The bells of Qingshui Village rang after the smoke had already begun to rise.
By the time the sound reached the fields, fire was moving through the western homes. Roofs crackled. Smoke poured low and thick, pressing people into the streets. Someone screamed for help. Someone else screamed a name. Then both sounds were swallowed.
The soldiers entered through the main road.
They moved in lines, armor dark, faces flat and unreadable. Their boots struck the ground together. A red sun marked their banners, stamped on black cloth. It fluttered once, then settled, as if the air itself had gone still.
One soldier looked up at the bell tower.
"Too late," he said.
Another answered, "They always wait too long."
A torch was passed forward. The man who caught it didn't hesitate. He threw it onto the nearest roof and watched until the flames took hold.
People ran.
An old man dropped to his knees in the dirt, forehead pressed down. "Please," he said, voice breaking. "We have nothing."
A soldier stepped around him. "Then you won't miss it."
Steel flashed nearby. Three young men fell in the street, tools clattering from their hands. One tried to crawl. A boot came down on his back and held him there.
"Age?" a soldier asked, glancing at a boy frozen beside a cart.
The boy couldn't have been more than fifteen.
"Does he breathe?" came the reply.
"Yes."
"Then he's old enough."
The blade came down once. Clean. The body folded into the dust.
A woman ran forward with a child clutched to her chest. "He's sick," she cried. "Please—"
"Move," a soldier said calmly.
She didn't understand the word. She stayed where she was.
Another soldier pulled her aside by the arm and tossed her to the ground. The child slipped from her grip, landing hard, coughing, trying to stand.
"Too slow," someone muttered.
Fire spread behind them, walls collapsing inward. Smoke burned the eyes, the throat, the lungs. Animals screamed in their pens until the sounds cut off one by one.
The village headman was dragged into the square, feet scraping uselessly over stone.
"Wells," a soldier said to him. "How many?"
The old man shook his head violently. "Please—children drink from them—"
"I didn't ask who drinks," the soldier said.
When the headman pointed, the soldier nodded and repeated the locations to the others. "Fill them. Seal them."
Another soldier kicked open the grain store and stood watching as rice spilled across the dirt. He ground it beneath his heel until it became useless.
"This place feeds the next province," he said.
"Not anymore," someone replied.
Fire took the rest.
By the time the watchtower was seized, the bells had melted into blackened shapes in the square. The banner went up, the red sun rising over ash and flame.
From the edge of the village, a boy watched.
He had hidden beneath a collapsed fence, smoke coating his skin, his mouth pressed into his sleeve to keep from coughing. He saw the soldiers pass within arm's reach of him. Close enough to smell leather and oil.
"Check the east road," one said.
"It's burning," another answered. "No one survives that."
The boy didn't move.
When the voices faded, he crawled. Slow. Careful. Every sound felt like betrayal. He followed the ground away from heat, away from light, toward shadow.
The trees caught him before anyone noticed.
Branches tore at his clothes. Roots grabbed his feet. He ran anyway, lungs screaming, heart beating so hard it hurt. No shouts followed. No horns. The soldiers were finished here.
He didn't stop until the smell of smoke faded into damp earth.
From the forest, he watched Qingshui burn.
By morning, there was nothing left to return to.
He followed the river south, barefoot and bleeding, carrying only what he had seen. When he reached the farms near Meihe, he collapsed at a gate and said the only words that mattered.
"They don't stop."
By the time the smoke reached the city, fear had already arrived.
And somewhere not far away, a conscription order was being written.