Battle Diary by Commander Ren Xian in the Year of Great Virtue
The dawn mist clung low over the Blue Forest River, veiling the land in the stillness of death. From the ridgelines, the Black Tiger Battalion waited in a silence so taut it felt like the earth itself was holding its breath.
Wu An stood at the edge of the rise, eyes narrowed at the enemy encampment below. The Golden Mandate and Crimson Banner forces bustled—oblivious to the trap tightening around their throats.
He turned to his captains, voice steady. "Wait for the water to die."
Beneath them, the river was already receding, as he had calculated. The last moon had dragged the tide away early, leaving the supply lines exposed—bloated wagons, food stores, and ammunition stranded in the soft, sucking mud.
Three nights before, he had forged the final letters, dispatched the final spies, and sowed doubt deep in the enemy ranks. Distrust now festered like rot. General Hoang had doubled his guards. Colonel Li refused to share provisions. Commander Wen kept his own banners tightly furled, claiming "ill omens" whispered in the wind.
Wu An had lit the fire with forged orders and whispered betrayals. Now, all that remained was the wind to carry the flame.
He turned to his second-in-command. "Signal the hawks."
At his nod, trained birds burst skyward—each bearing a piece of parchment scrawled in Wen's own hand, or so the enemy would believe. Treason, feigned alliances, assassination plots.
By the time the birds reached their targets, the generals would be too busy drawing swords on each other to notice the Black Tiger's charge.
But not all went smoothly.
In the days leading to the assault, Wu An had wrestled to hold his battalion together. These men had not sworn to him. They had sworn to his father, the Lord Protector. Now they whispered behind his back, tested his commands, resisted his authority with the blunt scepticism of soldiers who had buried too many young commanders.
"Another princeling with clean boots," one muttered.
"You'll all die if you follow me," Wu An had told them during the rain-drenched march north. "But you'll die faster without me."
That had earned silence.
But silence wasn't loyalty.
He had studied each man. Found the disgraced, the outcast, the ones broken by the war and hardened by it. He fought beside them. Ate beside them. Bled beside them.
When Captain Duan questioned his orders, Wu An had taken his blade, stepped into the sparring ring, and shattered the man's stance within three movements.
"Do not mistake my rank for safety," he told the watching men. "I will earn every command I give."
Still, it was not enough. Not until the fog night.
That was when it began.
The scouts brought back strange stories. An enemy patrol had gone missing—no bodies, just blood-soaked ground and a single soldier driven mad, whispering about the "eyes beneath the hill." Another time, an entire Crimson Banner outpost was found abandoned, weapons still warm, fires still burning.
And then, in the forest, the shadows began to move when no wind stirred the trees.
Wu An never spoke of what he felt in those moments. He barely understood it himself.
But something inside him had shifted—stretched thin, like skin over an alien thought. He would close his eyes and see angles that didn't exist, hear sounds that didn't echo. The first time it happened, a Crimson scout band had ambushed them in the ravine.
He hadn't even drawn his blade.
He merely raised his hand.
The ground had… responded.
Later, his men whispered of how the air grew thick like molasses, of how their enemies screamed before they were cut—mouths moving without sound, eyes glassy with horror as if they had seen something vast and wrong, something not meant for human minds.
They called it a miracle. Or a curse. But from that night on, the Black Tiger Battalion followed him without question. As if they feared something greater than death.
They began to chant his name before battle—not with pride, but with reverence.
And fear.
The trap was sprung at sunrise.
By then, the enemy was already tearing itself apart. General Hoang had executed two of Colonel Li's messengers. Commander Wen's encampment had caught fire in the night—no accident, Wu An was sure. The screams of infighting rose like wolves howling over the marshes.
Wu An gave the signal.
The Black Tiger Battalion descended like specters through the fog, armor blackened with ash, eyes gleaming with red pigment smeared beneath their helms. They made no sound—only steel, only death.
Wu An moved like a ghost through the chaos, issuing cold, precise orders. His sword drank blood without resistance. Bodies piled high in the mud. The sky turned from misty grey to copper red.
There were no glorious duels. No honor. Only slaughter.
Soldiers were trampled by their own horses, choked on the fumes of burning grain, clawed each other to pieces for a mouthful of water.
And in the center of it all was Wu An, untouched. Not because no one reached him, but because when they did—they stopped. Stared. Their eyes widened. And they screamed.
He never saw what they saw.
He didn't want to.
By dusk, it was over. The Blue Forest River was red again—though not with tide.