Tranquility

[Kronan]

Chapter 17 – Stolen Names

The dead along the walls lifted their heads.

Not all at once. That would have been easier to understand. The first movement came from the nearest corpse on Kenna’s right, a slow tilt beneath a rusted helm as if some distant voice had spoken through stone. Then another. Then three more farther down the hall. Old mail shifted over flesh that no longer cared for cold. Weapons rose from resting positions with the patient obedience of things that had forgotten why hands existed except to hold command.

Kenna did not step back. Xiulan did.

Only half a pace. Not from fear of death, though fear was there and had its proper place. The step came from disgust so sudden and deep that it nearly broke her breath. These were not wandering corpses. They were not hungry dead clawing at life because some remnant of pain had failed to release them. They stood in rows like soldiers awaiting inspection, mouths wired, jaws bound, fingers curled around weapons placed in their hands by another will. Whatever names they had carried in life had been taken from them. Whatever door should have opened after death had been barred.

“This one hates this,” Xiulan whispered.

Kenna’s eyes remained on the hall. “I know.”

“No.” Xiulan’s grip tightened on her spear. “Not dead. This.” Her voice shook once, then steadied into something colder than anger. “He makes them continue.”

The first corpse came forward.

Kenna moved to meet it before the hall could decide its own rhythm. Jitsugetsu cut from low right to high left, clean through a dead wrist and into the jaw beneath the helm. The corpse collapsed sideways into the wall, but two more stepped over it before it finished falling. These were not the outer sentries. Their armor still held formation. Shields rose. Spears angled. Dead feet advanced in the old memory of drill.

Xiulan lifted her shield and spoke in Shou, sharp enough that the words struck the hall before the next spear did.

“Offices of grave, ash, returned name, and closed account, hear objection. These bodies are improperly held. These names are stolen. This small servant submits denial of unlawful command.”

The air changed.

No golden light burst through the chamber. No choir answered. Instead, the dead nearest Xiulan simply fell apart, they bones and ragged cloth simply stopped its animation. One corpse turned its head toward her, jaw working against black thread, expression almost thankful. Another dropped its spear and staggered back into the wall before it fell apart. Farther down the hall, three lesser dead folded to their knees with a sound like dry leather collapsing around bone as their command left them.

For one breath, relief passed through the chamber. Not from the living.

Xiulan felt it like cool water moving behind her ribs: the faint release of something trapped too long, grateful not with words but with absence, as if several stolen souls had slipped at last beyond Zu-Zalka’s reach and into the proper spirit road.

Then the stronger dead answered.

A shield slammed into Kenna hard enough to drive her boot back half a step. Her armor held. Her balance held better. She turned the pressure aside and cut beneath the shield rim, taking one knee, then drove the blade through the base of the skull as the corpse fell. Another spear came for her ribs. Xiulan stepped close to Kenna and caught it on her round shield, teeth clenched against the shock, and thrust her own spear into the attacker’s throat. The point sank deep, but the corpse did not care. Its hands grabbed the shaft and pulled itself forward.

Xiulan’s disgust sharpened into purpose.

“Office of brief flame, borrowed tooth, permitted burning,” she said, breath hard, palm striking the spear shaft. “One weapon. Few breaths. No waste.”

Dark fire crawled along the spearhead.

It did not blaze bright. It burned like coals under funeral ash, low and hungry, clinging to the metal with restrained force. Xiulan twisted the spear free and thrust again. This time the point entered beneath the dead thing’s chin, and the dark fire ran upward through the skull. The corpse convulsed once and dropped. The flame thinned immediately.
Few breaths. No waste. “Kenna,” Xiulan called.

Kenna crossed in front of her without needing more. Xiulan touched two fingers to the spine of Jitsugetsu as Kenna passed, fast enough that it looked less like casting than blessing a blade before execution.

“Brief flame. Rightful edge. Friend’s hand.” Fire took the katana.

For three heartbeats, Jitsugetsu carried a dark burning line along its edge. Kenna used all three. The first cut split a shield and the arm behind it. The second opened an armored orc corpse from shoulder to hip. The third struck through the throat of a dead soldier whose mouth opened silently as if it had remembered screaming only after the blade arrived. Fire followed steel into dead flesh, and what it touched stopped rising.

Then the flame vanished.

Kenna did not chase it. She had known it would fade. She stepped back into line beside Xiulan, breathing measured, sword low, eyes moving. “Again?”

“Not yet.”

“Good.”

The hall pressed forward.

The dead were not endless, but there were too many to fight as if time belonged to them. Kenna understood the pattern first. The lesser corpses attacked directly, not to win but to hold. Behind them, larger figures remained nearer the far passage: armored orcs, broken human soldiers, and one broad corpse in blackened mail with a helm split down the center. That one did not advance. It raised its hand instead.

The dead shifted.

“Commander,” Kenna said.

Xiulan saw it then. Not rank. Not life. Function. The corpse in blackened mail held a knot of Zu-Zalka’s authority, some stolen fragment of command tied into its bones. The others moved around that knot, reforming faster than dead things should, filling gaps, closing lanes, preventing the living from reaching the descending passage beyond.

“That one holds order,” Xiulan said. “Not lord. Hand of lord.”

“Then I need a path.”

Xiulan nodded once.

A spearhead scraped across Kenna’s shoulder guard and glanced away. Another corpse struck Xiulan’s shield hard enough to numb her arm from wrist to elbow. She answered with the butt of her spear, drove it into a dead knee, then shoved the thing aside with shield and shoulder. Her body complained. The old bruises, the cold, the climb, the pressure of armor: all of it came back at once. None of it mattered enough to command her.

She drew breath and submitted another petition, shorter now, less formal, because the hall had no patience for complete forms.

“Offices of guarded courage, breath in battle, and friend not lost, record urgent need.”
Warmth moved through both women, immediate and practical. Kenna’s next breath deepened. Xiulan’s shaking shield arm steadied. Not restoration. Not peace. Enough.
Kenna drove forward.

For several moments she became the narrowest possible answer to a crowded hall. No flourish. No wasted anger. Jitsugetsu struck where joints failed, where old armor gaped, where dead hands gripped too slowly. A corpse reached for her face; she removed its arm and stepped inside its balance. Another swung a rusted axe; she let the weapon glance from strengthened armor and cut through the spine. Xiulan moved behind and beside her, keeping the left flank from closing, shield high, spear working in short brutal thrusts meant not to kill quickly but to keep space alive.

A dead soldier got through.

It came from Xiulan’s blind side, crawling low beneath the press, one hand gone, the other clutching a hooked knife. Kenna turned too late. Xiulan saw the movement as a smear through too much noise and brought her shield down. The knife skidded along the rim and tore through cloth below her ribs. Not deep. Enough to burn. Enough to make breath stumble.

Kenna’s blade passed over Xiulan’s shoulder and took the corpse through the skull.

“Wound?” Kenna asked without looking away from the next attacker.

“Small.”

“That was not answer.”

“Small enough.”

Xiulan put her free hand over the cut, spoke three words to the offices of clot, skin, and kept blood, and felt the flesh pull shut beneath her palm. The pain remained. The body had recorded the knife and would not surrender the memory just because danger had been reduced. But blood stopped commanding attention, and that was all she needed.

The commander corpse raised its hand again.

This time the dead did not simply shift. They surged.

Kenna was forced back one step, then another. Xiulan felt the unseen boundary around them strain as the mass of stolen bodies pressed close. Something colder than touch reached through the hall, searching for weakness, for fear, for a place where death might write its claim. The grave-seal petition held, but holding was not the same as ease.
Xiulan’s disgust became fury, and the fury frightened her because it wanted to become command.

No. She had not survived the palace to become another hand ordering bodies through pain. She planted the butt of her spear against the floor and lifted her voice.
“Returned-name offices. Grave witnesses. Ash clerks. Road keepers of the properly dead.” Her Shou words rang against the black stone, formal and fierce, palace-trained humility sharpened into accusation. “These are not his soldiers. These are not his servants. These are not tools. This small servant files denial again. Let stolen names remember door. Let bound mouths be released from false duty. Let those who may rest, rest.”

The answer struck the hall.

Lesser dead collapsed outright. Not burned. Not shattered. Released. One by one, several bodies dropped as if strings had been cut, and the silence that followed them felt cleaner than the silence before. Kenna did just see the animated bodies fall apart. For Xiulan, it came as a cacophony of joy and release, so fierce it nearly split her hearing: names torn free from the fortress, souls rushing toward the proper road beyond command, toward whatever court awaited those no longer stolen.The stronger dead resisted. The commander corpse staggered. Kenna saw the opening.

“Now,” Xiulan said.

Kenna ran.

The few remaining dead tried to close around her, but Xiulan spent another brief petition and threw fire back onto Jitsugetsu before the first hand reached. The dark flame returned, weaker than before, shorter. Kenna did not need long. She cut through a spear shaft, shouldered past a corpse whose claws scraped harmlessly against reinforced armor, and met the commander in blackened mail beneath the archway.
It was stronger than the others.

Its first blow struck Jitsugetsu aside with enough force to twist Kenna’s wrist. Its second came with a broken sword toward her thigh. Kenna moved with the turn instead of fighting it, letting the strengthened body and disciplined breath carry her around the attack. The commander’s helm snapped toward her, empty eye sockets fixed with borrowed purpose. It had no hatred. That made it worse. Hatred at least belonged to someone.

Kenna cut once across the sword arm. The blade bit but did not sever. The commander struck her in the chest with its shield and drove her into the archstone.

Xiulan moved to help. Three dead bodies rose between them. Kenna did not call out. She set her feet. Power was not permission. Pain was not commander. Fear was not commander. The blade in her hand had purpose, and purpose had line.

The commander thrust.

Kenna stepped inside, took the edge along her side where armor and petition turned death into bruising, and drove Jitsugetsu upward beneath the split helm. The dark fire on the blade guttered as it entered, then flared once inside the skull. The commander froze.
For the first time, something like a voice came from its wired mouth. Not speech. A release of air that might once have carried a name. Then it fell. The formation broke.

“Move,” Kenna commanded.

Not all the dead were gone. Several still dragged themselves across the stones. Others turned uncertainly, command severed but not freedom fully granted. Xiulan wanted to stop for each one. Wanted to kneel, to petition properly, to release every stolen name from the hall. But the descending passage beyond the arch breathed cold into the chamber, and beneath that cold waited the will that had stolen them.

They passed beneath the arch and descended. The stairs were older than the fortress above, narrow and steep, worn in the center by long use. Green light trembled below, not flame, not fungus, but something between corpse-glow and sick moonlight. The air thickened with each step. Behind them, the hall shifted as released bodies settled and unreleased ones searched for new command.

Halfway down, Kenna stumbled. Only slightly. Enough for Xiulan to see.

“Kenna.”

“Keep moving.”

Xiulan reached forward anyway, fingers touching the back of Kenna’s armor. “Office of breath returned, bruise held low, pain placed in proper rank.”

The petition was small, one of the lesser ones, the kind she had used on caravan guards and road wounds. It passed into Kenna quickly. Kenna’s breath steadied, but the bruise did not vanish. It would be dark by night if night still belonged to them. Xiulan felt the expenditure leave her like a cup poured out. Not dangerous alone. Dangerous in accumulation.

Kenna knew it too. “No more small spending unless needed.”

“This was needed.”

“I know.”

They reached the bottom of the stair.

The passage opened into a high antechamber cut from black stone. Chains hung from the ceiling in long rows. Some ended in hooks. Some in collars. Some in bones polished smooth by movement. Along the walls, hundreds of marks had been carved into the stone: names perhaps, or tallies, or attempts by hands long dead to record that they had existed before command reduced them to function.

Xiulan stopped breathing for one moment.

Stolen names.

Not metaphor. Not only spiritual sense. Here they were, scratched, crossed out, overwritten, broken by newer marks that did not belong to the first hand. Zu-Zalka had not merely raised corpses. He had kept records. Claimed them. Organized them. Turned death into inventory.

The thought struck her with such force that disgust almost became nausea. Undeath itself was horror enough, but this was worse. These souls had not been left to wander. They had not been lost through accident, grief, or unfinished longing. They had been seized, filed, numbered, and denied the final courtesy of release. Somewhere beyond the iron door, a thing had made a court out of desecration.

Xiulan’s hand tightened on her spear. “This one will see him ended.”

Kenna looked at her then. The fury in Xiulan’s voice was quiet, and because it was quiet it was far more dangerous. Kenna did not soften it. Some anger was not corruption. Some anger was the soul refusing to make peace with desecration.

“Yes,” Kenna said. “But centered.”

Xiulan closed her eyes once. Opened them. “Centered.”

At the far end of the chamber, a door of dark iron stood beneath an arch carved with old symbols partly broken away. The green light beneath it strengthened as they approached. The petitions around them still held, but thinner now. Strength remained. Endurance remained. The grave still had no easy claim. Malice still had to cross a boundary before touching them. Yet the brief flames were spent, several lesser healings were gone, and the great answers remained untouched, held in reserve like sealed orders Xiulan prayed she would not need and knew she would.

Kenna stepped toward the door.

Before she touched it, every chain in the chamber went still.

Not quiet. Still.

The faint sway of old iron stopped at once. The little clinks and settling sounds vanished as if a hand had closed around the room. Dust hung unmoving in the green light. Even Kenna halted, not from fear, but because every sense she had trusted on roads, battlefields, and mountain passes told her that something had noticed the shape of her decision before she completed it.

Xiulan felt the petitions around them draw tight.

Not break.

Tighten.

The door opened inward.

No hand pulled it. No hinge groaned. It simply moved, slow and deliberate, admitting them because refusal had never been the point. Invitation would have been too kind a word. This was inspection.

Beyond lay a chamber large enough to swallow the light.

The dead were kneeling.

Rows of them filled the floor, heads bowed, weapons laid before them as if awaiting judgment. Orcs. Humans. Goblins. Others too broken to name. Their mouths were bound. Their hands were still. Some had old iron tags wired through ribs or wrists. Some bore marks cut into bone. Some had names carved into breastplates, then crossed through with deeper strokes until only ownership remained.

The chamber did not stink as it should have. That was worse. Decay had been made orderly here. Blood had dried where it was permitted to dry. Bones had been stacked where they were meant to remain. Banners hung from the upper galleries, stiff with age and smoke, and above them narrow platforms overlooked the floor from angles no attacker could easily reach. Crossbows rested there in dead hands, aimed downward, waiting for command.

