, but he is no longer ruling.
He is being preserved.
I know because I've seen that look before.
Wu Jin stands at the balcony when I finally look up, framed by a sky stained with smoke and sutra-ash. He looks older than he did yesterday. Smaller.
His voice does not carry this time.
He is no longer addressing a city.
He is whispering to ghosts.
Somewhere behind him, the Lord Protector watches the horizon, hands clasped behind his back, posture relaxed. This is not triumph.
This is satisfaction.
Wu Shuang stands apart from them both, her presence no longer warping reality openly—but every shadow near her bends wrong, as if it remembers what it could become.
She does not look at me.
That hurts more than her hostility ever did.
I realize then what my father has achieved.
He has turned Ling An into a warning.
Not just for Zhou.
For me.
A reminder of what happens when power is centralized too completely, too visibly. The horror was not meant to win the war.
It was meant to end questions.
But questions remain.
Mine.
I turn away from the palace.
"The Tigers move west," I say. "We break into smaller claws. No more mass formations."
"Where are we going?" Liao Yun asks.
"Where authority is weakest," I answer. "And memory is longest."
The Presence hums softly, approving not of direction, but of fracture.
Behind us, Ling An becomes quiet in the way cemeteries do once the mourners leave.
Ahead of us, the world reshapes itself around the knowledge of what this city has become.
Zhou will regroup.
The South will advance carefully.
Wu Jin will cling to a throne no one needs anymore.
My father will prepare the next unveiling.
And I—
I will no longer wait for empires to decide the shape of the future.
If horrors are going to rule this age,
then I will make sure they answer to competition, not crowns.
I disappear into the western roads as dawn breaks weakly over a city that has already died—
and behind me, the Presence watches, patient,
learning what it means
to follow instead of command.