The field was fire.

  Ash fell like snow, silent and weightless, but it coated everything in a charred memory of what had once stood. Trees cracked under their own burning skeletons. Bodies, Imperial and rebel alike, were strewn like discarded puppets across the dirt. And in the center of it all, Kaede stood, sword lowered, breath shaking in her lungs.

  The last arrow had been fired. The last scream had already bled into silence.

  And still, she didn’t move.

  “Kaede!” a voice shouted through the haze.

  Sakari’s silhouette emerged from the smoke, limping, one arm clutched against his side where blood seeped through torn fabric. His eyes locked onto her—wide, wild, but focused. “The western ridge—they broke through! We have to fall back!”

  She blinked. Her mind screamed at her to run, to move, to respond. But her feet felt fused to the earth. Somewhere behind her, a child soldier cried out. She turned slowly. One of Rokuin’s men—the youngest, the one with the chipped glaive—was crawling, legs crushed beneath fallen debris.

  Kaede sheathed her blade and sprinted toward him.

  “No—don’t!” Sakari shouted. “We have to go, now!”

  But she was already there, digging through the ash-covered wreckage, pulling at wood and stone. The boy’s eyes flickered open—bloodied, clouded with shock.

  “You’ll live,” she lied, lifting a shattered beam off his torso. “You’re not dying here.”

  He coughed, half-conscious. “The Ember… lives.”

  Kaede froze.

  “What did you say?”

  “The Ember,” he repeated, faintly. “He said… the Ember lives.”

  She looked to Sakari, whose face had gone pale.

  “It’s not possible,” he whispered. “That bunker was obliterated—he was in there. We saw it fall in on itself.”

  “He’s alive,” she murmured. “Rokuin… is alive.”

  Suddenly, everything clicked—the precision of the strike, the misdirection, the vanishing supply caches. It hadn’t been a retaliation. It had been a trap. One meant to bleed the front dry, then ignite something far deadlier behind the lines.

  “Pull everyone back!” Kaede barked. “To the southern ridge—we regroup and move through the old river pass.”

  Sakari hesitated. “That’ll leave the high ground.”

  “Then we’ll take the low one and drown them in it.”

  He gave a shaky nod and turned, rallying the scattered survivors. Kaede slung the wounded boy over her shoulder and sprinted through the smoke.

  Behind her, the battlefield shifted. The smoke curled upward, like a serpent exhaling, revealing shadows on the ridge. Flags, black and red, fluttered into view.

  Rokuin’s banner.

  He hadn’t just survived.

  He’d returned to lead the final phase himself.

  The ridge still smoked, but Rokuin stood tall at its crest, the wind catching the torn edges of his crimson cloak. Beneath him, the battlefield writhed with dying flame and fleeing shadows. The Imperials had taken the bait—every misstep, every assumed victory—they had swallowed the illusion whole.

  And now, they ran.

  “Signal the right flank,” Rokuin said, voice calm. “No pursuit. Not yet.”

  One of his officers—a woman named Teira, once an Imperial tactician herself—stepped beside him. “They’re scattering into the river pass.”

  “As planned.” Rokuin didn’t look at her. His eye traced the winding trails of smoke that led south. “They’ll think it’s a retreat path. It’s a funnel.”

  Teira gave a low whistle. “You really meant to trap them twice.”

  “I meant to remind them what happens when you burn a home and think the ashes won’t remember.”

  Behind him, the Ember Guard—his elite inner circle—stood in silence, weapons at the ready. Each bore the sigil of the reborn rebellion: a phoenix rising from a ring of broken swords. They were fewer now, hardened by the months of blood and sacrifice since the first breach of the capital. But those who remained… they were fire given shape.

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  “I saw Kaede,” Teira said suddenly. “She was dragging a boy out from the rubble.”

  Rokuin’s jaw tightened. “How close?”

  “Fifty paces from our forward blade line. But she didn’t see me.”

  “Good. She’s not ready yet.”

  Teira raised a brow. “Not ready to die?”

  “Not ready to understand,” he said. “Kaede still fights to fix the machine that crushed her. She hasn’t realized it was never broken—it was made to kill.”

  There was a pause.

  “Will she join us?” Teira asked.

  Rokuin didn’t answer.

  Instead, he turned toward the forest line where the scouts had disappeared hours ago. If they’d done their part, the supply lines feeding the southern garrisons would already be in flames. The river pass wouldn’t just be a funnel—it would become a grave.

  “Orders?” Teira prompted.

  “Let them run,” he said. “Let them believe they escaped.”

  He began walking, slowly descending the slope with the composure of a man stepping onto sacred ground.

  “Because after today…” he added quietly, “there will be no more Empire to run to.”

  And behind him, the Embers marched.

  The war tent was made of patchwork canvas and stolen Imperial silk, stretched tight over a frame of pinewood poles. It smelled of leather, ink, and the faint trace of blood. Rokuin stood at its center, hunched over a map littered with obsidian markers—each one a unit, a decoy, or a detonation point waiting to be triggered.

  “You're sure the courier escaped?” he asked.

  Lieutenant Orin, a fresh-faced scout with soot-black fingers, nodded. “He reached the southern post two hours ago. The Imperials will take the bait. They think you're headed toward the old mines.”

