Dawn cracked the sky like a blade drawn from a sheath. A spill of molten gold poured over the eastern ridge, igniting the vast Plains in the ghostlight of a world about to bleed. Cold mist clung to the earth, thin as breath, veiling the black banners of the Gale that rose like impaled omens against the bruised heavens.
At the edge of the plateau, twenty thousand warriors of the Gale stood in silence—no chant, no horn. Just stillness. Men molded from exile, failure, and fury. Men turned stone.
Chadhan stood at their front, helm tucked beneath one arm, dust clinging to the creases of his armor. He wasn't a hero; he was the blunt instrument that made them whole. These weren't lords. They were butchers and miners, herders and thieves—reforged in a crucible of bruises and repetition. The Stoneheart Resonance thudded in his bones like a second heartbeat. No fire. No lightning. Only density, resolve, pain absorbed and transmuted into purpose.
He inhaled deep. Earth and metal filled his lungs. He pressed the breath into his dantian, molten and heavy, then released it through his bones. The vibration hummed through the line—a call unspoken, a rhythm shared. The frontline responded in kind. Shields braced. Glaives angled. They breathed as one body.
Across the plain, a sea of red banners danced under a rising wind. The Zhong army stretched wide, nearly a li across. Crisp in formation. Standard-perfect. General Yue Lin rode at center on a white stallion, ceremonial plumes rising like defiance. To the right, Lord Qiu's cavalry shifted in tight reserve, their horses nervous, stamping through the mist. Their lines gleamed. Their formations sang with elegance.
They would bleed just the same.
Far behind the Gale line, Altan stood unmoved. Arms folded. Eyes like obsidian, watching wind ripple through grass blades.
"Signal Chadhan," he said quietly. "Begin the push. Oblique angle—left flank crushes, center delays, right refuses contact until I say."
A rider nodded and vanished into the ranks. Moments later, the drums began.
Not thunderous. Not rushed. One beat every four breaths. A reminder: battle is a rhythm. Panic has no place in tempo.
Chadhan stepped forward, voice as sharp as his blade:
"Form up. Move with me. Break the tide."
The Gale infantry moved, not like a charge, but a gathering tsunami, thickening with each step. Shields interlocked. Spear lines angled like porcupine spines. On the far left, formations widened—deep layers of spearmen backed by cloaked archers. Just behind, reserves formed a rotating wedge, drilled to rotate men forward every thirty heartbeats. Chadhan walked with them, not behind. The battlefield would not be led from the rear.
Across the field, Zhong horns screamed. The red right wing snapped into tighter formation, rushing to mirror the Gale shift. But they were a breath too late.
Chadhan's foot struck earth.
The Stoneheart Resonance exploded outward, rippling through the ground. Soil compressed. Grass shriveled. Men felt it—qi anchoring their feet, grounding their nerves. Glaives dropped into guard. Arrows hissed overhead in tight, lethal arcs.
The clash was instant.
Spears burst through bellies.
Screams tore the morning wide.
The front line collapsed into chaos. Blades hacked. Guts spilled. A Gale soldier screamed as a Zhong axe split his jaw from the side, sending teeth flying like rice. Chadhan roared forward, his glaive a steel whirlwind. He tore open a man's collarbone, ripped down to the lung. The blood came fast, steaming in the cold. A second attacker drove a spear at his flank—the strike bounced, useless, off his hardened skin. Chadhan grabbed the shaft, pulled him forward, and crushed his skull with his forehead.
Bone crunched. The man fell twitching.
Beside him, a Gale fighter was thrown back, intestines unraveling from a gash in his belly. Another soldier took an arrow to the throat, coughed foam, then stabbed upward even as he died—his blade puncturing a Zhong throat in return.
The soil turned black with blood.
In the middle, the grind was slower. Shields locked in brutal press. Swords stabbed into ribs. Knuckles smashed cheekbones when space ran out. Grunts turned to sobs. Screams to gurgles. Men fought from their knees, over bodies of friends. Every foot forward was bought with tendons and bone.
Chadhan's glaive snapped at the haft. He cast it aside, drew his hooked short-spear, and ducked under a Zhong sword. He hooked behind the man's knee, dragged him to the mud, and stomped on his throat until cartilage cracked and eyes rolled white.
A mounted Zhong officer shouted above the melee—then his words ended in wet silence as three Gale arrows punched through his ribs. He toppled, crushed beneath his own horse.
On the Zhong right, Lord Qiu tried to stabilize the collapse—but the Gale left flank was too fast, too violent. Cavalry surged to plug the breach, only to meet hook-spears and glaive walls. One horse took a blade under the chin, blood spraying like a fountain as it collapsed onto its rider, crushing him. Another galloped straight into a shield formation—only to be brought down by three upward glaive thrusts, its rider flung like a doll and impaled midair.
Horses screamed like people.
Riders vanished beneath boots and blades.
Blood soaked the grass, turning soil to muck and pulp. A soldier screamed as he slipped, arms pinwheeling—then a blade drove through his back, erupting from his chest. A severed arm flew past Chadhan's face, fingers still twitching. Another man writhed, pinned to the earth by a broken spear through the eye socket, muttering for his mother until the light faded.
Behind the frontline, Altan mounted his horse, eyes scanning the center.
"Collapse their center," he said. Cold. Certain.
The Gale reserves moved, hammer to the Zhong anvil. The center surged, smashing forward with terrifying unity. Pikes dropped, punching through shields. Heavy footmen crushed exposed ribs, axes descending like judgment. Gale archers rained volleys on Zhong officers, targeting banners, sowing fear. Axemen on horseback flanked wide, butchering the rear—cutting supply lines, torching wagons.
Yue Lin turned, trying to escape.
He never got the chance.
Chadhan, blood-soaked and dragging a broken weapon, saw him through the chaos. He dropped the shattered spear, picked up a fresh one from the mud, and pointed.
Three archers saw the line of sight.
Three arrows flew.
One struck home—right through Yue Lin's throat.
He jerked once. Then collapsed backward off his horse, eyes wide and blank.
That broke it.
The Zhong line fractured.
Then it ran.
Leaderless. Screaming. Desperate. They dropped shields, dropped blades, pissing themselves as they trampled each other to escape. Only a few hundred made it. Gale troops did not chase far. There was no need. The field belonged to the dead.
Altan rode through the wreckage of men.
Bodies twitched. Fires crackled from upturned wagons.
One man wept over his own intestines, hands shaking, praying to gods that did not hear.
Altan barely glanced at him.
"Burn the wagons. Strip the armor. Leave the bodies."
Chadhan limped up beside him. One eye swollen. Cuts across his chest. Blood—his or not, he no longer cared.
"What now?"
Altan's gaze turned south, to the smoke of distant cities.
"Next city in three days. Rest for one."
Chadhan nodded. The Stoneheart still thrummed in his ribs like the pulse of a god beneath the earth. He gritted his teeth and walked on.
The pain remained. So did he.