At the far end, upon a raised place of old stone and newer bone, Zu-Zalka sat.

No.

Xiulan rejected the word almost as soon as it came.

He did not sit as kings sat. He occupied. The throne had been built around him or grown beneath him or learned his shape through long obedience. Tall even at rest, he was folded into shadow and corpse-light, too still for anything alive and too aware for anything dead. Horns rose from a skull that was not quite human, not quite beast. Blackened plates clung to him like armor and old wounds together. One hand rested upon the arm of the throne, long fingers curled with almost delicate patience. The other held nothing.

It needed nothing.

The kneeling dead were his weapon. The chamber was his weapon. The stolen names were his weapon.

Kenna drew Jitsugetsu.

Only then did Zu-Zalka move.

His head lifted, and the pressure of his attention crossed the chamber like a hammer testing a gate. The unseen boundary around Kenna and Xiulan flared once without light. Xiulan felt the ward against evil hold. Felt death turned aside. Felt the spirits of threshold, breath, armor, blade, and grave keep their appointed places.

But she also felt him measure them.

Not strike.

Measure.

His gaze touched Kenna first and found discipline. It touched Xiulan and found disgust. It touched the freed spirits behind them, those last small lights escaping from the halls, and something in the chamber changed.

The kneeling dead raised their heads as one.

Bound mouths opened against wire and thread. No voices came out, but the silence carried the shape of pleading.

Xiulan lifted her shield.

For one breath, through the sickness of green light and the cold order of the chamber, she felt the released spirits vanish behind her like candles carried over a distant hill. Relief moved with them. Not joy. Not peace yet. Only release from command.

Zu-Zalka watched her understand.

Then, from the throne at the far end of the stolen court, the demon smiled.

The stolen names waited.

And their thief had been with them since the first door opened.

[Kronan]

Chapter 16 – Under Stone

By the time they left the alcove, dawn had thinned across the dead hills, but the fortress had not yet claimed notice of them. Behind them, the alcove’s quiet vanished step by step; ahead, Zu-Zalka’s ruin rose from the slope like a wound cut into the hill and left open for too many winters. The light touched stone, frost, torn grass, and the broken upper lines of the fortress without warming any of it. Towers leaned at wrong angles. Curtain walls sagged where old masonry had split. The main gate stood ahead and above them, dark beneath a cracked arch, too open, too patient, too clearly waiting for anyone foolish enough to approach by road.Kenna studied it in silence.

Xiulan stood beside her with shield on her left arm and spear in her right hand, body rested in the places that mattered and aching in the places that refused to forget. The night had returned much to her. Breath no longer came shallow. Her sight no longer blurred at the edges. The doors inside her, those offices of road, wound, breath, blood, grave, and guarded passage, were open again. Not all warmly. Not all without cost. But open. Her palms still felt numb where prayer wood had bitten into them. Her shoulders still carried a dull memory of the climb and the fight before it. Yet that was only body. Body complained. Body remembered. Body did not command.

Kenna pointed with two fingers, not toward the gate, but toward the western side of the hill where the ground broke into shelves of black rock and dead thorn. “There.”

Xiulan followed the line. “No road.”

“That is why.”

The western slope was worse than the road in every honest way. Stone spills. Frost under shade. Dead brush that could catch cloth or armor. No easy retreat. No straight approach. But it crossed beneath the least intact part of the outer wall, where old collapse had cut a jagged scar through the masonry and half-buried a lower breach beneath fallen rock.
Kenna’s eyes moved from wall to tower, from tower to ground, from ground to the empty gate. “The gate wants witnesses. We will not give it any.”

Xiulan nodded once.

Before they descended, Xiulan knelt on the cold stone of the alcove and placed the prayer wood before her. No candle. No bowl. No clean paper. Those belonged to better places and slower hours. Here she had frost, pain, breath, and need. She lowered her head with the precision of old palace training, spine straight, shoulders still, hands arranged despite their numb ache. Kenna waited without interrupting. She knew enough of Kara-Tur to understand that Xiulan was not begging one god for favor. She was placing an urgent petition before the proper offices, asking that several doors be opened at once before fear could make delay fatal.

Xiulan began softly whispering in High Shou. The words were too formal for the slope, too careful for the cold, yet that was what made them hers. “Honored offices of sinew, breath, guarded courage, rightful steel, shielded skin, clear sight, final gate, boundary, hostile word, and storm-taken element, this small servant submits emergency petition under witness of road and grave. Lend strength without hunger. Lend endurance without pride. Let hand not fail companion. Let weapon remember purpose. Let armor remember mountain. Let falsehood show its teeth before biting. Let these two names be misplaced from unlawful death. Let malice cross no easy line. Let curse and command be questioned before obedience. Let flame, frost, venom, storm, and burning wind find poor purchase upon living flesh. Permission requested. Duty accepted. Merit not claimed.”

The prayer wood warmed between her hands.

Nothing flashed. No light ran over stone. No voice answered from the sky. The change came instead as order settling into place. Kenna felt it first through her breathing, then through the old injuries beneath her ribs and hip, as if pain had not vanished but been moved into proper rank, no longer officer but messenger. Strength entered without heat. Endurance settled without excitement. Her fear did not disappear, and she was grateful for that; fear had its use when kept disciplined. Around her, the air seemed to take up a boundary she could not see but could trust, a quiet refusal laid between living flesh and the hunger of the dead. Jitsugetsu did not become lighter at her hip; it became more certain of itself, edge and purpose aligned beneath her hand. Her armor settled against her body with a firmer obedience, every plate, cord, buckle, and strip of leather agreeing with the movement she intended before she made it. For one dangerous heartbeat, Kenna understood how easily a lesser warrior might mistake such aid for permission. She did not. Power was not freedom from restraint. Power was another reason for restraint.

Then sight changed. Kenna felt it less as new vision than as correction. The fortress did not alter shape, but its emptiness became less convincing. Shadows near the gate held too cleanly. The open road seemed marked by attention rather than use. Places that should have been merely dark now looked occupied by purpose. She did not understand the spiritual grammar of what she saw as Xiulan did, but she understood enough: the gate was not empty. It was prepared.

Xiulan felt the same order settle through her own body, less like strength granted than permission recorded: breath steadied, shield arm lightened, old pain placed where it could be endured, and the sight behind sight opening whether she wished for it or not.

Kenna saw no flame in Xiulan’s eyes. No glow. Nothing dramatic enough for story-singers. Only a sharpening so precise it made the morning around them seem less trustworthy. Xiulan looked toward the fortress and flinched, not from fear, but from seeing too much at once.

“The gate is watched,” she whispered.

“I assumed.”

“Not by eyes only.”

Kenna nodded toward the western slope. “Then we do not give it eyes.”

Xiulan rose carefully. The numb pain in her palms remained, but her fingers closed properly around the spear shaft. Around both of them, something unseen held its shape: not a wall, not a promise, but a rule carried in the air. Harm would not be stopped. Nothing honest promised that. But harm would have to argue before entering.

Kenna drew Jitsugetsu only halfway, checked the blade, then slid it back with a soft click.

“How much?”

“Enough to enter,” Xiulan said.

Kenna accepted that because there was nothing more useful to do with concern. “Then we enter.”

They left the alcove at a crouch and descended along the western shelf. The slope resisted every step. Frost hid beneath grass. Loose rock shifted underfoot. Thorn branches scraped armor and cloth. Kenna moved first, choosing the line, never hurrying simply because danger waited. Xiulan followed close enough to read her pauses. When Kenna stopped, Xiulan stopped. When Kenna lowered, Xiulan lowered. No words were needed for the first hundred paces.

Above them, the fortress remained still.

That stillness sharpened the tension rather than easing it. A living fortress failed constantly in small ways. Men coughed. Armor scraped. Guards cursed at cold fingers. Fires smoked. Dogs barked. Gates creaked. Zu-Zalka’s fortress gave them none of that. It held its silence like a drawn bow.

The first dead thing appeared near a broken outwork below the western wall.
Kenna saw it before it saw them. Once, it might have been an orc. Its shoulders were too broad for a man, its jaw heavy beneath torn gray skin, one tusk broken at the root. Rusted mail hung over a chest that no longer needed breath. It stood beside the collapsed stones with a chipped axe in both hands, head lowered as if listening to the ground. Not patrolling. Waiting.

Kenna lifted one hand and Xiulan froze.

The dead orc’s head turned slowly. Not toward them exactly. Toward the idea of them.
Xiulan felt the boundary around them tighten. The circle petition held, but it did not make them invisible. It made malice work harder. It made command hesitate. That was enough for one breath. Perhaps two.

Kenna used the first.

She moved downhill in silence, not rushing, not hesitating, Jitsugetsu clearing its sheath with a controlled whisper. The dead orc turned fully then, axe rising. Too slow. Kenna’s first cut took the weapon hand at the wrist. The second opened the thing from collarbone to spine. The strengthened blade passed through dead flesh and old mail with a clean, ugly certainty, and the corpse fell against the stones without a cry.

Another shape lurched from behind the outwork. Xiulan saw it through the false shadow before it fully emerged. “Left.”

Kenna was already turning.

This one had been human, or close enough. It carried a spear with a cracked shaft and came forward with sudden speed, the old command inside it driving dead legs harder than living caution would have allowed. Kenna stepped inside the thrust. The spearhead scraped across her enhanced armor and slid away as if the metal had forgotten how to yield. She struck the shaft aside with her left forearm, pivoted, and cut once across the neck.

The head did not come free. It did not need to.

The dead body lost direction and crashed to its knees. Kenna reversed the blade and drove it down through the base of the skull. The corpse folded into stillness.

No shout rose. No bell rang. No answering movement came from the wall above.

Xiulan came up beside her, shield ready, spear angled past Kenna’s shoulder. “More?”

Kenna listened. The fortress listened back.

“Not here.”

The fight had lasted only moments. Kenna had not been wounded. Not truly. A scrape across armor. A jolt through her stance. Nothing more. Yet the ease of it did not comfort either of them. Easy enemies near a fortress were rarely placed to win. They were placed to notice.

Xiulan crouched beside the first corpse. She did not touch it. The dead flesh bore lines of command beneath the visible rot, not written in ink or rune, but in the posture of the bones, the wrong tension of the jaw, the obedience left behind after will had been emptied out.

“Bound,” she said.

“All of them?”

“This one thinks many.”

Kenna cleaned Jitsugetsu with a strip of dead cloth and sheathed it. “Then we keep moving before whatever bound them asks why they stopped.”

They climbed past the outwork and reached the broken base of the western wall. The breach Kenna had chosen was narrower than it had seemed from the alcove. Fallen blocks had collapsed over an old watercourse, leaving a low, jagged opening half-choked with frozen mud and black roots. A person could enter only by crouching. A shield would catch. A spear would scrape. Armor would remember every stone.

Kenna looked at the opening, then at Xiulan.

“This will be tight.”

“This one noticed.” Xiulan said, watching the breech.

“You can fit?”

“This one is not wagon.”

Kenna almost smiled. “Good.”

She went first, lowering herself into the gap and sliding through with Jitsugetsu held close along her forearm. Stone scraped her shoulder guard. Something brittle cracked beneath one knee. She paused just inside, listening, then gave two light taps against the rock.
Xiulan followed. The shield had to turn flat against her body. Her spear slid ahead of her one handspan at a time. Numb pain woke in her palms as stone pressed old bruises, but her body moved. It obeyed. That was enough.

The passage beyond sloped downward into darkness. Cold air breathed up from inside the fortress. Not wind. Wind had life in it. This was air that had been trapped too long with things that did not need it.

Xiulan whispered another small petition, not full spell, not large enough to count against what she had already placed around them. A courtesy to threshold and hidden step. Let foot find floor. Let stone not lie. Let breath remain small.

Kenna heard the shape of it and moved.

The old watercourse carried them beneath the wall and into a lower passage that did not match the ruin above. The outer masonry had been rough, broken, repaired by hands that cared only that stone remained stacked upon stone. Here the blocks were older and cleaner, joined so precisely that even frost and rot had not made them uneven. Shallow grooves ran along the walls at waist height. Drains cut the floor at regular intervals.

Recesses lay beyond, some empty, some filled with shattered wood, rusted tools, strips of cloth stiff with age.

Kenna stopped. Xiulan stopped behind her.

“This is not orc work,” Kenna said.

“No.”
“Zu-Zalka’s?”

“No.” Xiulan looked along the wall and felt the old, cold order beneath the corruption.

“Older.”

The place did not feel like a crypt. Crypts remembered names. It did not feel like a dungeon. Dungeons remembered fear. This remembered bodies. Fever. Water. Restraint. Preservation. Hands that had once worked quickly beside stone beds. Orders given in a language long dead. Not kindness. Not cruelty. Function.

“This one thinks bodies were kept here,” Xiulan said.

“Prisoners?”

“Maybe patients.”

Kenna’s eyes narrowed. “That is worse.”

“Sometimes.”

They moved deeper. The passage rose after twenty paces and opened into a chamber beneath the fortress wall. Broken shelves lined one side. On the other, a stair climbed toward a door of blackened wood reinforced with iron bands. The door stood slightly open.

Light showed beyond it. Not daylight. A thin greenish smear reflected across the floorboards from somewhere farther inside.

Kenna drew Jitsugetsu again.

Xiulan raised her shield. The petitions around them remained in order. Strength held in Kenna’s shoulders, endurance in both their breathing, steel and armor answering more cleanly than craft alone should allow. Xiulan’s sight stayed open behind sight. The grave had no easy claim on them. Malice still had to cross a boundary, curse and command still had to argue before entering, and flame, frost, poison, storm, and burning wind would find poor purchase on living flesh.They were not safe. They were ready enough to continue. Kenna touched the door with two fingers and pushed it open by the width of a hand.

Beyond lay a narrow storeroom. Broken crates. Empty weapon racks. Hooks on the wall. Bones swept deliberately into one corner. Not fallen. Swept. Someone, or something, had made the room usable again. Tracks crossed the dust, old and new, some booted, some bare, some too narrow for living feet.

A sound came from the corridor beyond. Scrape. Pause. Scrape. Kenna glanced back once. Xiulan nodded.

They entered the storeroom and crossed it quickly. At the far wall, Kenna leaned just enough to see into the corridor. Two dead shapes moved away from them, slow and uneven, dragging a chain between them. The chain scraped the floor at each step. Neither turned.

