Snow fell over the ruined depot like ashes from a funeral pyre.

  General Tohma stood in the wreckage, boots crunching over half-buried crates and frozen grain. He didn’t speak. He hadn’t spoken much in days. Not since the third caravan vanished on the same route Rokuin had bled dry. Not since the whispers started.

  “Another three officers accused of sedition,” said a voice behind him. Advisor Kinka, gaunt as ever, wrapped tighter in her red-gold cloak. “Two hanged. One vanished.”

  Tohma didn’t answer. His eyes remained fixed on the charred skeleton of the granary’s central beam, still blackened with soot and claw marks—signs of the saboteurs who had carved through their supply lines like ghosts.

  “They're not ghosts,” he muttered.

  Kinka raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  He turned. “Rokuin. That bastard’s not just after our walls—he’s hunting morale. Starvation, suspicion, internal rot. We’re bleeding without a single pitched battle.”

  Kinka’s mouth tightened. “Then perhaps it’s time we stop waiting for him to strike. We find him first. Crush his camps before—”

  “To do that,” Tohma cut in, “we’d need to know where he is. And we don’t. We’ve sent twenty scouts past the pass. Only three returned. All raving about shadows and tunnels. One claimed she saw soldiers rise from the ground.”

  He moved past her, his boots dragging over the crusted snow, the gray of war hanging over the valley like fog. Every breath he took felt thinner. Sharper. The Ember forces were still mighty—but something was cracking at their heart.

  Kazuki had grown quiet in court. Paranoid. Half the nobles were being watched. The rest were already feeding their own soldiers with whispers of mutiny.

  And deep beneath the snow and stone, something was moving.

  Tohma stopped at a nearby outpost. His guards snapped to attention.

  “Send riders to the Iron Sutra Temple. Request the diviners. If there is something moving beneath us,” he said grimly, “I want eyes that see beyond stone and steel.”

  Kinka frowned. “You really think he’d use the mines?”

  “I think,” Tohma replied, “that Rokuin’s not fighting a war. He’s crafting a collapse. And the deeper he digs... the closer he gets to the throne.”

  The tunnel breathed like a dying beast.

  Daisuke paused, hand flat against the wall of compacted dirt. Moisture dripped somewhere in the darkness. A creak—timber shifting above them—drew every ear taut.

  “Hold,” he whispered.

  His crew, a mix of former miners and exile warriors, obeyed without question. In the weeks since Rokuin's plan had been set in motion, they had carved nearly five kilometers through ancient mine shafts and forgotten burial grounds, some so old even the map-keepers refused to speak their names aloud.

  “Think it’s another collapse?” someone whispered behind him. Kenji, too young for the blade but too angry for anything else.

  “Shh,” Daisuke warned.

  Another drip. A faint groan.

  Then stillness.

  He nodded once and moved forward, each step measured. Timber braces lined the walls, freshly installed by Rokuin’s engineers—but down here, even fresh wood felt brittle. The tunnel curved downward, where a faint red glow began to pulse ahead.

  As they neared the heart of the operation, the silence gave way to sound—picks on stone, whispered chants, the hum of magic being used to reinforce the ceiling. They passed a priest with inked arms kneeling beside a seal-slab, muttering words of binding. Even he looked exhausted. Everyone down here was gaunt, eyes sunken, nerves frayed.

  But they were alive. And they were winning.

  Rokuin’s plan was simple in theory, but monstrous in execution—create tunnels that would intersect with the Ember’s forward barracks, command tents, and supply stores. Collapse them from below. Incite confusion. Then strike above with sudden fury.

  Only now, Daisuke thought grimly, the tunnels were starting to fight back.

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  “Shift leader,” a voice called from further in. “You need to see this.”

  Daisuke moved forward through the winding hall. He ducked through a narrow crevice into one of the side chambers where the strike crew had been preparing the next breach. What he saw made his blood chill.

  Carved into the stone wall ahead was a mark—deep and ancient. A ring of thorns around a black sun.

  “The hell is that?” Kenji asked, peering over his shoulder.

  “Old god stuff,” muttered another. “From before the Empire. Ain’t natural.”

  “It’s a ward,” Daisuke said quietly. “A warning.”

  “A warning for what?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he raised his pick and slammed it into the stone beside the mark.

  It cracked. The sound echoed far too long. The air suddenly shrank.

  Then came the scream.

  It didn’t come from the chamber. It came from the stone itself.

  High. Shrill. And inhuman.

  The tunnel groaned again. Dust fell like snow.

  “Back! Everyone out, now!” Daisuke roared, shoving Kenji and the others toward the exit.

  But the damage had been done.

  The last thing Daisuke saw before the lights flickered was the black sun bleeding red.

  The explosions came not as thunder but as a heartbeat—a rhythm that struck the ground and sent ripples through the rebel camp like the echo of some giant’s drum.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Rokuin stood at the edge of his command tent, staring eastward, where black smoke now curled into the sky like fingers rising from a fresh grave.