  Rokuin exhaled slowly. “Good.”

  Around the map stood his inner circle—soldiers, turncoats, survivors, and one historian-turned-propagandist named Mirai, who was furiously scribbling even now.

  “Why write this down?” Rokuin asked, eyeing her.

  She looked up. “Because even if we fail, the world needs to know someone tried.”

  Rokuin said nothing. He respected it—the need for a story, for myth—but his war wasn’t about stories. Not yet. Right now, it was blood and gravel and the slow burn of a dying regime.

  “Update me on the sabotage squads,” he said.

  Teira stepped forward, her tone clipped. “Saboteurs struck the transport bridge at Kaga’s Pass. It collapsed under a supply caravan—no survivors. That cuts off rations to the eastern forts for at least a week. And the merchant road into Hakujin? We salted it with spikes. They’ll bleed trying to take it back.”

  “Any casualties?”

  “A few. Volunteers.”

  Rokuin nodded. “Honored and remembered.”

  He stepped back from the table and faced them all.

  “We’re no longer shadows in the trees,” he said. “We’ve broken three legions in six weeks. We’ve turned their own forts against them. Every man and woman who thought us ghosts now fears us in daylight.”

  “But fear fades,” Orin said, voice low.

  “Exactly.” Rokuin’s gaze sharpened. “Which is why we’ll strike the heart next.”

  The tent fell into silence.

  “You mean… the Imperial Capital?” Mirai asked.

  “No,” Rokuin replied. “Not yet.”

  He reached down and moved one marker—a black phoenix—toward a red gem symbolizing a major fortress city: Tetsuzan.

  “We take Tetsuzan,” he said. “Not just with force. With strategy. We infiltrate, subvert, and turn the outer wall before they realize we’re inside the gates.”

  Teira frowned. “That city’s supposed to be impenetrable. Massive gates, tiered defenses, loyalist garrison.”

  “It’s not the walls that hold a city,” Rokuin said, voice low. “It’s belief. And we’ll make them doubt.”

  “How?” Orin asked.

  Rokuin walked over to a rack of stolen Imperial banners and tore one down—slashing it with a blade until only the phoenix remained scorched on the cloth.

  “By giving them something else to believe in.”

  The rain fell in quiet sheets, soft enough to be ignored but steady enough to mask footsteps.

  Rokuin crouched beside a muddy irrigation trench, wrapped in a cloak darkened with grime. Around him, five others moved silently—disguised as traders and pilgrims, their weapons wrapped in cloth, their eyes sharp beneath the hoods.

  Tetsuzan’s outer gates loomed ahead, flanked by two towering statues of lion-faced guardians. The banners overhead still bore the Imperial insignia—golden fireflies on crimson silk—but the wind tugged at them like they didn’t belong.

  Rokuin whispered, “Move when the monks finish their prayer.”

  A bell rang inside the walls. Pilgrims began to shuffle toward the gates.

  Perfect.

  They joined the procession. Rokuin kept his head down, posture hunched, every movement rehearsed. Beside him, Teira disguised herself as a grain merchant, her hands calloused from weeks of false labor. Orin carried a sack of flour—within it, fire dust and fuse thread. The other three? All local defectors with forged papers and the kind of haunted eyes you didn’t fake.

  They reached the guards. Two of them, bored and distracted by the prayer drums.

  “Papers,” one mumbled.

  Rokuin handed over a sealed scroll bearing a counterfeit monastic sigil.

  The guard barely looked. “Go on, don’t block the line.”

  They passed through the gates.

  Just like that, they were inside.

  The city smelled of wood smoke and iron. Tetsuzan was built in layers—winding roads spiraling toward the central keep, where the governor's garrison lived fat and comfortable. Rokuin’s target wasn’t the top—it was the middle ring. A barracks. A granary. A powder depot.

  They split into teams as planned. Orin and Teira veered off toward the granary. Rokuin and Mirai—disguised now as wandering healers—made their way through the merchant quarter, stopping to sell tinctures and gather rumors.

  At a cramped sake stall, a drunk officer babbled about recent unrest. “Governor says not to worry,” he slurred, waving his cup. “Says we’re safe inside these walls.”

  Mirai leaned in. “And the uprisings outside?”

  “Ghost stories,” the man sneered. “A few rebels hiding in hills. Nothing serious.”

  Rokuin watched. Smiled.

  That was the weakness.

  Pride.

  They didn’t believe Tetsuzan could fall. That meant they wouldn’t see it coming.

  By nightfall, they regrouped in the shadow of an abandoned shrine.

  Teira whispered, “The fuse dust’s in place. Orin says two barrels of fire powder now sit beneath the garrison’s mess hall. Tomorrow night, we light it.”

  “And the gate levers?” Rokuin asked.

  “One of the blacksmiths will help us. His son was executed for harboring rebels.”

  “Good.”

  He looked to the horizon. Rain still fell, but the clouds were thinning.

  “We strike when the sun sets tomorrow. One explosion. One open gate. Then the second wave comes.”

  “And if the city rallies?” Mirai asked.

  Rokuin didn’t answer right away.

  Then he said, “We don’t need to hold Tetsuzan. Just break it. Let the world see it bleed.”