Kenna waited. The dead passed the corridor mouth. She slipped out behind them.
Xiulan followed. They moved in the chain’s rhythm. Scrape. Step. Scrape. Step. Each ugly sound covered the faint shift of their boots. The corridor bent left, then widened. Somewhere above, something heavy moved across stone. Dust fell in a thin line from the ceiling. Xiulan looked up.

Kenna did not. “Keep moving.”

At the next corner, the dead with the chain stopped. So did Kenna.

The two corpses stood motionless in the corridor ahead, backs turned, chain slack between them. Their heads tilted at the same angle. Listening. Receiving. Being asked a question by something that was not in the hall.

Xiulan felt it then.

A pressure, faint but deliberate, passing through the fortress like a finger drawn across water. Not alarm. Inquiry. Kenna’s hand tightened around Jitsugetsu.

The magic circle around them held its shape. The death ward held. The spell resistance Xiulan had petitioned for stirred cold beneath her skin. Something searched, touched the edge of the boundary, and did not immediately enter.

Xiulan barely breathed. “It asks.”

“What answer?”

“This one does not know.”

The chained dead turned together. Kenna moved before they finished the motion. No hesitation. No wasted strike. She cut the chain first, freeing their movement from one another before they could use its weight against her. The nearer corpse lunged. Kenna stepped outside it and removed its leg at the knee, then struck through the skull as it fell. The second dragged the broken chain in both hands like a whip. It swung. The chain struck Kenna’s shoulder and glanced off armor that had remembered mountain. She closed the distance and cut upward through ribs, spine, and the command holding the thing upright. It collapsed in pieces. The corridor became still. This time, the fortress answered.

A low sound moved through the stones above them. Not a horn. Not a bell. More like a door opening somewhere deep inside a mountain. Xiulan’s blood went cold. Kenna looked down the corridor, then up the stair beyond it where the greenish light strengthened.

“That was noticed,” Xiulan whispered.

Kenna turned Jitsugetsu once in her hand and began moving toward the light. “Then we stop being slow.”

They ran.

Not wildly. Never that. Kenna moved first, fast and controlled, choosing the cleanest line through the corridor while Xiulan followed with shield high and spear close. Behind them, something scraped in answer. Ahead, the green light brightened, spilling across old stone and broken thresholds. A dead fortress that had held its breath since dawn began, at last, to breathe.

They reached the stair.

At its top, a larger door stood open into the inner works of Zu-Zalka’s fortress. Beyond it waited a hall of black stone, hanging chains, old banners stiff with rot, and rows of motionless dead standing along both walls like soldiers awaiting inspection.

At the far end, another passage descended.

Cold rolled from it in a steady tide. Kenna stopped only long enough to measure the hall. Xiulan came beside her, breath deep, body aching, power awake. The dead along the walls began to lift their heads. Kenna drew herself into stillness. Not fearlessness. Not anger. Discipline. Xiulan tightened her shield and felt the petitions around them burn quietly in their proper order.

The fortress had opened one eye.

Now they had to reach the heart before the rest of it woke.

[Kronan]

Chapter 15 – Find Dawn

Dawn found them because Kenna had made certain it would.

The alcove lay high along the broken ridge, not deep enough to be a cave and not open enough to be seen easily from below. Wind had carved it into the mountainside over more winters than either woman could imagine, leaving a shallow hollow beneath a leaning shelf of stone. From the lower slope it looked like shadow and fractured rock. From within, it gave a narrow view over the dead valley, the mist below, and the ruined shape of Zu-Zalka’s fortress crouched upon its hill like something waiting with its eyes closed.

Kenna had chosen it in darkness by touch, instinct, and discipline. One way in. Loose stones below. A ridge at their backs. The wind moving across the opening rather than into it. No dead tracks crossing the final climb. Nothing about the place promised safety, but safety had become a word for other roads. This was concealment, warning, and enough stone overhead to keep the worst of the night from finding them. Strangely, a certain amount of peace and comfort was felt in the alcove.

Xiulan felt a calmness and the presence of something, a calm island in a land of pressure. Kenna seemed to feel the calmness as well, visibly relaxing in a way not possible out there. Xiulan regarded the inner wall.

The mountain wall behind them showed its age in narrow bands: gray stone, darker sand, pale mineral, stone again, layer upon layer pressed flat by time and weight. Xiulan noticed it while grinding dried leaves between numb fingers.

Near the place where Kenna had set the fire, one line broke that patience.

It ran downward instead of across.

Xiulan stared at it for several breaths before deciding it was not a crack. A crack would have split the stone unevenly. This was too narrow, too straight, no wider than the back of a knife, and visible only when the small flame leaned low enough for firelight to catch its edge. It looked almost inserted, burrowed. Frost had retreated from the surrounding wall, but along that vertical seam the surface remained clear, neither wet nor blackened by smoke. The material within it was difficult to name, but it radiated peace and serenity.

Kenna saw her looking. “What?”

Xiulan indicated the wall with two fingers.

Kenna studied the seam, then rose with visible care and crouched beside it. Her wounded hip resisted the motion. She did not let the resistance change her face. She touched the strange line once with a gloved thumb. Nothing moved. Nothing answered.

Old,” she said.

“Is, yes.”

Xiulan listened, though she was not certain what she listened for. The seam gave no prayer, no name, no memory she could reach. She did feel a slight warmth, almost as when the spirits answered her. If a hand had made the hair-thin marks vanishing along its exposed surface, that hand had belonged to a people beyond her learning and perhaps beyond her years.

“This one does not know.”

The night passed slowly and not gently. The dead valley below did not sleep. Mist shifted around the fortress walls, and more than once Xiulan thought she saw shapes moving where no torch burned. Kenna took first watch, then second, because Xiulan’s head dipped twice despite her effort to remain awake. When Xiulan protested, Kenna only looked at her until she stopped. There were some arguments friendship did not require finishing.

At last Xiulan slept, though sleep came like water through a cracked cup, never enough, never held for long. She dreamed of the Great Gap, of planks opening beneath her feet, of a rider with no place in the world and a blade that remembered her skin. She dreamed of her fingers refusing to close around prayer wood while voices called from behind a door. She woke before dawn with a sound caught in her throat and found Kenna seated at the alcove mouth, still awake, still watching.

The fire had fallen into ash. The vertical seam in the wall had almost vanished. Without flame it looked like nothing more than a pale flaw in old stone.

Outside, the eastern sky had begun to loosen.

Xiulan sat up carefully. Her shoulders ached from armor straps and cold ground. She felt much better than the short sleep should have allowed. She felt a stronger warmth from her prayer wood. She felt fuller. She regarded the thin blank seam at the wall.

Relief moved through her so sharply it almost became fear.

Kenna noticed. Of course, Kenna noticed. Even though she had not slept, she looked more alert, more replenished.

“Better?”

Xiulan looked at her own hand. “Some.”

“Enough?”

Xiulan almost smiled, but the expression did not quite reach her mouth. “Is a warrior question.”

“It is the only kind I have this morning.”

“Enough for careful work,” she said.

Kenna nodded once, then shifted her weight. That motion told Xiulan more than Kenna intended. The wound at the hip had improved immensely, it no longer ruled her body. Yesterday, pain had stood between Kenna and every movement like an armed guard.

“This is better,” Xiulan said.

“It feels better.”

“This one think is spirit live here,” She glanced at the seam briefly. “Think here is protect,”
Kenna’s gaze moved past her, toward the fortress still half-hidden by morning mist. “We may not get another night like this.”

“No.”

“Once we go down, rest becomes luck.”

Xiulan tied the satchel closed. “Luck is a poor healer.”

“It is worse as a commander.”

For a time they listened to the wind move across the alcove. It carried no voices. No dragging feet. No distant horn. Somewhere below, stone clicked against stone, but it was only the mountain shifting under cold.

Then Kenna took Jitsugetsu from her belt and sat.

She did not sit as a woman seeking comfort. She folded herself with care because the wound allowed no other way, knees settled beneath her, spine straight, sword laid before her still sheathed. Her hands rested lightly upon her thighs. Her eyes remained open.

Xiulan paused with the prayer wood in her hand.

There was nothing dramatic in what Kenna did. No chant. No gesture of power. No sign called into the air. Yet the change in her was immediate and difficult to name. She did not become softer. If anything, she became more present. The alcove, the ridge, the ruined fortress, the ache of her wound, Xiulan’s movement behind her, the pale seam hidden in the wall, the dead valley below, all of it seemed to reach her and pass without taking hold.

Xiulan had seen priests pray with less discipline.

After a time, Kenna spoke without turning. “You are staring.”

“This one is observing.”

“That is staring with discipline.”

Xiulan lowered her eyes, though amusement warmed her despite the cold. “Your teacher taught this?”

“One of them.”

“In Kara-Tur?”

“Yes.”

“What is it called?”

Kenna was silent long enough that Xiulan thought she might not answer. “Different teachers called it different things. Mine called it sitting before steel.”

Xiulan looked at the sheathed sword before her. “But steel is not drawn.”

“That is why one sits.”

The answer settled in Xiulan quietly. It did not explain everything, but it explained enough.
Kenna’s gaze remained open, unfixed. “If I close my eyes, I imagine the fight. If I imagine the fight, I choose a fight that will not happen. If I think only of pain, pain becomes commander. If I think only of fear, fear becomes commander. So I sit. I hear the wind. I feel the wound. I know where the sword is. I know where you are. I know where death waits. I do not follow any one of them.”

Xiulan held the prayer wood between both hands. Its surface had warmed slightly in the growing light. “This is difficult,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You look peaceful.”

“I am not.”

“No?”

“Peace is for after.” Kenna’s voice remained even. “This is readiness.”

Xiulan understood then, or thought she did. Kenna had not found calm because danger was distant. She had found stillness because danger was near enough that any wasted movement might kill them. It was not unlike the moment before a needle entered flesh, or before a bone was set, or before a prayer was spoken over someone who might not live to hear the last word. The body wished to tremble. The mind wished to run ahead. The work required both to remain.

So Xiulan prepared her own sitting.

She chose a flat stone near the back of the alcove, not too close to the strange seam and not too far from the dawn. From her satchel she removed the small things that had survived the road: carved dragon charms darkened by handling, a strip of red thread, a pinch of dried herbs wrapped in paper, three beads from a broken temple bracelet, and the old prayer wood that had warmed and cooled with every answer granted or withheld. She placed them carefully, each in relation to the next, not to make a shrine of the alcove, but to remind herself of order.

The place was not Shou. She felt that more clearly in daylight. It held no ancestor’s name. No incense memory. No old household god waited in the stone. Whatever lingered here was older than her understanding and foreign to her blood. Yet the silence was clean. It did not welcome her, but neither did it listen with hunger. After days of roads that watched and stones that remembered badly, that absence felt almost like mercy.

Xiulan bowed her head.

At first nothing answered.

She had expected that. Or told herself she had. The spirits were not servants. Ancestors were not tools to be drawn and spent like arrows. She had asked too much already. In the hollow after the Rider, on the road beneath the undead tracks, at the bridge, at every place where fear had opened its mouth, she had reached. Sometimes they had answered. Sometimes they had only remained near enough for her to continue.

Her fingers trembled as she lit the herbs from the last coal of the fire. Smoke rose thin and pale, carrying a scent of bitter leaves and clean bark. It leaned toward the alcove mouth, then paused, held strangely still for a breath before the wind took it.

Xiulan spoke in Shou.

Not loudly. Not with the formal strength her teachers had required in halls where every word had to prove obedience. She spoke as a tired daughter far from home, kneeling in a mountain alcove at the edge of a dead lord’s land. She named her sisters as far back as memory allowed. She named teachers who had corrected her hands, women who had shown her how to grind feverroot without spoiling its virtue, old men who had taught her which spirits belonged to birth and which to death, and one quiet servant who had once hidden sweet rice beneath a folded cloth when Xiulan had been too young to understand kindness as rebellion.

Kenna did not turn, but Xiulan knew she listened. The prayer wood warmed between her hands. Xiulan closed her eyes.

“This one asks not for victory. Victory is large word. This one asks to walk rightly where the dead are chained. This one asks to see what must be seen. This one asks to spend only what must be spent.”

The warmth grew. It did not come from the strange seam in the wall. Not directly. Xiulan was certain of that, though she could not have explained why. The alcove did not answer her. The buried thing in the stone did not speak. It merely held the world quiet enough for other voices to cross the distance.

And cross they did. They came first as pressure behind her ribs, then as warmth along the lines of her palms. The carved dragons shifted where they lay, not lifting, not moving enough for certainty, but turning by the smallest degree toward the fortress below. The smoke from the herbs thickened. Frost around the flat stone softened into beads of water. Xiulan heard, beneath the wind, the layered murmur of voices too old and too beloved to separate.

She bowed lower. Then the dead valley answered as well. Not with words, but, with resistance.

Cold pressed against the edge of the alcove like a hand testing a closed door. The prayer wood flared hot enough that Xiulan nearly dropped it. She held on. Pain cut through her palms, sharp and immediate. The voices did not vanish, but they changed. Not frightened. Angered. The kind of anger that belonged not to pride, but to grief denied its proper shape.

Xiulan saw, for one breath, a hall beneath stone. Not with her eyes. She saw bound figures standing without breath. She saw hands tied not with rope but with command. She saw mouths open around names that could not be spoken. She saw a crown of old bone, or perhaps only the memory of one. Then the vision broke apart into smoke and dawn.

“How much?” Kenna asked.

Xiulan drew a breath. “Enough.”

“That was not my question.”

The words should have irritated her. Instead, they steadied her. Kenna’s voice had no accusation in it. Only the refusal to let a wound hide because it was not bleeding.

Xiulan looked toward the fortress. Mist still gathered there, untouched by dawn. “The spirits answer now.”

Kenna waited.

“But not endlessly,” Xiulan said.

“That is not a number.”

“No.” Xiulan looked down. “It is warning.”

Kenna accepted that with the same severity she gave terrain, weather, and steel. “Then we spend carefully.”

Xiulan nodded. She picked up the prayer wood with both hands this time. The surface was warm. A dark mark had crossed one side of it, thin as a hairline crack. She touched it once, then tucked it back into her belt.

For a moment they stood together at the mouth of the alcove, looking down toward the fortress. The hill below seemed closer in daylight and worse for being seen. Broken walls climbed from the mist. Towers leaned inward as if listening to one another. No banners moved. No guards paced openly. No smoke rose. Yet nothing about the ruin felt abandoned.

Dawn had found them.

Below, the fortress waited.

