The courtyard reeked of iron and wet stone.
The Grand Commandant stood beneath the eaves, untouched by the blood slowly running in quiet rivulets toward the drains. Four bodies lay face-down in the rain—soldiers and assassins both, their wrists bound, their armor half-stripped, as if they'd died halfway through their own disgrace.
He didn't speak.
He didn't have to.
The silence was enough. His aides watched with stiff necks and frozen expressions, lips sealed behind bronze helms. None dared meet his eyes. They knew better.
The Grand Commandant finally lifted one hand, and the corpses were dragged away.
Failure, to him, was not simply error—it was rot. And rot had to be burned before it spread.
He turned toward the brazier glowing behind him. A map of southern Qi was stretched across the table, its parchment edges fluttering in the wind. Nan Shu sat near the center, marked not with a circle but a blackened slash.
"She's heading there," he said quietly. "The phoenix child and her little blades."
An officer stepped forward. "We've already rerouted the border scouts."
"I don't want her stopped," the Grand Commandant murmured. "I want her buried."
The aide hesitated. "But my lord—"
"Nan Shu is hollowed out. A corpse of a city. No one will listen to her there. No one will help. Let her arrive and realize she's too late."
He narrowed his eyes, voice turning cold.
"Let her choke on the ashes of everything I've already burned."
The journey took seven days.
The path wound through ragged hills, dense underbrush, and crumbling roads where caravans once roamed but now only weeds remained. The sun barely pierced the clouds, and every night the trio made camp in places too quiet for comfort.
No soldiers followed. No thieves attacked. Not even bandits took notice of their wagon.
It was the silence that unsettled them most.
"They've cleared the roads," Feiyan said one night, her voice low over the crackling fire. "Or something cleared them for us."
Li Qiang sharpened his blade, never looking up. "They want us to reach Nan Shu."
Ziyan said nothing. But she felt it, too—that strange absence of threat that was itself a warning. No obstacles. No confrontations. Just the creeping sense that they were being led.
Led to something waiting.
They crested the final ridge by dawn on the eighth day. Fog clung to the valley below, soft and unwelcoming, but through the mist, the broken roofs of Nan Shu stretched in ruinous stillness.
Once, it had been a city of rivers and red-tiled bridges, famous for its artisans, its markets, and its flowering trees.
Now?
Now it was a skeleton.
The outer walls sagged in places, patched with rotted wood and straw. Gates that had once borne carved dragons now hung askew, their paint peeled and faded. The guards at the entrance wore no insignia—only mismatched armor and hollow expressions.
Ziyan dismounted slowly. "This was once the jewel of the southern provinces."
Feiyan frowned. "Now it's a graveyard."
They passed through the gate without resistance. No questions, no inspections. The guards didn't even meet their eyes.
Inside the walls, the city was worse.
Children with sunken cheeks watched from doorways with the silence of ghosts. The markets were half-empty, with vendors selling wilted roots and broken tools. No music played. No laughter. Only the weary thud of sandals on dust-choked stone.
An old woman tried to sell a bowl of water for three copper coins.
No one bought it.
Li Qiang stepped in front of a beggar and handed him a piece of dried meat. The man looked at it, then at them, and shuffled away without thanks.
"They don't trust anyone," Feiyan muttered.
Ziyan looked around slowly. "They've been taught not to."
They found shelter in an abandoned courtyard on the eastern edge of the city—once a tea house, now stripped of anything valuable. Only cracked lanterns and soot-covered floor tiles remained. Feiyan cleared the space of debris while Li Qiang checked the perimeter.
Ziyan stood at the threshold, the wind tugging gently at her cloak.
She could feel it now—the weight of Nan Shu's silence. It was not just poverty or decay. It was orchestrated neglect.
"War didn't do this alone," she said quietly. "This was bled dry on purpose."
Feiyan brushed ash from an old plaque. "How?"
Ziyan's eyes narrowed. "Over-taxation. Seized grain. Conscription quotas. Then the nobles left when there was nothing left to take."
Li Qiang returned. "The people who remain are either too weak to flee… or too angry."
Feiyan's blade was already unsheathed. "We'll have to be careful."
Ziyan stepped deeper into the courtyard, her boots crunching soft charcoal.
"No," she said. "We'll have to be honest."
That night, they lit no fire.
Ziyan sat by the window, gazing into the cold street below. A child ran past barefoot, clutching a reed flute. No one followed. No one called after him.
Just another shadow among many.
"I came here thinking I would find answers," she said softly. "But I think what I'll find is pain."
Feiyan leaned against the wall beside her. "Maybe pain is the answer."
Li Qiang said nothing. He stood at the far edge of the room, eyes fixed on the broken moonlight spilling through the roof beams.
Ziyan glanced down at her palm.
The phoenix mark pulsed faintly, a quiet warmth beneath the skin—not blazing, not screaming. Just watching.
Waiting.
Back in the Eastern Capital, the Grand Commandant sat in his private war room, staring at a sealed message from one of his contacts in Nan Shu.
The contents were simple: They've arrived.
He turned the letter over once, then held it to the edge of the candle's flame.
The parchment blackened and curled.
"Let her see what justice looks like when it is forgotten," he whispered. "Let her stand in the ruins of mercy."
He poured himself a cup of wine and drank slowly, already thinking of the next move.
Not how to stop her.
But how to make sure no one listens, even if she speaks.