The third day on the road, the wind changed.
It came from the south now — cold, wet, and wrong. It carried the scent of ash that wasn't burning, and soil that wasn't alive.
We passed through villages that no longer had names.
The signs had been stripped.
The walls collapsed inward.
Some buildings were intact — but no lights inside.
No people.
Not even bones.
Shen Yue did not speak.
She barely moved.
She rode with her eyes half-lowered, like someone half-dreaming. Her posture remained perfect. Her robes, spotless. Her breath, even.
But the guards began avoiding her.
Subtly at first.
Then openly.
One changed his horse to avoid riding beside her.
Another murmured a prayer when she passed.
None dared speak to me about it.
They didn't need to.
That night, I woke to silence.
The kind that wasn't empty — but full.
Heavy with breath not drawn by men.
Outside the tent, the horses refused to eat.
Their eyes rolled when Shen Yue passed.
I dreamt again.
But it wasn't a dream.
It was the same corridor — darker now.
Wetter.
The walls pulsed.
And this time… the faceless woman was not waiting.
She was walking toward me.
When I awoke, I found her — Shen Yue — standing at the edge of the stream near our camp.
Alone.
Barefoot.
Staring into the black water.
"You should rest," I said.
"I don't dream," she replied.
I didn't ask what she saw.
Because I already knew I wouldn't understand it.
Back in Ling An, the fog never lifted that morning.
The courtiers moved like shadows under colored parasols, unaware that one of them was already marked.
Minister Hao, Lord of Grain Transport, arrived late to the Council Hall.
He had been sick, they said. A fever. Maybe exhaustion.
He never made it to his seat.
A runner found him slumped in the antechamber.
His lips blue. His teeth clenched. No wounds.
No struggle.
Just stillness.
A quiet, clean death.
And yet his documents — all his private correspondences — had been collected already.
Filed.
Handled.
By Wu Kang's agents.
The official story was heart failure.
Old age.
But everyone knew he had once sided with the Southern Watch.
And now… he was gone.
Wu Kang signed the decree that transferred the grain contracts to the Central Supply Office.
Then he sipped tea and said nothing.
He didn't smile.
He didn't need to.
By the end of the day, whispers had spread.
Not of Minister Hao's death.
But of how Wu An's appointment to Dongxia had caused yet another collapse in court.
The boy brings ruin, they said.
Even from afar.
Wu Kang let the rumor spread.
He fed it silence.
And waited.
Dongxia Province
They didn't tell me it smelled like this.
As we approached, the trees thinned into blackened husks. Their branches curled like dead fingers toward the road. The soil was wrong — cracked in some places, bloated in others.
Even the birds avoided the sky here.
The first village we passed had no name.
Its well was dry.
Its shrine collapsed inward.
The children didn't wave.
They didn't run.
They simply watched us from behind shutters, as if we were the procession of a funeral they'd already attended.
The guards shifted uncomfortably.
Shen Yue said nothing.
Her posture hadn't changed in three hours.
I wasn't sure she had blinked.
We climbed the last hill before the city.
Dongxia rose before us — not proud, not defiant.
It sagged behind its walls.
The banners above the gate were torn.
The soldiers at the gate wore rusted armor and hollow stares. They opened the doors without question.
No salute.
No welcome.
Just resignation.
We entered in silence.
Even the horses treaded softer here.
The streets were not empty — but they might as well have been.
People watched us pass, but none approached.
No cries of welcome.
No flowers.
No drums.
Only cracked stone, faded paint, and the weight of something rotting beneath the surface.
I dismounted in front of the old administrative manor.
It had once been a governor's palace.
Now it looked like a mausoleum.
I turned to Shen Yue.
She looked at the gate behind us.
Not ahead.
Not at me.
Only back.
As if something was still watching us leave — even though we had already arrived.
"How does it feel?" she asked, softly.
"Like I've returned to a city I never left."
She nodded.
As if that made perfect sense.
The gates behind us groaned shut.
And the sky — pale and sour — did not lift.
I felt it then.
Not fear.
Not grief.
Recognition.
I had been here before.
Not in body.
But in the way a wound remembers the blade.
Dongxia had been waiting.
And now it breathed again.