[Kronan]

Chapter 14 – Crossing Fear

They broke camp slowly. Kenna scattered the ashes and Xiulan buried what could not be carried. Nothing was left in the hollow except flattened grass, disturbed stones, and a faint dark stain where the fire had been. From a distance, it would look abandoned.

That was enough.

The Cold Roads did not need winter to be cruel.

Narfell carried cold differently here. It did not merely lie upon the land. It moved through grass, stone, air, and bone as though searching for weakness. The sun gave light without warmth. Frost clung in shadow long after morning should have torn it away. Old standing stones leaned beside the road, their carvings worn nearly smooth by centuries of wind.

They walked for two days with few words. Words had become expensive. They focused on conserving strength, spiritual and physical, treating lingering wounds and mending gear.

On the second evening, they saw the first dead thing that was not lying still.

It moved along a low track beneath them with the patience of something that had forgotten urgency. Once, perhaps, it had been a man. Its shape still suggested shoulders, arms, a bowed head. But its walk was wrong. Too even. Too obedient. It did not stumble like a corpse dragged upright by crude magic. It moved like a servant listening to orders neither woman could hear.

Kenna lowered herself behind frost-stiff grass, every motion careful. Xiulan crouched beside her quickly. The prayer wood at her belt had grown cold enough to hurt.

“Undead?” Kenna breathed.

Xiulan watched the thing pass below them. There was no hunger in it. No wandering instinct. No blind malice. It moved as if it belonged to a will outside itself.

“Called,” Xiulan whispered.

“Zu-Zalka?”

Xiulan did not answer at once.

Farther down the slope, another shape appeared between the stones. Then a third. Then more. They did not speak. They did not search. They followed the track with the same awful patience, feet dragging through grass without care for cold, stones, or pain.

“Yes,” Xiulan said.

Kenna’s hand rested near Jitsugetsu, but she did not draw.

That restraint told Xiulan more than words would have. Kenna was not afraid of fighting them. She was measuring the cost. Steel could answer the dead, but steel alone would not be enough if every answer spent blood they could not afford to lose.

“How many?” Kenna asked.

Xiulan closed her eyes.

At first there was only cold. Then the cold deepened, not in the air but beneath it. She reached carefully, not outward with sight or sound, but inward toward the thin place where the spirits sometimes answered. Something here had changed. The land still had memory. The old stones still held echoes. But the presence that answered her was cautious.

Afraid, perhaps. She opened her eyes.

“More than we see.”

Kenna absorbed that without visible change. Her gaze moved from the dead below to the broken land ahead.

“We wait,” she said.

They waited until their legs numbed beneath them and the dead passed slowly along the track below. Xiulan held her breath more than once. Kenna did not move except when the wind shifted through the grass and threatened to show the edge of her armor.

The dead did not look up. Only when the last shape disappeared beyond a fold in the land did Kenna release the breath she had been holding.

“We could have fought them,” Xiulan said quietly.

“Yes.”

“But you did not.”

“No.” Kenna’s eyes remained on the track below. “That rider taught us that surviving one enemy does not give us permission to spend ourselves on the next.”

Xiulan considered that. It was a warrior’s answer, practical and severe. But it was not cowardice. It was something more difficult than courage. It was the discipline of refusing an unnecessary victory.

“This one agree,” she said.

Kenna glanced at her, and the smallest trace of approval moved through her eyes before vanishing. “Good.”

By the third day, the Great Gap opened before them. The land simply ended. One moment the road climbed through broken stone and wind-flattened grass. The next, the world fell away into a canyon so vast that Xiulan’s first instinct was to step back. Far below, unseen water struck stone with a sound like distant teeth. Mist moved in slow coils through the darkness beneath the span, rising and sinking as though the wound in the earth were breathing.

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The bridge across it had no right to still exist.Rope thicker than a man’s wrist stretched from one ledge to the other, blackened by age and weather. Wooden planks hung between them, some cracked, some warped, some missing entirely. Old charms dangled from the ropes, left by travelers who had crossed and wished not to cross again.

Kenna looked toward the caves cut into the cliffside below, then looked at Xiulan.

“No caves.”

Xiulan had already been staring at them. The prayer wood at her belt felt heavy again. Whatever rested below the Gap was not merely darkness.

“This one agree very much.”

Kenna almost smiled.

They crossed one at a time. Kenna went first, because the first crossing would reveal whether the bridge could still bear weight. Her injured hip made the decision foolish. Her discipline made it necessary.

The bridge accepted her reluctantly. Wood creaked. Rope groaned. Wind rose from the canyon and pushed at her armor. Kenna kept one hand close to the rope, one near her sword, moving with the same measured economy Xiulan had seen in the dojo. No wasted motion. No panic. No argument with fear. Only movement.

When Kenna reached the far ledge, she turned and drew Jitsugetsu only after her boots found stone. She waved at Xiulan to cross.

Xiulan stepped onto the bridge. Fear rose immediately. It was sharp and humiliating, more powerful for how childish it felt. Her foot touched the first plank. The bridge shifted. The canyon opened beneath her in sound before sight. Rope trembled through her hand. Wind moved through the Great Gap and found every weakness in her balance.

She kept moving. One plank. Then another. Do not look down.

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She looked down.

The canyon swallowed the world beneath her. Mist curled over stone far below, hiding the bottom, hiding the water, hiding whatever old bones might have fallen and never been found. For a moment her legs forgot how to obey.

Then Kenna’s voice came from the far side. “Xiulan.”

It was not loud or urgent, rather a soothing calm. Xiulan lifted her eyes.

Kenna stood on the far ledge with sword ready, injured and still steady. She was watching the stones. Watching the bridge. Watching Xiulan. Watching everything.

Xiulan breathed once before she continued. The final steps felt longer than the whole road behind her. When she reached the far side, Kenna caught her by the forearm and pulled her onto stone. Only when Xiulan had found her balance, did Kenna let go.

Neither mentioned it.

Behind them, the bridge swayed in the wind. Ahead, the land rose toward Zu-Zalka’s realm.

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The change became clearer after the Great Gap. The grass grew thin and brittle. The stones carried old black stains no rain had removed. No birds circled above them. No insects stirred in the low places. Even the wind seemed to lessen, as though reluctant to enter fully.

Xiulan stopped beside a fallen marker stone. Its carvings had nearly vanished beneath weather and lichen, but something in the shape of them made her chest tighten.
She did not touch it. Kenna stopped a few paces ahead. “What is it?”
Xiulan listened. Not with ears. Ears heard only wind, and even that seemed wrong here. She listened the way her teachers had taught her to listen when a room was too still, when a patient slept too quietly, when a prayer had been answered by something that should not have heard it.

There were ways a place could welcome. Ways it could warn. Ways it could grieve.
This place did not welcome. It remembered.

“Border,” Xiulan said.

Kenna turned fully. “His border?”

Xiulan nodded once. Her hand went to the prayer wood at her belt. The warmth from earlier was gone now. What remained was a thin, urgent pulse, like warning pressed through old wood.

Ahead of them, beyond low mist and broken stones, a hill rose from the dead land. Upon it stood the ruin. It had been a castle, once. Now it was only broken teeth.

Broken towers clawed at the gray sky. Walls stood open in places where siege or time had torn them apart. No smoke rose from within. No torchlight marked a living watch. Yet the ruin did not feel abandoned.

It felt occupied by something that did not need lamps. Kenna looked at the hill for a long time.

Xiulan tightened her grip on her spear. Neither moved for several heartbeats.
Behind them lay the Dead Horse Inn, the Cold Roads, the Rider, the bridge, and every choice that had brought them farther than caution should have allowed.

Kenna slid Jitsugetsu back into its scabbard. “Not tonight,” she said.

Xiulan looked at her.

Kenna’s gaze remained on the ruin above the mist. “We find ground. We rest. We take whatever advantage morning can still give in a place like this.”

Xiulan nodded.

The decision settled something in her. Not comfort. Never that. But direction. Crossing fear did not mean stepping blindly into every darkness. Sometimes it meant stopping when they should stop, waiting when they should wait, and refusing to mistake courage for haste.

“This one honor ancestors before dawn,” she said.

Kenna’s mouth tightened, not quite a smile.

“Then I will make sure dawn finds us.”

They turned from the valley and climbed toward a ridge of broken stone where the wind still moved freely. Behind them, mist gathered around the ruined castle. For a moment, Xiulan thought she saw pale figures standing along the wall, thin and patient beneath the dying light.

When she looked again, there was only fog. She did not tell Kenna.

Kenna had seen them too.

[Kronan]

Chapter 13 – The Fireplace

They walked until walking became something they could barely handle anymore. The hill disappeared behind them, first as shape, then as memory, at last as struggle to escape. They glanced behind them, fearing a sight of broken armor. Grass hissed around their legs. Frost broke beneath their boots. The moon slid in and out behind thin clouds, bright enough to show the pale line of the road and cruel enough to show every time Kenna’s step shortened.

Xiulan noticed the third time Kenna’s weight shifted badly onto her right leg. She noticed the way her friend breathed shallowly beneath the armor, the way one hand remained near her ribs as if the body could be argued into obedience by pressure alone. Xiulan wanted to speak, but speech required more strength than she trusted herself to spend. Her own shield arm throbbed from shoulder to wrist. Each heartbeat seemed to arrive there first, deep and hot beneath the skin.

“Not far,” Kenna said.

Xiulan looked at her and almost smiled, because neither of them knew whether that was true. “Not far,” she agreed anyway.

They left the road where the ground shifted into shallow hills of stone. Thorn brush grew thick along one side, black and tangled beneath the moon, while broken boulders formed a half circle on the other. It was not safe. Safe belonged to houses, walls, locked doors, warm lamps, and people who had never heard hooves coming through darkness. This place was only defensible. Tonight, defensible would have to become enough.

Kenna inspected the hollow before allowing herself to sit. Even then she did not collapse. She lowered herself with controlled care, jaw tightening only once when her hip refused the movement. Xiulan saw it. Kenna saw that she saw it. Neither spoke of it.

The fire took too long. Xiulan’s fingers had become clumsy from cold and exhaustion, and the first sparks died in the damp grass before they could become anything useful. She tried again, slower, lips pressed together while frustration gathered behind her eyes. The second attempt caught in dry scrapings beneath a shielded stone, a weak orange thread that trembled in the wind before beginning to feed. Only when the flame strengthened did Xiulan realize she had been holding her breath.

“You first,” she said.

Kenna looked at the herb packets in Xiulan’s hands, then at the blood dried along Xiulan’s knuckles, then at the bruise already darkening near the edge of her jaw. “No.”

Xiulan blinked. “You hurt.”

“So are you.”

“This one can work.”

Kenna’s expression did not change, but something in her eyes sharpened. “That is not the same as being well.”

Those words had more hidden meaning than Xiulan expected. For a moment she only stared down at the poultice in her palm. Simple things. Honest things. They did not demand prayer. They did not require spirits to answer. They only required hands steady enough to place them where pain lived. She tried, desperately, to hold back tears.

“Is hands shake,” Xiulan whispered.

“I see.”

“This one apologize.”

“For what?”

Xiulan did not know how to answer that. The apology had risen before thought, old and automatic, shaped by places far from the Cold Roads. Sorry for shaking. Sorry for bleeding. Sorry for needing rest. Sorry for taking space beside the fire when someone else was hurt worse. She looked down quickly, ashamed by the confusion in her own chest.

Kenna leaned forward despite the pain it cost her and placed one hand over Xiulan’s wrist, stopping the useless motion of her fingers. “Breathe.”

Xiulan obeyed before she meant to. One breath. Then another. The air entered raggedly and left worse, but it entered. That was something.

“In palace,” she said after a long silence, “crying make worse. Sound make worse. If hurt, be still. If afraid, be still. If angry…” She swallowed. “Never angry.” She placed buns from her backpack to heat by the fireplace.

Kenna’s hand remained where it was, warm despite the cold. She did not say that was terrible. She did not say that Xiulan was safe now. Safe was too large a lie for that night and both of them knew it.

“So you learned stillness,” Kenna said.

Xiulan nodded once.

Kenna looked toward the small fire. Its light moved across her face, catching soot, blood, and the hard line of pain she had been refusing to show.

“I learned it differently. My father put a wooden sword in my hands before I was strong enough to swing it properly. I thought the lesson was about cutting. It was not. My parents thought a peaceful person should learn the sword because a peaceful person would fear using it wrongly.” Her mouth tightened slightly. “I think they were right. I also think they did not know how heavy that lesson becomes.”

Xiulan listened carefully. Kenna rarely wasted words. When she spoke like this, each sentence felt placed by hand.

“He made me hold it while my arms shook. Then he told me that if I ever enjoyed the fear it caused in another person, I was no longer fit to carry steel.” Kenna’s mouth tightened slightly at the memory. “My mother said much the same, only softer. A peaceful hand should learn the sword because a peaceful hand fears what the sword can do.”

She looked down at Jitsugetsu where it lay across her knees. Firelight moved along the scabbard but did not warm it. “I have tried to remain that kind of hand. Some nights make it harder.”

“Tonight,” Kenna continued, “I did what was necessary. I know that. The Rider would have killed us. The horse was part of the weapon. I know all of this.” She looked past the fire toward the darkness beyond the stones. “Knowing does not make the sound leave.”

The horse’s scream seemed to return between them, thin and terrible beneath the wind. Xiulan felt her throat close. She had been thinking of the man beneath her spear, the way resistance had become absence, the way Kenna had stood beside her afterward without trying to make it clean. Now she understood that Kenna had carried her own sound away from the field.

Xiulan turned her wrist beneath Kenna’s hand until she could hold it instead. “Sound stay,” Xiulan said softly. “But maybe not alone.”

Kenna looked at her then. The fire was small, the night was wide, and both of them were too tired to pretend strength was the same as silence.

“No,” Kenna said. “Not alone.”

The poultice smelled of bitter root, bruised leaf, and smoke from the struggling fire. Xiulan warmed it between her palms before placing it against Kenna’s side, but her fingers had gone stiff from cold and shock, and the first binding slipped before she could draw it tight. She tried again. The cloth rasped over bruised skin beneath the loosened armor, and Kenna’s breath caught once, sharp enough that Xiulan stopped immediately.

“Continue,” Kenna said.

Xiulan swallowed and obeyed, slower this time. The straps resisted her. Mud had dried into the buckles, and one bent plate refused to lift cleanly from Kenna’s ribs. When it finally shifted, Kenna’s hand closed in the grass hard enough to tear roots free, but she made no other sound. That silence did not comfort Xiulan. It only told her how much pain Kenna was choosing not to give a voice.

