As the battle settled, the visions returned.
They came like a flood behind my eyes—blood boiling, skin crawling, mind unravelling.
I saw Cao Wen, the heart of the Golden Mandate—hidden deep in the mountains, veiled by mist and stone. The city appeared like a fortress, but the vision peeled it open like rotten fruit: beneath the grandeur, it was weak, festering, hollow. A sheep cloaked in a wolf's skin.
Ten thousand soldiers could take it. Fewer, if led properly.
As the soldiers of the Black Tiger howled and drank and celebrated in the camp behind me, I stood apart—staring into the dark.
The laughter crawled beneath my skin.
"Silence!" I barked.
The noise died.
I stepped forward, blood still crusted on my cheeks, and spoke into their tired, skeptical eyes.
"You cheer for a battle?" I said. "This? This was nothing. A corpse convulsing in its last breath. But Cao Wen—Cao Wen is still watching. They believe we are satisfied. That we will crawl back into the mud."
I raised my voice, sharp enough to cut through exhaustion.
"Do you want your names sung in dirt, or carved in stone? Do you want to die as raiders, or be remembered as gods? I say we march. We end their false lord. We burn their prayers from the mountains."
They wavered. Some looked at their wounds. Others at the empty sky.
But I kept going.
"You followed me into fire. Follow me now into storm. Let them pray to their rotting idols—I'll carve a god they'll never forget."
And for the first time that night, silence gave way not to celebration—
—but to agreement.
Low. Rumbling. Terrifying.
Two days through jagged hills and fog-draped forests. The sky hung low and grey, as if the heavens themselves refused to watch what came next.
Then we saw it.
Cao Wen.
A proud fortress nestled in the mountains, crowned with pale stone walls and banners that no longer fluttered—they hung limp, soaked in mist and something heavier. On the surface, it stood tall. But beneath the towers, I could feel its rot.
The people behind those walls were not proud.
They were starving.
They were afraid.
And the city waited—like a corpse dressed for its own funeral.
I lifted my blade toward the gates. The steel caught no light, only shadows.
"Charge!"
The Black Tigers surged forward like thunder rolling downhill. Steel met stone. Arrows sang. Blood sprayed the ramparts. The first assault failed. So did the second. But we were not meant to be repelled.
We starved them of their own defense—burned the grain towers while their screams echoed in the smoke. We slaughtered only the armed. Only those who raised their blades.
And on the third day, Cao Wen's gates finally broke—not with splendor, but with a long, low groan, like the earth itself had been wounded.
I had issued strict orders:
Do not harm the citizens.
Do not torch the markets.
Do not touch the shrines.
We were not here to raze the world—only to cleanse and reshape it.
Our goal was the nobility—the soft-throated leeches clinging to the corpse of this empire. We moved through the outer city in silence, smoke and ash clinging to our boots. The citizens watched us with hollow eyes. They had seen too much already.
But in the noble quarter?
There, we found opulence stacked like corpses.
Golden roofs. Imported silks. Jars of wine older than our bloodlines.
We surrounded them—lords, barons, wives dripping in jewels. Some wept. Others tried to bribe us. A few clutched old swords with trembling fingers.
We said nothing.
Justice didn't need a speech.
That night, while my men stripped titles from trembling mouths and pried signets from bloated fingers, I stood in the royal manor.
The silence inside was unnatural. I could hear it again—that pulsing hum, behind the walls, beneath the floor.
Something old was here. Something buried. And as I stared into the King's polished mirror, I did not see myself.
Only eyes. Watching. Blinking. Endless.
The night after the fall, we gathered in the shattered plaza before the palace. The fires burned low. Roasted game and stolen wine passed between bloodied hands. My men laughed like beasts with full bellies, their faces smeared with pride and ash.
The people of Cao Wen watched from the shadows. Some cried. Some glared. None dared speak.
I said nothing.
I walked among the Black Tigers, but gave no toast, no command. My gaze swept over them like a blade. The noble quarter behind me still burned, its towers collapsing into embers.
And then—I felt it.
Not a sound, exactly. More like a scratching—behind my eyes, inside my skull. The air thickened. The walls around me breathed like lungs full of dust. Shadows twisted at the corners of my sight, stretching long and curling inward like claws.
That's when I saw it.
A vision: a vault buried beneath the citadel. A spiral staircase of obsidian, sinking into dark that pulsed like a heartbeat. Images crashed through my mind in flashes:
Faces stripped of eyes, blind and screaming. Tongues nailed into black stone in ritual patterns. Maps skinned into human backs. Symbols burned into memory, drawn with something darker than ink.
I woke on the floor of my chamber. My hands were sticky with dried black fluid. It smelled like ink—but bitter, metallic, wrong.
Still shaking, I followed the pull. The vision gripped me like a hand around the throat. Step by step, I descended beneath the Temple of Eternal Light, beneath the bones of Cao Wen.
No one had spoken of it.
No priest had dared.
But the stone remembered.
I found it—a door carved into the earth, ancient and waiting. It opened without sound, without resistance. As if it had been expecting me.
Inside:
Scrolls written in a language that seemed to bleed when I looked too long. Star charts of constellations I'd never seen—some of which, I now understood, had died long ago. Bones arranged with reverence and precision, spiraling like the galaxy. And at the center…a pool of ink.
It didn't ripple. It didn't reflect.
It watched.
I stared into it and whispered:
"Why?"
It didn't answer. But something stirred beneath the surface. Not movement—intention.
And I knew—I knew with a terrifying clarity—that this place had waited for me. That it had chosen me. Or worse—claimed me.
I don't remember how long I stood there. Minutes. Hours. Maybe days. But when I returned to the surface, something in me had changed.
The men noticed.
I blinked less. My footsteps made no sound. Dogs flinched at my presence and refused to approach. I no longer needed to shout to give orders. I barely needed to speak. They obeyed anyway.
Whispers followed me.
That I no longer slept.
That I murmured names in my sleep—names no one had ever heard, not even the scholars.
That some men had seen those names carved into their dreams, burning like brands.
They started calling me something behind my back:
The Ash Prince.
They feared me. Respected me. Obeyed me.
And I—I started to believe I was more than a man. That I had been anointed. That I was meant to unmake this empire and rebuild it in my own shape.
But deep inside, in the part of me that still remembered what it was to be afraid, I knew one thing:
Power like this always demands something back.
And it had only just begun collecting.