The sky at last remembered how to bleed into color. The ghost army thinned according to plan: fires guttered, drums staggered, the branch-brooms retired before they revealed themselves to be shrubs. When the sun lifted a cautious edge above the hills, Xia had not moved.
"They wait," Han said, incredulous and almost reverent. "They wait for the army that isn't."
"Then we have our day," Ziyan said. "Spend it twice."
They took it in bread and in orders. Han's quartermaster doled porridge in bowls that still smelled of smoke. Wei slept in a crouch and woke angrier and happier. Feiyan rewrapped her thigh and didn't limp unless someone she liked could see it. Shuye dug ash out of his fingernails with the satisfaction of a craftsman whose work had not betrayed him. Li Qiang walked the perimeter and counted the men who would still be there at dusk.
By midmorning, the river mist lifted and the ruins of Ye Cheng showed themselves, honest and without apology. Roofs gone. Streets written over by ash. The long wall where Ziyan had learned to balance as a child stood half a memory high. A scarf of smoke drifted from a collapsed market stall as if bargaining with the air had become the town's last habit.
Wei saw her looking and said nothing. Feiyan did not pretend to read her face. Li Qiang took off his glove and touched the jar as if what lay inside and what lay across the water could teach each other to endure.
"It isn't lost," Ziyan said. "It is not theirs."
Feiyan followed her gaze to the far bank, where engineers fussed and carpenters argued and a general's tent watched the river with practiced contempt. "They will cross tomorrow," she said. "Or tonight, if pride wins the argument with caution."
"Then someone must make pride lose," Ziyan said. She drew the Emperor's letter, unfolded it once, then folded it again without reading. "We have one more night of ghosts in us. After that, we stop pretending and start teaching."
Han joined them at the ridge's edge. "I distrusted you for the right reasons," he said. "I will follow you for different ones."
"Good," Ziyan said. "Distrust sharpens. Faith dulls."
The wind turned northeast. Along the shore, the first thin plates of ice formed at the edges where the current was lazy and the water remembered stillness. They held light the way poor men hold coin—tight, surprised to have it. A single heron stood knee-deep and looked annoyed by history.
"Winter is early," Han said.
"Or on time," Feiyan countered. "And we are late."
Below, Xia's camp stirred like a beast considering a second meal. Above, Yong'an's ridge exhaled, tired but unbroken. Between them lay the river that had listened to too many plans and agreed with none.
Ziyan set her hand on the jar and felt its heat answer through cloth and skin, old warmth asking new work of her bones. "The river will decide," she said. "We will persuade."
Feiyan's hand brushed the blue silk at Ziyan's wrist, the touch brief as permission. "Then let's give it arguments it can't forget."
They stood until the cold asked them to move. The phantom army slept, and the real one, small and stubborn, woke into its own shadow. Along the bank, the ice crept another finger-width outward, thin glass over dark current. The sound it made was tiny and exact, like porcelain cooling on a kiln's lip.
The river did not bless them. It did not curse them. It tested their weight and did not yet crack