After that, the treatment became slower and less perfect. Xiulan bound Kenna’s ribs as well as she could, working carefully around bruised armor marks and places where breath caught. Kenna helped her clean the swelling along her shield arm, then insisted on wrapping the worst of it herself when Xiulan’s fingers failed again. They ate half cold buns warmed badly near the fire and drank sparingly from the waterskin. Neither had appetite. Both ate anyway.

When sleep finally came near, it did not come kindly. Kenna sat with Jitsugetsu across her knees until Xiulan’s eyes began to close despite herself. Xiulan tried to protest, tried to say she could take first watch, but the words lost shape before leaving her mouth.

“Rest,” Kenna said.

“This one wake soon.”

“I know.”

Xiulan did not know whether that was true. She only knew that the fire was warm against one side of her face, that pain had become distant enough to float around instead of through her, and that Kenna was still there when the dark finally took her. She felt as if something was faintly listening.

[Kronan]

Chapter 12 – The Banished Rider

The Rider halted and leaned onto its halberd at the edge of clear sight.

For several heartbeats he did not look at Kenna. He did not look at Xiulan. He did not look at the dead man lying in the grass between them. His helm turned instead down the slope where the horse had vanished.

The wind moved through the open field. Grass bent and lifted. The Rider listened to it.

Kenna felt something colder than fear move through her then. Not because he was angry. Anger would have been easier. Anger had shape. Anger spent itself. This was not anger. This was assessment, and beneath it something almost like regret, but not for the man that Xiulan had killed, not for the men that had broken, not for the blood that had spilled uselessly into the grass.

The rider felt it for the horse. The realization sickened her more than rage would have.
The two surviving attackers were already gone, crashing through the dark grass with no discipline left in them. One stumbled once, barely recovered, and kept running. The other did not look back at all. The Rider’s helm shifted toward them only after they had nearly vanished.

He watched them flee.

No command followed. No curse. No promise of punishment. He did not call them cowards. He did not order them back into formation. He merely regarded them as they disappeared into the night, and in that silence Kenna understood exactly what they had been to him.

The Rider let them go because retrieving them was not worth the effort.

Xiulan felt the cold of that without understanding all of it. She knew only that the man in the grass before her had died and the Rider had not looked at him once. Not once. Her stomach tightened around that absence. She had killed him. She could still feel the weight of his body dragging the spear down. Yet to the thing that had led him here, he was already less than the damaged horse below the slope. She regarded the spear, now in her hand.

The streaks of dried blood.

The Rider turned back to look at them, at last.

Moonlight moved across the dented helm, the crushed breastplate, the shoulder plate hanging wrong from torn straps. One side of his armor had been driven inward by the fall. Mud and dark blood filled the seams. His halberd remained in his hand, though the shaft had bent where it had struck stone or bone or both. He should have been broken. He was broken. But not enough.

Kenna raised Jitsugetsu slightly.

The motion hurt. Her ribs answered at once, sharp and deep, and her hip threatened to fail beneath her if she shifted weight too quickly. She kept her face still. The Rider was watching now. Not with hatred. Not even with revenge. He was measuring what remained.

“You cut well.” he said.

There was no admiration in it. Only factual statement.

Kenna’s eyes did not leave him. “Your horse carried well.”

For the first time, the Rider was silent in a different way.

The words had reached something.

Not grief, perhaps. Not tenderness. But possession. Recognition. Loss.

“Yes…” he said at last. “It did.”

That answer frightened Xiulan more than a threat would have. The fallen man beside her received nothing. The fleeing soldiers received nothing. The horse received acknowledgment.

The Rider took one step forward.

Kenna’s blade rose fully now despite the pain exploding through her body. Xiulan moved behind her, shield trembling, spear close to her, angled upwards even with the pain in her shoulder and her arm. Her body felt almost empty from prayer and blood and terror. The warmth at her belt was little more than memory, but she held the prayer wood anyway.

The Rider stopped after that single step.

It was enough. The movement showed them what he wanted them to know. Damaged armor had not made him harmless. The ruined leg had not made him slow enough. The fall had cost him, but it had not ended him. If he came engaged, they would pay for every breath of ground between them.

Then his helm angled once more toward the darkness where the men had fled.

“They run like dogs,” he stated.

There was no anger and no disappointment. Merely a cold acknowledgement.

Kenna’s grip tightened around Jitsugetsu. “Then follow them.”

The Rider looked back at her. For a moment the field held still around them.

“No…” he said. “Dogs return when they are hungry.”

Xiulan’s mouth went dry.

The Rider’s attention shifted to her then, and she felt herself become small beneath it. Not weak. Not helpless. Measured. His gaze rested on her shield, her bloodied hands, the place where the spear lay trapped beneath the dead man, and finally on the prayer wood clenched between her fingers.

“You…” he said quietly. “You changed the battlefield.”

Kenna moved half a step to block that attention, though the movement nearly broke her balance. “Look at me.”

“I am.”

The answer was calm enough to be worse than mockery.

For several breaths no one moved. Then the Rider lowered the halberd, not in surrender, but in conclusion.

“This field is spent,” he said.

He turned away.

He did not hurry. That was part of the threat. His damaged leg dragged through the grass, and every step carried the sound of broken armor, but the movement remained controlled. He turned his back to the dead soldier without the slightest regard, without pausing, without even granting the body the courtesy of recognition.

Only at the slope did he stop.

For a moment, he looked down into the darkness where the horse had fallen.

Then he continued on, dented helm and ruined shoulder vanishing slowly into the grass until even moonlight could no longer hold him.

[Kronan]

Chapter 11 – Open Fields

Xiulan heard the grass move behind her. Moving grass not made by the wind, but by steps.
Her breath caught before thought could fully form. Kenna stood several paces away with the sword Jitsugetsu raised toward the darkness where the rider had vanished after the second pass. The sound of hooves had faded, but not disappeared. It waited somewhere beyond sight, circling back through the moonlit plains like a hunting thing that knew it only had to strike correctly once.

Then three figures rose from the rolling grass.

Xiulan turned with shield lifted and spear drawn close. For one brief heartbeat she wished absurdly that they were bandits. Loud men. Hungry men. Frightened men who shouted to make themselves larger than they were. But these three did not shout. They did not laugh. They did not threaten. They spread with practiced purpose, one to her left, one holding back, one coming directly toward her behind a round shield darkened by weather and old use.

Soldiers, she thought. Or men who had once been soldiers. The thought chilled her more than the wind. Soldiers knew how bodies failed. Soldiers knew how fear narrowed choices. Soldiers did not need anger to kill.

Her fingers tightened around the spear shaft until the wood pressed pain into her palm. She felt the old palace lesson rise inside her, not as words but as command. Be still. Be useful. Do not embarrass yourself. Do not cry out. Do not fail those who stand above you.

No. Not above. Beside.

Kenna was beside her.

The first man came in hard, testing her before she could settle herself. Xiulan moved back instead of meeting strength with strength. The shield strike jarred through her arm and into her teeth, but she let the pain pass through her without giving it a voice. She had done that before. She had learned that long before battlefields and open plains. Pain was information. Pain was not permission to fall.

The second attacker came almost with the first, forcing her to turn. Xiulan did not try to win. She could feel how dangerous that desire would be. Winning belonged to those who could afford reach, certainty, and anger. She had none of those. She had only time. Time for Kenna. Time for breath. Time for the spirits she had begged to walk beside them.

Her feet found the rhythm without conscious thought. Small steps. Patient steps. No pride. No flourish. The men pressed her, and she yielded just enough that their blades met shield, shaft, and empty air rather than flesh. Each impact made her smaller inside, not weaker, but more contained. She withdrew into a place the palace had carved in her years ago, a place where fear could scream behind closed doors while the face remained calm.

“This one only need hold,” she whispered.

The shield-bearing man heard her and pushed harder. Good, Xiulan thought, though the thought frightened her. Let him think she was breaking.

Across the grass, Kenna heard the fighting behind her but did not turn. Turning would kill them both. The rider was still out there, and everything in her training told her that the third charge would decide the fight.

Her ribs hurt. Her hip burned where the last impact had thrown her across the ground. Her arms still remembered the shock of steel meeting halberd at full speed. Without Xiulan’s aid, she knew she would already have been slower. A fraction slower. Perhaps enough to die.

But something had changed.

The night had sharpened.

The wind no longer swallowed everything. It moved in layers now, each one carrying a different truth. Grass bent differently where the horse circled. Hooves struck damp earth, then stone, then earth again. Leather creaked beneath armor. Metal rang faintly as the rider adjusted weight. The darkness no longer felt empty. It had edges.

Xiulan.

Kenna did not smile, but a calm fierceness settled through her. The blessing did not feel like power was forced into her limbs. It felt like alignment. Breath, sight, hearing, balance, all placed exactly where they needed to be.

The rider turned. Kenna heard it before she saw it.

The horse accelerated with terrifying speed. Not a normal warhorse, or not ridden by a normal rider. The shape came out of the dark low and massive, halberd leveled, moonlight running briefly along the weapon’s edge. The first charge had surprised her. The second had nearly broken her. The third came against a woman who was prepared.
Kenna lowered the tip of Jitsugetsu slightly.

Not yet… Hooves hammered closer.

Not yet… The halberd point steadied toward her chest.

Not yet... Behind her, Xiulan staggered.

Kenna felt the instinct to look. She crushed it.

Now!

Kenna dropped towards the ground.

To anyone watching, it might have looked like she fell. It was not. Her knees loosened, her weight vanished beneath the line of the halberd, and she rolled forward and right into the space beside the charging horse rather than away from it, letting the horse shield her from the halberd. The rider noticed and adjusted the reins, but the horse was galloping to fast to course-correct.

Jitsugetsu cut low.

The blade met the horse’s front leg just above the joint.

Resistance slammed into Kenna’s arms, brutal and wet and hard beneath the edge. The force nearly tore the sword from her hands, but Xiulan’s blessing held in her body like a second breath. She completed the cut as the horse thundered past.

Then momentum finished what steel had begun.

The horse’s scream ripped open the night. Its front end vanished beneath itself. Rider, armor, halberd, and animal became one tumbling mass of speed and ruin, crashing through grass and darkness with a sound like a wagon breaking apart on stone. The shape rolled once, twice, then disappeared down the shallow slope beyond sight.

The scream continued for a moment longer.

Then stopped.

Kenna rose too quickly and nearly fell again. Pain stabbed through her hip, and her ribs protested each breath. She ignored both. Jitsugetsu remained in her hands. Good. Her fingers still worked. Better.

She turned toward Xiulan. What she saw made the calm inside her sharpen into something colder.

Xiulan’s shield rang again, and this time the strength behind the blow drove her almost to one knee. Panic rose hot in her chest. Not fear of dying. Not exactly. Fear of failing. Fear that Kenna would turn and see her on the ground. Fear that all her prayers had been too small for the cruelty of open fields.

Fear of failing the spirits of her ancestors. And her sisters.

The third attacker moved then, the one who had waited. He had been patient enough to frighten her most. He came when her shield was low and her breath was wrong.

Xiulan twisted away, but not cleanly. Pain opened along her upper arm, sharp and
immediate. Warmth followed beneath the armor strap. The wound was not deep enough to finish her, but it made the world narrow. For an instant she was not on the plains. She was kneeling in a courtyard with tears locked behind her eyes, learning that sound made punishment worse and stillness made survival possible.

No! This was not that place.

These men were not teachers. They were not true soldiers. They did not decide when she moved.

Xiulan exhaled and let the fear settle lower, beneath her ribs, beneath thought, where it could burn without controlling her. She gave ground again, but this time she chose the direction. The men followed. She felt them believe they were driving her. Perhaps they were. Perhaps it did not matter. Every step she took was another heartbeat Kenna still had.

The shield-bearing attacker struck again, too forcefully. His confidence had changed. He had felt her give way. He thought weakness was the same as surrendering.

Xiulan saw the mistake through pain and terror, it was very small.

A gap beneath the shield edge. A shift of weight is too committed. A throat briefly exposed above old mail as he leaned forward to finish what he thought had already begun.
She did not think of killing him, that would come later.
For now, she thought only of Kenna alone in the dark, and of the terrible sound of hooves returning.

Xiulan stabbed with her spear. It slid forward through the air. Not strong. Not grand. Precise, desperate, and perfectly timed. The point passed under the lifted shield, beneath the jaw, and into softness no armor had protected. For one impossible heartbeat the man remained standing, his weight still moving forward as though his body had not yet understood.

His eyes met hers, surprise lived there. Then he collapsed against the spear and dragged it downward with him. Xiulan almost screamed.

Not from pain. From the horrible intimacy of it. From the warmth on her hands. From the way a body became heavy when whatever had inhabited it suddenly departed. She tried to pull the spear free, but it caught, and the second attacker was already coming.

“Please,” she whispered, though she did not know whether she spoke to the dead man, to the spirits, or to herself. A warmth spread in her heart, and the spear broke free. She abandoned the spear.

The choice tore through her. The weapon had been meaning reach, safety, discipline, memory. But clinging to it would kill her. Xiulan let it go, stumbled back, and brought her shield up with both hands just as the next blow came down.

The impact drove her to one knee, the world flashed white.

Kenna sprinted towards Xiulan as she dropped to one knee, shield raised with both hands, spear gone. One attacker lay motionless in the grass before her. Two remained. One circled with the caution of a man who had seen the small female kill his companion. The other hammered at her guard with ugly, practical intent.

Kenna ran faster.

Xiulan could not hear Kenna coming. The world had become shield, breath, pain, and the next impact. She no longer knew if she was standing correctly. She no longer knew if her arm would lift again after the next strike. She only knew that she must not fall backward, because falling backward meant boots, blades, darkness, and Kenna finding her too late.

The attacker struck her shield again, and something in her shoulder screamed. Xiulan tasted blood where she had bitten her cheek. She wanted to apologize. The instinct came from nowhere and everywhere. Apologize for being slow. Apologize for losing the spear. Apologize for the dead man. Apologize for making Kenna come save her.

Anger flickered through the fear. The feeling was small but unfamiliar and very much alive. She was tired of being sorry for surviving.

The next blow came, and Xiulan met it with the shield edge instead of the center. The strike slid away enough to miss her head. She shoved forward with what little strength remained, not to hurt him, only to make space, only to remain a door that would not open.
The man snarled for the first time. That sound helped. He was frustrated. He was no longer certain. The circling attacker lunged. Xiulan saw him too late.