  “It’s done,” muttered Hino, stepping beside him with her glaive in hand. She didn’t smile, but her eyes glittered with quiet fire. “Tunnels reached the Ember line.”

  “No reports from Daisuke yet,” Rokuin said, voice low.

  Hino shrugged. “He knew the risks.”

  A scribe burst into the tent, scroll in hand and ink still wet.

  “Commander—Ember barracks—shattered. Two forward officers confirmed dead. Supply depot collapse reported. Eastern wall breached from below.”

  Rokuin took the scroll with steady fingers. Read it once. Then folded it in half.

  “They’ll scramble,” he said. “Sakari will assume a frontal retaliation is coming. He’ll divert forces.”

  “You want to press in now?” Hino asked.

  “No.” He turned back toward the map. Wooden markers dotted the terrain—red for the Embers, silver for their rebellion. He moved one silver token to the breach. “We wait one day. Let confusion rot the command tree. Then we strike west. Not east.”

  “Hit the blood gates instead?”

  “They’ll never see it coming.”

  Hino smiled grimly. “Bold.”

  He placed Daisuke’s token on the edge of the map, near the tunnel breach.

  “Brave men die in silence,” Rokuin murmured. “We’ll not waste their echo.”

  The air shifted—subtle, but cold.

  Another runner approached, this one bloodied and wild-eyed. He stumbled into the tent and knelt with a thud.

  “Commander—the tunnels…”

  Rokuin’s gaze snapped to him. “Speak.”

  “They’re whispering, sir. Some came back babbling… about marks on the walls, voices in the stone. Others didn’t come back at all.”

  Hino’s face darkened. “Magic?”

  The runner nodded, visibly shaking.

  Rokuin didn’t flinch. “Seal the breach. For now. Burn incense. Let the priests chant until their lungs break if they must.”

  “But the plan—”

  “We adjust,” he cut in. “If something ancient stirs beneath the dirt, then we let it sleep. We strike from above next.”

  The runner hesitated, then bowed and ran.

  Hino said nothing for a long moment.

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I believe war opens doors best left closed,” Rokuin said. “But this rebellion… it was born from ghosts. We are no strangers to wrath that doesn’t wear a face.”

  He looked out again toward the horizon, where the smoke still rose.

  “We press forward. But not blind.”

  The morning air clawed at her lungs like broken glass. Kaede marched at the head of the Ember 3rd division, eyes scanning the grey hills for any sign of movement. Twenty riders followed behind, and another fifty marched on foot—a last-minute reinforcement ordered westward to secure the Blood Gates after the eastern sabotage.

  “I don’t like this,” muttered Captain Renji beside her, his breath fogging in the morning chill. “We’re exposed.”

  “More exposed if we sit in rubble,” Kaede said flatly, gripping the reins of her warhorse tighter.

  Scouts had returned with half-truths and twisted reports. The rebel tunnels had caved in—but not before wrecking an entire barracks. Survivors spoke of flames without fuel, whispers in pitch-black air, and a light that blinked like an eye.

  She’d chalked it up to trauma. Until the third scout stabbed himself mid-debrief.

  Now, as the march crested a hill, Kaede raised her hand.

  “Hold,” she said.

  The column slowed.

  Below them stretched the southern flank of the Ember line—fields of salted earth, carved by trenches and armored roads. But something was wrong.

  No guards at the watchposts. No patrols in the trenches.

  Not even the crows circled above.

  “Where the hell is everyone?” Renji asked.

  Kaede dismounted. Drew her blade. It shimmered faintly in the morning haze—runed steel, gifted by General Sakari himself.

  “Form wedge formation. I want eyes in every direction. Archers to the rear. If anything moves—shoot it.”

  The column began to shift, reorganizing into a defensive wedge.

  Kaede advanced on foot, boots crunching over cracked soil.

  They reached the central command outpost—abandoned. Maps still on the tables. Hot tea cooling in cups.

  “No signs of struggle,” said one soldier. “It’s like they just… left.”

  Kaede stepped into the main war room. A long table was covered in hastily abandoned plans. One scroll in particular caught her eye—it was marked with Rokuin’s insignia.

  She unrolled it.

  It was a map of the Blood Gates—with precise artillery positions, guard rotations, and weaknesses labeled in crimson ink.

  Renji looked over her shoulder.

  “That’s not ours…”

  “No,” Kaede said quietly. “It’s not.”

  She turned just in time to hear the horn.

  Two blasts. Long. West.

  “Ambush,” Kaede snarled. “Positions—now!”

  The Ember column scrambled just as shadows burst from the western ridge—rebel skirmishers, using smoke bombs and mirrored cloaks to shimmer into view like ghosts.

  Arrows flew. Screams rose. And the silent march turned into a harrowed chaos.

  Kaede didn’t flinch.

  She raised her runed blade high and roared:

  “EMBER GUARD! SHOW THEM FIRE!”