Then moonlight flashed red-black, and Kenna arrived between them.

Jitsugetsu cut across the attacker’s path with such speed that Xiulan barely understood the motion before the man recoiled, armor splitting where the blade found its line. Kenna did not chase immediately. She placed herself in front of Xiulan, breathing hard, sword held low and ready, her dark hair torn loose by wind and violence.

“You are hurt,” Kenna said.

Xiulan tried to answer, but her throat closed. She managed only a small nod.

Kenna did not look back. “Can you stand?”

Xiulan looked at the dead man in the grass, at the spear still trapped beneath him, at the blood on her hands. For a moment the plains seemed impossibly large around her. Too open. Too cold. Too much sky pressing down on one small body that had only wanted to help.

Then Kenna shifted half a step, placing herself more fully between Xiulan and the remaining men. Not above, beside. Xiulan forced her shaking legs beneath her.

“Yes,” she whispered. Then, stronger, though still trembling, “This one stand.”

The two surviving attackers hesitated.

Kenna noticed. Xiulan noticed too, even through pain. The men were disciplined, but not fearless. Their rider was gone. One of their own lay dead at Xiulan’s feet. The prey had not behaved like prey, and the night no longer belonged only to them.

Kenna raised Jitsugetsu slightly.

“Leave,” she said.

The wind carried the word across the grass.

The man with the bloodied blade glanced toward the darkness where horse and rider had vanished. The other touched the wound Kenna had opened through his armor. Neither answered. For several breaths no one moved.

Then something sounded from the slope. The scrape of metal and a low, wet breath travelled with the wind among them.

Kenna’s eyes narrowed.

The attackers heard it too, and whatever resolve remained in them changed shape. Not loyalty. Fear. Their attention broke from Xiulan and Kenna for the briefest moment.
It was enough. Kenna moved first.

Xiulan did not see the full exchange. She saw only fragments: the curve of Jitsugetsu in moonlight, Kenna’s body turning with terrible dexterity, one attacker stumbling away from a cut he had barely avoided, the other raising his weapon too late. Xiulan wanted to help. Her hand reached for the spear before she remembered it was still pinned beneath the dead man.

So she did the only thing she could. She touched the worn prayer wood at her belt with bloody fingers and prayed again.

Not for victory. For steadiness. For Kenna’s breath. For her own heart not to shatter before the work was done. Warmth answered faintly. Weaker now. Thin as candlelight in wind. But still present.

Kenna felt it.

Her next movement became cleaner.

The wounded attacker broke first. He turned and fled into the grass, staggering toward the dark slope. The last man backed away with his weapon raised, eyes moving between Kenna, Xiulan, and the place where the rider had fallen. He wanted to live. That made him dangerous in a different way, but also predictable.

Kenna let him retreat. He vanished into the grass after the other. For several moments, neither woman moved.

The plains did not become quiet. The wind still moved. Grass still rolled. Somewhere in the darkness, metal scraped once more and then fell silent. But the terrible pattern of the fight had broken.

Xiulan lowered her shield slowly, her arm failed halfway, and the shield dropped into the grass.

Kenna turned immediately. “Xiulan.”
“This one is standing,” Xiulan said, though her voice sounded distant even to herself.

“You are bleeding.”

Xiulan looked down at her arm as though surprised to find it still attached to her body. Blood darkened the sleeve beneath her armor. Her hands were worse. Not all of it was hers. She stared at them for too long.

Kenna stepped closer, then stopped before touching her. That restraint nearly undid Xiulan more than comfort would have.

“I killed him,” Xiulan said.

Kenna followed her gaze to the fallen attacker. Her expression did not soften into false reassurance. She did not say it was nothing. She did not say Xiulan had no choice, though both knew it was true. Instead, she stood with her beneath the endless sky and let the words exist.

“Yes,” Kenna said quietly.

Xiulan’s mouth trembled once. She forced it still, hated that she forced it still, and then could not hold the contradiction inside her. “This one did not want.”

“I know.”

“He looked surprised.”

Kenna’s eyes lowered briefly. “They often do.”

The answer was gentle, but it carried weight. Xiulan understood then that Kenna had carried similar faces inside herself for longer than this night. The thought hurt in a different way.

“Honored spirits, Celestial Court….” *the rest of the prayer was murmured and lost in the wind.

A sound came from the slope again.
Both women turned.

A cold and deep voice travelled with the wind.

“…I was very fond of that horse…”

[Kronan]

Chapter 10 – The Cloudy Plains

The Plains grew crueler farther south.

Cloud cover hung lower now. Wind moved constantly through endless grasslands broken only by scattered ruins and old stones worn smooth by generations of weather and forgotten war.

Kenna disliked the Plains more with every mile. The environment threatened to crush her. It was too exposed to danger. Miles-wide plains with only low hills dotted in the distance. There was nothing to hide behind but wind whipped small trees or ancient stones with faded carvings. The grass continued to roll in the wind as they walked along a road that had seen centuries of travel.

Xiulan walked quietly beside her. She did not discuss chicken or buns today, only silence.

Even Xiulan felt it. “Clouds feel heavy,” Xiulan said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Spirits not like place.”

Kenna glanced briefly toward her. “Neither do I.”

Hours passed. Then Kenna spotted movement to the east. A group of one mounted rider and several walking by foot. Kenna immediately lowered herself.

“Down.” She said in a hushed tone while motioning with her arm. Xiulan followed instantly. Kenna regarded the four figures. She saw heavy armor, but they flew no banners. They advanced in a disciplined formation, not clustered, but not to spread out. They covered their angles in a very organized manner.

“Raiders?” Xiulan whispered.

“No.” Kenna narrowed her eyes as she felt something wrong. The group did not turn their head towards them, but something still felt amiss. The rider towered over the others. Shoulder to broad, too tall. Even at this distance, Kenna deduced that the rider was considerable larger than the companions travelling by foot.

alt text

The ironclad warrior held a halberd in its hand, resting casually on its shoulder, as they disappeared behind a shallow hill.

Xiulan quietly touched worn prayer wood. “This one have bad feeling.”

Kenna slowly nodded. “Move west.” They did not seek any heroic battle. Not here, not now. They had to preserve their strength and their supply. They did not need to fight everything they saw. They left the road and moved out into the Plains. Wading through grass reaching their waists. They silently circled around hills to make a wide berth from where the rider and its group had disappeared to draw distance.

The wind was howling, distorting sound, but suddenly Kenna tensed. Xiualan looked at her friend for a short moment before Kennas sword left her sheath and went into a defensive position in one fluid and quick motion. The next blink a shadow passed them so fast that it made Xiulans hair flicker back from the force of wind. The sound of steel meeting steel cracked through the air, and she saw Kenna being thrown backward and tumbling along the ground, rising to her feet in the end with a bewildered expression. Rolling grass. harsh wind. Moonlit night. Kenna was standing firm with her sword in front of her. Now the wind carried the sound, as it roared against them. Hooves against dirt. A shadow manifested, halberd forward, approaching in full gallop. This time Kenna was ready. Xiulan witnessed her wait until the last moment before she took a step to the side and deflected the threatening, sharp, steel. The sound cracked like thunder again. Xiulan closed her eyes, touching her wooden charms, thinking of her friend.

A warmth spread in her heart.

The rider had appeared from nowhere. Unconsciously Kenna understood that the wind had hidden the sound of the approaching foe. She managed to parry the attack, but she was hit by the horses’ breast. Immense pain exploded in her chest as she was sent through the air, landing hard on her hip. Years of training made her body limp and then roll to an upright position.

alt text

The rider rode into the wind now and that made it possible to hear the thumping sound of hooves to the ground. She assumed the neutral position, arms and sword extended in an angle in front of her. She heard the thumps slow, then speed up again. The rider was charging again. She waited. One heartbeat, two heartbeats. Three, then four. THERE! The dark figure manifested very close, approaching in insane speed. The tip of the halberd, held straight, glimmered in the moonlight. Kenna moved her sword to deflect and sidestepped. The clash sent pain up her arms as she turned to face the rider disappearing into the dark plains.

Then she felt the warm invite, and she widened her eyes slightly.

Suddenly her arms felt stronger, her vision cleared, even under the cloudy, yet moonlit tundra, her eyes could see clearer. She felt her breath calm down, she felt that she could cleave a fly in chaotic motion. She could almost see the rider halt its horse and turn for a third charge. She could also see three shadows closing in on Xiulan. The rider was approaching.

Xiulan heard rustling not made by the wind in the grass behind her. She turned with raised shield and spear.

[Kronan]

Chapter 9 – The Dead Horse Inn

Storm clouds rolled heavily across the skies when they finally saw it properly.

The Dead Horse Inn stood alone against endless tundra.

It was not very welcoming; it was certainly not a beautiful structure. However, it was practical. A last frontier outpost, built from thick northern timber darkened by years of smoke, storms and brutal winters. Heavy stone reinforced its lower walls while iron braces strengthened corners where harsh weather had likely tested the structure countless times. Lanterns still burned outside despite daylight slowly strengthening beneath gray skies.

The place looked less like an inn, and more like a small fortress. Something built to survive attacks from the creatures hat roamed the region. Xiulan adjusted the straps of her pack while studying it.

“Looks cold.”

Kenna regarded the structure quietly. “Looks durable.”

Well inside the courtyard, they could see several wagons standing outside beneath crude wooden shelters with mud covered wheels. In the stable, several pack horses shifted restlessly. Two caravan guards repaired a broken axle while another sharpened a spear beside stacked timber.

Even in this desolate location, the Inn breathed life, movement and survival.

The hanging sign above the entrance creaked beneath harsh northern wind.

A faded horse. Xiulan noted that one leg was missing. Someone had long ago carved some words beneath it. “STILL STANDING”. Kenna approved immediately. Xiulan thought the horse looked sad. The heavy wooden door opened before they reached it.

Warmth struck them immediately together with the scent of smoke and cooking grease. Wet leather drying near stone hearths. The sound of many voices filled their ears. The common room held perhaps thirty travelers and adventurers. This was not soft people, this was people that had seen their fair share of the horrors of the Cold Road.

A scarred Damaran caravan master argued loudly with two wagon guards over ale and road conditions. A dwarf wearing worn chain armor quietly sharpened an axe beside the hearth. Three heavily armed adventurers sat beneath mounted antlers while comparing injuries with surprising enthusiasm. One of them carried holy symbols. Another wore enough knives to concern Kenna slightly. A broad-shouldered woman wearing battered scale armor laughed loudly while displaying bite scars running along one arm.

Kenna studied the room strategically, as her habit always made her do. She identified possible exits. She noticed two persons that could possibly pose an instant threat. A drunk person barely hanging on to the bar. But no one was giving them any specific attention.

That was good.

Xiulan noticed something entirely different. Food. Her eyes followed a serving girl crossed the room carrying thick northern bread and a plate of roasted vegetables. Another carrying a large bowls of stew. Then her eyes widened slightly, as she saw a plate with grilled chicken wings. They were covered in dark spice, steam still rising.

Xiulan stopped walking as she pointed. Kenna immediately noticed.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“We just arrived.”

“Chicken.”

“We have travel food.”

“Travel food sad.”

Kenna quietly removed wet gloves. “We should secure rooms first.”

“Chicken first.”

“Xiulan.”

“Chicken very urgent!” Xiulan looked thoughtful for a moment. “Kenna need spicy chicken for to have better make from wound!” She said, nodding to Kenna’s shoulder.

Kenna exhaled softly.

Several minutes later they occupied a smaller table near heavy support beams blackened by decades of smoke. The wings arrived. Xiulan blinked with a smile and anticipation. Then blinked again, as she smelled the grilled wing. Her already wide smile widened further.

Kenna examined one carefully.

Southern food usually favored practicality with heavy and simple meals. Meals that were reliable meal.

Not this. A clear taste of smoke, garlic and pepper. Sharp spice balanced beneath savory char. Slight sweetness.

Xiulan slowly bit into one.

Silence.

Kenna watched carefully.

Xiulan swallowed.

“Kenna.”

“Yes.”

“This one think spirits bless chicken.”

Kenna quietly sampled one herself.

The spice hit first. Then smoke. Then warmth. Unexpectedly tasty with excellent flavor balance.

“Possible,” Kenna said.

“You joke.”

“Perhaps.”

“You disrespect chicken spirits.”

“Mm.”

Xiulan narrowed her eyes suspiciously before they continued eating, acknowledging the hunger that they felt. Many chicken wings later Xiulan sighed and leaned back in her chair with a content expression.

“This one forgive Cold Road.”

Kenna nearly smiled. Around them conversations continued.

“…Road south feels wrong…”

“…Found tracks bigger than wolves…”

“…Temple patrol never returned…”

“…Bodies walking…”

“…Cold Roads…”

Nobody lowered voices. Nobody dramatized. Hard people. Danger existed. Danger simply belonged here. A gray bearded northern warrior eventually stopped beside their table. He laid a hand on their table, Kenna noticed his missing fingers. As she looked up she could see one of his eyes clouded in white. old sword scars crossed his jaw.

He looked first at Kenna, then Xiulan before he moved to regard their armor.

“Cold Roads?” he asked.

Kenna nodded.

“You saw something.”

It was not a question.

“Yes.” Kenna answered.

The old warrior regarded them carefully. He showed no disbelief or any surprise. A slight nod confirmed understanding.

“Worse things to the south.”

The old warrior walked away. Kenna quietly finished eating. Xiulan finished six more wings.

“Travel food still sad,” Xiulan concluded.

“Apparently.”

“Need recipe.”

“Absolutely not!” Kenna answered.

Xiulan smiled amused for a moment as she regarded the number of bones on her plate. Slowly her smile faded.

“Kenna. Voices from woman on road is feel real…”

Kenna looked sharply at her, silent for a moment, she considered whether she should say something or remain quiet. Xiulan made the choice apparent as she continued.

“This one hear voice from Palace. Voice from sisters this one see.. no longer live. Sisters say bad things” She frowned slightly and scratched on her hand wrist.

Kenna absorbed the words with a thoughtful and curious expression. “I heard voices also. Voices that are not possible. She vexed us, a spell, I would think”

Xiulan nodded slowly. “This one hear truth in bad way. Same as in Palace” Kenna parted her lips to ask a question, but Xiulan continued. “Ancestors no answer” Again, even more curiosity now, Kenna attempted to talk. “Wha..” Xiulan continued. “This one always want honor spirits and ancestors. Is for what this one is. To help when pain is much…” Kenna waited to see if Xiulan would continue again, but her friend looked visibly disturbed and in deep thought.

She had questions, but as she kept regarding Xiulan’s expression, Kenna decided to remain silent. Concerns and understanding that had grown inside her for some time had now grown even more, hearing the words, and watching the actions of her friend. But this was not the time to pry or press for answers.

Eventually exhaustion won. After some haggling they convinced the innkeeper to provide two modest rooms upstairs. They were simple but clean enough with strong locks. They agreed to head out early the next morning. The two friends retreated into their respective rooms to enjoy a good night’s rest. Neither knew when they could rest in a bed next time.
For tomorrow, they would continue towards somewhere beyond distant gray horizons, beyond old battlefields, beyond forgotten stone.

Something waited.

Patiently watching.

[Kronan]

Chapter 8 – Into the Cold Roads

The Cold Roads deserved their reputation.

Wind moved endlessly across northern plains where tall grass bent beneath harsh gusts sweeping down from wilderness older than roads and older than kingdoms. Frost lingered stubbornly beneath ancient standing stones while distant hills rolled beneath endless gray skies that seemed somehow larger than they should have been.

Kront disappeared behind them hours earlier, now only tundra remained. Cold, open and empty. Kenna disliked empty places as where forests provided coverage, open plains exposed them.

Xiulan walked quietly beside her adjusting travel blankets secured beside her pack while northern wind pulled dark strands loose from beneath tied hair.

“Dead Horse Inn still far?” The woman asked while regarding an unusual smooth boulder with barely visible marks.

“Several hours.” Kenna answered.

“Cold Roads like Long Road.”

“Yes.”

“Bad road.”

“Yes.”

Silence settled again and it was not a peaceful silence. It was too silent. Wrong silence. There was no chirping from birds, no sounds from insects. The surrounding were still, only howls from the wind, the sounds of their steps and armor leather creaks.

Kenna noticed something behind them, a sound. She slowed her steps slightly and glanced backwards. She saw nothing, but she could have sworn that she had heard footsteps. Slow and heavy. Xiulan looked at her and then turned her head to look behind them. She also saw nothing, only the grass rolling as winds swept over the Plains.

“You hear?” She asked while looking back at Kenna.

“Yes.”

Kenna stopped walking as she tried to focus her hearing. Only wind, rustling grass. Nothing else, nothing.

“Animal?” Xiulan asked quietly.

“No.”

They continued their walk. Five minutes passed by, then ten. Kenna stopped. She heard it again. Footsteps behind them. Slow, heavy, deliberate.

Kenna saw Xiulan turn as well. Neither of them saw anything. Only moonlit boulders and stone markers and wind whipped, lonely, trees.

“You also hear now?” Xiulan asked in a hushed voice.

“Yes.”

Kenna lowered one hand towards Jitsugetsu. She did not feel fear, exactly, however, she wanted to be prepared.

The wind shifted slightly and it brought with it a smell of rot and decay, stagnant water and salt. A feeling of something wrong settled in Kenna, and in Xiulan, she saw, after a quick glance at her friend.

Something beneath the skin felt wrong, a tightness. Something felt wrong in the mind as an uneasy sensation took hold.

“Kenna…”

“I know.”

They continued but walked considerably faster. In their minds they heard ominous footsteps keep pace behind them, seemingly remaining at the same distance. They glanced backwards at times, but still, they saw nothing. The feeling of being watched hung over them as they hurried along.

Xiulan touched worn prayer wood hanging beside her belt, the one carved into the shapes of tiny dragons. When her fingertip ran over the familiar carvings, she thought of warm memories, sisterly protections and strong devotion. She frowned her eyebrows slightly, as she did not feel anything answer.

Infront of them the Cold Road rose into a hill. The roadside still had the occasional stone marker, some broken. The wind picked up and whipped through strands of Xiulans hair.
Suddenly, Kenna stopped. Xiulan was fiddling for a piece of dried meat and almost walked into her.

“What?” She asked surprised.

Kenna pointed to a set of tracks that she had spotted. They revealed the footprints of something large, barefooted but humanoid, moving uphill.

Xiulan swallowed. “One?”

“Yes.”

The wind strengthened even more, and Xiulan could feel even more pressure on her mind. She could almost see something flowing through the air around them. They continued walking uphill. Xiulan reached the top of the hill first. She stopped, no, she froze. Kenna stepped beside her and followed her pointing finger.

Below, under a wind whipped collection of almost bare trees, stood a woman.
The woman seemed too tall, judging from the distance, thought Kenna. Even so, her long limbs seemed too thin. Kenna narrowed her eyes to try to pierce through the moonlit tundra. The realization made the hairs on her neck stand. It was not a woman.

Beside her rags, yellow flesh covered sores and rotting wounds covered her skin. Her long and filthy hair moved in the harsh wind like drowned weeds dragged from stagnant water. She stood completely, unnaturally, motionless while looking directly at them.

Xiulan gasped slightly and felt fear in her heart. “Kenna...”

“I see” She said, while feeling something twist in her chest and she needed to use all her training to remain calm.

The thing smiled. Almost human, but slightly wrong. The wind shifted, blowing up dust. Kenna instinctively protected her eyes with her underarm for but a moment. Then, the woman, the thing, was gone.

Xiulan inhaled sharply. “Where….?”

“Move!” Kenna turned immediately and quickly headed for a wide berth around the collection of trees. Jitsugetsu cleared its sheath, steel hissed softly.

“Kenna?”

“Quiet.”

Xiulan heard it then. It was closer, much closer. She heard whispers in her head. Not clear words, but almost. Voices. Many voices. Some felt familiar, some felt completely foreign. Some felt it was impossible. The voices of her sisters, some long dead, receiving the last punishment, for whatever reason. Accusing, complaining, agonizing. Palace voices. Wounded soldiers crying. Children. Pain.

“Xiulan…” A whisper. She froze. Impossible. Impossible!

“Xiulan.” Collected voices from faces she used to know. Not her sisters. Wrong. Wrong!

“Xiulan!” Kenna grabbed her shoulder, hard, and shook her. “Look at me.”

Xiulan blinked while breathing hard. “What…?”

“It used magic on us.”

Kenna rarely sounded uncertain. She sounded uncertain now. Wind exploded sideways and Xiulan could feel her body not obeying her as usual. It was slower, heavier, as if moving through water.

Movement. The woman emerged beside broken stone barely six steps away. Too close. Far too close. Kenna made Jitsugetsu move immediately. Steel cut through air. The creature wasn't there!

Xiulan heard laughter behind them and turned her head towards Kenna as her scream began to take form in her throat.

Claws struck armor, metal screamed. Kenna staggered forward from the attack at her shoulder. She felt the numb feeling spread, along with warmth slowly expanding downwards. She flexed her back slightly. The cut was not deep, but enough to impair movement.

The woman moved unnaturally fast. Too fast for something so tall but so skinny limbs. This was all wrong. Xiulan lowered her hand to her belt instinctively. Prayer wood, tiny dragons.

“Please.” Not strength, pressure relief. “Please.” She thought in desperation.

Wind calmed slightly as warmth answered. Small, not much. Familiar, but enough.

The whispers weakened, the voices faded, reality steadied.

The revulting woman lunged at Kenna again. She waited. With the absence of the agonizing voices, she was able to return to her measured self and could focus on identifying moves. The woman was too aggressive. While her clawed hands posed a threat, she lacked discipline and accuracy.

The woman came at Kenna with open arms, clawed fingers spread wide. Too confident, that was a mistake.

Jitsugetsu flashed in the moonlit night. One strike across arm. Black blood sprayed into the wind. The creature screamed but not in pain, it was anger.

Xiulan moved. Shield raised and spear held outwards, close to her body, just as her sister had taught her. She might not be as elegant as her sisters or Kenna, but she had to help. The first thrust of the spear struck low in the woman’s back. She twisted as Xiulan retracted the spear. Kenna saw the opportunity and opened her side from shoulder to hip while Xiulan thrusted the spear forward again, into the shoulder of the woman.

The woman let out an unnatural shriek which turned into a laugh as she staggered backwards, making distance. Still smiling, she was not retreating, yet still limping backwards. The air shifted, and she vanished in one blink of an eye.

She was gone. Only rolling grass and harsh winds with the biting cold remained. A last laugh seemed to be carried in the wind as it disappeared into the dark. Silence returned.

Xiulan breathed hard. “Dead?”

“No,” Kenna said quietly. “Gone. We should move.”

“Cold Roads bad place,” Xiulan whispered.

Several hours after the encounter with the woman, Kenna watched distant tundra as they walked. Morning was arriving and the horizon had turned grey. A marking stone told her that they were nearing their destination.

Xiulan had been impressive as she treated her shoulder wound, applying salve, murmuring softly as she did. Kenna felt better than she believed that she should. The wound was healing much better than expected.

Far ahead, beneath stormy skies, the Dead Horse Inn awaited.

[Kronan]

Chapter 7 – Kront

Kront appeared beneath gray skies the following day, shortly before midday. The frontier settlement rested south of Rawlinswood where civilization slowly began to thin toward harsher lands farther south. Timber walls reinforced portions of the town more from necessity than confidence while watch platforms overlooked the northern roads where traders, hunters and patrols regularly disappeared into dangerous territory. Worn banners shifted weakly beneath northern winds carrying the scent of pine and distant rain.

The caravan rolled slowly through muddy streets lined with workshops, supply stores and buildings built with practicality rather than beauty in mind. Men hauling timber moved with quiet efficiency while hunters returning from nearby forests carried themselves with the same alert awareness Kenna had observed among caravan guards farther north. Frontier living. No wasted movement. No unnecessary words.

Xiulan noticed something entirely different.

“Vegetables,” she said quietly.

Kenna looked toward her.

“What?”

“Good vegetables.” Xiulan pointed toward a small produce stall near the central market square.

Kenna regarded her silently for several moments. “We survived an ambush yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“And your concern is vegetables?”

“Yes.”

Kenna exhaled quietly. “Of course.”

They separated from the caravan shortly afterward to replenish supplies before continuing south. Bandages. Preserved food. Lamp oil. Kenna acquired cord, whetstones and additional cold-weather provisions while quietly inspecting travel equipment with careful attention. Xiulan immediately negotiated for herbs and preserved vegetables before eventually locating steamed buns from a small vendor near the southern market road.

“Travel buns.” Xiulan clarified seriously.

“Of course.” Kenna replied with a smile.

The town fountain stood near Kront’s center surrounded by carefully maintained flowerbeds that seemed strangely out of place against the practical frontier settlement surrounding them. Worn stone carved generations earlier into flowering vines and spiraling dragons guided quiet water through shallow channels beneath lantern posts and late-season blossoms still stubbornly surviving despite colder weather settling over the region.

Xiulan lowered herself carefully beside the fountain. For several moments neither woman spoke. The caravan journey settled heavily into tired muscles. Rain. Mud. Blood. The dead. The wounded. Water flowed quietly nearby.

“This place peaceful…” Xiulan said softly.

“Temporarily.” Kenna answered.

Xiulan nodded slowly. She understood.

A pair of caravan guards passed nearby carrying supplies toward one of the northern streets. One walked carefully with fresh bandages visible beneath his sleeve.

“Another patrol vanished near Cold Roads.”

“Heard same thing.”

“Three merchants now.”

“Bandits?”

“Not this time.”

“Undead?”

“People say so.”

Xiulan slowly raised her eyes. Kenna had already been listening. Another voice drifted from farther across the square.

“Temple caravan came through two days ago.”

“They saw something?”

“Bodies walking.”

“The Plains feels wrong.”

Kenna pondered the exchange with a strong dislike. Practical dangers could be understood. Managed. Measured. Bandits. Storms. Wolves. Wrong felt different.
Beside her, Xiulan quietly touched one of the small ancestral charms resting near her belt. She did not radiate fear. She was preparing.

“We leave this afternoon,” Kenna said.

Xiulan nodded immediately. No hesitation. No dramatic declaration. Only acceptance. Kenna could never become used to the level of readiness her friend possessed in face of danger.

Later, after resting aching muscles, the two women donned their armor once more. Leather straps tightened. Steel inspected carefully beneath lanternlight. Xiulan fastened her breastplate with quieter discomfort than before while checking herbs, bandages and worn spirit tokens.

Kenna inspected and sharpened Jitsugetsu carefully. Stone across steel. Measured movement. Routine.

Xiulan quietly inspected travel supplies one final time.

“Buns.” Xiulan confirmed.

Kenna nearly smiled. “Essential.”

“Yes.”

Outside northern winds moved quietly across Kront. Beyond timber walls and distant forests, the Cold Roads waited under a silent and patient danger.

And somewhere farther south something ancient waited there too. Something no longer content remaining buried.

Xiulan and Kenna left the gates of Kront and stepped upon the Cold Road.

[Kronan]

Chapter 6 – Contemplation

The caravan resumed its journey before sunset. It moved slowly and carefully. Not only had wagons sustained damage, but some guards were now scouting ahead. Everyone was on high alert.

One wagon wheel required reinforcement before travel could continue. Two dead caravan guards lay wrapped carefully beneath canvas near the rear wagon. Three wounded occupied the supply wagon under blankets despite insisting they could still work.
Kenna sat quietly near the rear opening beneath the canvas while rainwater dripped steadily from pine branches overhead. The forest seemed quieter now. Exhausted, rather than peaceful.

Mud still clung to sections of armor not fully cleaned. Blood remained beneath fingernails despite washing. The smell lingered. Iron, leather, medicine… Herbs.

The wounded caravan guard near the front wagon breathed easier now. The one with the chest wound. Another man whose leg had nearly failed entirely now walked carefully beside the wagon using a carved branch as support. Not fully recovered, but alive.
Xiulan had moved between them for nearly two hours after the battle, applying bandages, administering water, mixing herbs into tonics, giving reassurance.

Quiet words were spoken in Shou, it didn’t matter that they did not understand it, her voice had calmed them. Soft whispers toward spirits Kenna still did not fully understand.
Then afterwards, without complaints, Xiulan simply sat beside one of the younger guards while he cried quietly after killing someone for the first time. She held him in her arms. She gave no speech, no wisdom. She gave only presence.

Kenna rested one arm across her knee as she kept watch on the tree lines along the road, in thoughtful contemplation.

Inside the wagon behind her sat a narrow travel cot. She glanced over an regarded a sleeping Xiulan. She slept heavily, with one arm partially hanging from beneath the blanket, her black hair slightly loose.

Exhaustion finally won over her tenacity. Kenna watched her quietly. Something bothered her. No, that was the wrong word. Occupied.

The battle. The feeling. Her sword had moved differently. Not as she didn’t expect it to do, not impossibly easy, the weight and balance was there. Just easier, cleaner, faster.

She remembered one strike particularly against the spearman. Ordinarily she would have needed to commit fully. Commit her hip and weight fully, use precise timing and excel her precision. Instead, the blade simply arrived where she wanted it to be, with ease and speed. No hesitation. No resistance. As though motion itself had become simpler.

Her endurance too. The battle should have taxed her more heavily. Three trained opponents together in mud and rain. Restricted footing, wet clothes and armor.

Yet afterwards she felt less fatigued and breathed clearly. She was aware of everything around her, she could react to threats at a moments notice. She felt stronger.

Kenna lowered her eyes slightly. Not strength forced into her. That feeling had been wrong.

No. Not wrong.

Unfamiliar. Gentler. Balance offered. Not taken. Her eyes drifted toward Xiulan again.

The woman slept heavily enough now that one of her spirit charms had partially slipped loose beside the blanket. A tiny carved dragon. Prayer wood worn smooth through years of touch. Kenna remembered warmth.

Kenna looked toward the sleeping woman and the tiny carved dragon half-loosened beside the blanket. Prayer wood, worn smoothly by years of touch.

She remembered rain, murmured Shou, and the strange gentleness that had settled over her sword arm. Not possession. Not command. Borrowed balance.

Kenna had heard mainland priests in Kara-Tur speak to offices of road, blade, ancestor, and household threshold. She understood enough to recognize the shape of what Xiulan had done. She did not understand the accent. She did not understand the palace humility folded into every phrase. But she understood this much: Xiulan had asked, not taken.

Xiulan shifted slightly beneath the blanket and murmured something quietly in sleep.

Kenna could not understand it, even though she spoke the Shou language, herself. It was murmuring from deep, exhausted, sleep. She briefly thought about her pilgrimage to Kara-Tur. In one way, that felt like a home, yet something far away.

The swordswoman leaned back quietly against the wagon frame.

Outside, the forest rolled steadily southward as they continued towards Mavalgard. Toward darker roads. Toward whatever waited there.

For a while longer, Kenna simply watched over the wagon.

And the sleeping friend beside her.

[Kronan]

Chapter 5 – Ambush

The first arrow tore through the canvas wall of the wagon hard enough to bury itself into a crate behind Xiulan with a violent crack of splintering wood.

“AMBUSH! DRAW STEEL!” someone screamed outside.

The entire wagon lurched sideways as horses panicked. Both women stared at the arrow for a moment before Kenna exploded into movement. Xiulan blinked a few more times before grabbing her spear to follow.

The swordswoman tore the rear canvas flap aside and dropped from the moving wagon into the mud below without hesitation. Xiulan followed moments later with shield and spear already in hand while the sounds of shouting and steel erupted around the caravan.

The ambush had been planned well.

Very well.

Bandits occupied elevated positions along both forest ridges while others emerged from concealed pits and brush near the road itself. Crossfire immediately pinned several caravan guards near the lead wagons while two attackers rushed directly for the mule teams with hooked blades clearly intended to cripple mobility first.

They seemed well trained, they were not desperate roadside thieves, wearing faintly green armor with colored lacquer on their shoulders, perhaps to denote rank.

Kenna recognized the tactics instantly. “They want the caravan trapped!” she shouted.

One of the caravan guards screamed as an arrow punched through his thigh near the front wagon. Another collapsed beside a wheel clutching his shoulder while bolts slammed repeatedly into the wooden sides of the caravan.

Then the melee attackers arrived. Six rushed the center wagons simultaneously using shields and short axes while archers continued firing from the tree line above.

Kenna stepped directly into their path. Rain rolled from her armor while her hand rested calmly against the hilt of her katana.

Xiulan saw the shift in her posture with awe. A sense of stillness, the kind that existed immediately before violence. Xiulan lowered her eyes briefly. Her fingers touched the ancestral charms hanging from her belt.

Her whisper vanished beneath the rain, murmuring in Shou language.

“Offices of measured hand and guarded breath, receive urgent petition. Lend strength to those who stand between cruelty and the helpless. Withdraw it when pride begins.”
“Please let them return home.”

Warmth spread outward almost immediately. A warmth that was neither visible nor dramatic. But those nearest her felt it.

The trembling fear inside several caravan guards steadied slightly. Their exhausted arms felt lighter. Breathing eased. Focus sharpened. Kenna inhaled slowly.

Again, that strange sensation settled across her thoughts, this was not power forced into her. It was balanced. As though unseen hands quietly corrected hesitation before it fully formed.

The first bandit reached her, a large man carrying a woodcutter’s axe.

Kenna sidestepped.

One precise cut opened the inside of his arm before he fully completed the swing. The axe dropped instantly from numb fingers.

Second strike sliced effortlessly through the throat.

The man collapsed into the mud, sliding before the momentum fully left his body. Another attacker came from the left. Kenna pivoted smoothly. Steel flashed once beneath the man’s raised shield. Hamstring severed. He dropped to one knee screaming. Next strike ended the fight immediately. No wasted motion, no flourish, No anger. Only concentration.

Xiulan stared only briefly before forcing herself to move. Another wounded guard had collapsed beside a wagon wheel nearby clutching his stomach while blood seeped heavily between his fingers. Xiulan kneeled beside him in the mud while arrows hissed overhead.

“Pressure here,” she ordered urgently while guiding his shaking hands. The guard’s breathing became ragged.

“Can’t… can’t hold…”

Xiulan pressed one hand over the wound. Then lowered her head. Not commanding. Never command. She whispered again in her native language.

“Offices of measured hand, clean water, red blood, and guarded breath, this small servant submits urgent petition. Here is one gate torn open before its appointed hour. Permit closing. Permit warmth to remain. Permit pain to speak softer, not vanish. Let this man return to his own name.”

Warmth spread softly beneath her palm. The bleeding slowed. Not completely, but enough to not be fatal.

Only then did she work. Salve first. Cloth second. Pressure. Breath. Quiet words in Shou that none of the guards understood, though more than one stopped shaking while she spoke.

The guard gasped sharply as pain lessened enough for him to breathe properly again. “I thank you, honored spirits.” She thought before a scream tore her attention sideways.
Two bandits had broken through near the grain wagons. One swung a mace downward toward a fallen caravan driver. Xiulan reacted reflexively, her spear thrust forward hard. The steel tip punched through leather armor beneath the attacker’s ribs. The man stumbled backward in shock. Xiulan felt the impact through the shaft. Felt the body resist. Her stomach twisted instantly.

The bandit collapsed heavily into the mud. Xiulan froze for half a heartbeat, long enough for another attacker to charge her directly. The axe slammed against her shield hard enough to numb her arm. Xiulan stumbled backward.

Then suddenly Kenna was there. The swordswoman intercepted the attacker with frightening speed. Their weapons met once, only once. Kenna’s blade slid across the man’s exposed wrist before reversing instantly into a precise upward strike beneath the jaw. The bandit collapsed at Xiulan’s feet.

Rainwater mixed with blood beneath the wagon wheels now. Kenna glanced toward Xiulan briefly. Not trying to claim victory, she was checking her.

Xiulan nodded once despite the tightness in her chest. Kenna understood immediately and turned back toward the fight. More attackers emerged from the tree line.

One of the caravan sellswords shouted in panic, “Too many!”

Xiulan closed her eyes briefly again. The ancestral charms swayed softly at her belt.
“Please protect.”

The air shifted. Several guards near her suddenly found renewed strength in exhausted muscles while cracked leather and dented armor seemed to hold together longer than they should have beneath incoming strikes.

Kenna felt it most strongly. Her body moved with impossible certainty now. A heavy blow that should have staggered her merely glanced aside. Her fatigue faded, her breathing steadied and focus sharpened. The swordswoman advanced directly into three attackers simultaneously.

One of them carried a spear, another wielded a falchion. The third carried a shield and hand axe.

Kenna moved between them almost fluidly. The spear thrust missed by inches.

Her blade struck the shaft aside before cutting across the spearman’s throat in the same motion. Pivot. The falchion wielder attacked immediately.

Kenna stepped inside the swing. Elbow. Pommel strike. Throat cut. The third attacker hesitated. That hesitation killed him.

One precise thrust slipped over his raised shield directly into the gap below his collarbone. The body collapsed heavily into the mud.

Xiulan watched her friend standing there amid rain and dying men. While she did not like to hurt people, she had to admit that Kenna was terrifyingly capable with a control that she had only seen in some of her sisters. A true soldier.

And somehow she still seemed peaceful.

Then the surviving bandits finally broke. One of them shouted the retreat from the tree line. The others began withdrawing immediately into the forest with practiced discipline, dragging wounded where possible while covering each other with arrows.

Professional enough not to rout completely, but they had been beaten. Gradually the sounds of combat faded beneath the rain once more. Only groans remained.

The caravan suffered damage such as broken wheels. Men where bleeding, the horses screaming in panic, blood colored the mud. Xiulan stood motionless for several seconds with her spear lowered, her breathing calmed slightly now. Then she turned and moved toward the injured.

Kenna cleaned rainwater and blood from her blade before returning it carefully to its sheath. She saw Xiulan approach one of the injured caravan guards. Xiulan was already kneeling beside another injured guard before Kenna reached her.

[Kronan]

Chapter 4 – To Kront

The two friends travelled with the ferry from Peltarch to Norwick, bandits or not. The caravan departed Norwick beneath low gray skies and the constant threat of rain.

Seven wagons guarded by twenty sellswords. One was a mule team hauling preserved grain toward Mavalgard. Another wagon carrying iron tools and timber fittings meant for settlements farther south beyond the Kront. It was not a glamorous caravan, not luxurious. It was functional. Part of the commerce between Norwick and the South.

The sort of practical movement that kept frontier settlements alive. Xiulan preferred caravans like this. She had never been outside the walls of the Palace before her older sister woke her that night. Told her that she needed to leave the Palace and move to this land. Just as she refrained from going outside the walls when she arrived to Peltarch for a long time. And here she was. The angst of being outside of protecting walls and protecting soldiers still made her stomach tighten and the uncomfortable feeling almost overwhelmed her.

The caravan master, a broad-shouldered Damaran named Harl, had accepted both women almost immediately once Xiulan treated an infected hand belonging to one of the wagon drivers before departure while Kenna quietly demonstrated enough sword discipline to discourage unnecessary questions.

By the second day, both women had naturally settled into routine inside the second wagon of the caravan.

Kenna usually sat near the rear opening beneath the canvas cover where she could watch the road behind them while keeping one hand resting casually near the sheathed katana at her side.

Xiulan remained beside the supplies and bundled blankets near the front half of the wagon. She tended the cooking tools, her herbs, folding medical wraps and making food.
Far too much food, at least according to Kenna. The wagon creaked steadily beneath them while rain occasionally rattled softly against the canvas overhead. Sometimes they spoke quietly, sometimes not at all. And gradually, both women began noticing things about the other that they had not fully understood before.

Kenna became quietly impressed by Xiulan, not because of combat but because of her attention. Everything Xiulan did seemed to have a purpose, every move, every step carefully prepared. It reminded her of a ceremony.

Xiulan noticed pain almost instantly. A wagon driver shifted awkwardly once while climbing down from his seat and Xiulan was already reaching for a small herbal wrap before the man himself fully acknowledged the soreness in his knee. Another laborer tried hiding a blistered hand from embarrassment after unloading supplies. Xiulan had already prepared salve.

One evening a caravan guard developed a slight fever. Xiulan recognized it before he finished insisting that he was “fine.” Again and again, Kenna watched Xiulan respond immediately whenever someone suffered even minor discomfort. She showed no hesitation, never complaining and did not expect any praise.

She just acted as natural as breathing. Kenna eventually realized something unsettling beneath the kindness. Xiulan’s awareness had likely been shaped through necessity.

Someone trained to constantly monitor moods, injuries and needs survived longer inside systems built around hierarchy and pressure. The realization lingered unpleasantly in Kenna’s thoughts afterward.

Xiulan meanwhile found herself increasingly fascinated by entirely different qualities.
Kenna noticed danger constantly, not fearfully, not anxiously but with genuine instinct. She seemed to observe risks and tactical options around every narrow road bend, exposed ridgeline and vulnerable night position. Sometimes before anyone else even realized risk existed.

And unlike many soldiers Xiulan had encountered before, Kenna did not ask anything in return. She did not ask for attention, closeness or submission. She simply acted.
By the third evening Kenna had already begun casually correcting the caravan guards during camp setup.

“Too much space between the wagons.”

“Do not silhouette yourselves beside the fire.”

“Rotate watch positions.”

“Clear brush near the horses.”

“You are leaving blind angles.”

Never arrogant or condescending but simply, well-meaning, practical.
One older guard initially bristled visibly at being corrected by a young woman carrying a Kara-Turan blade. Then Kenna quietly disarmed him during a “demonstration” in less than four seconds. After that, everyone listened carefully.

Xiulan tried very hard not to laugh during the exchange. She failed completely.
Now, during the long hours inside the wagon, she occasionally caught herself simply watching Kenna while the swordswoman studied the roads outside. The stillness fascinated her.

Kenna rarely wasted movement, she rarely fidgeted and rarely spoke unnecessarily. Even vigilance looked peaceful somehow.

Meanwhile Kenna increasingly noticed how Xiulan unconsciously organized the entire wagon around comfort and survival. Blankets was positioned for easier access, food redistributed to reduce spoilage. Always sorting bandages by severity. Making certain that medicines was protected from moisture.

And she always made food. She, somehow, found a way to make more food!

“The buns seems to multiply while I sleep,” Kenna remarked one evening.

Xiulan looked genuinely thoughtful and tilted her head with a furrowed eyebrow,

“Possible.”

Kenna stared at her. Xiulan eventually smiled faintly into her tea. The farther south they traveled, however, the quieter the roads became. Fewer caravans and the woods became darker. Even inside the wagon, Xiulan gradually began noticing the silence pressing against the world outside the canvas walls.

Then, on the fifth day, something changed.

While sitting in the wagon, Xiulan noticed how Kenna tensed suddenly. The road ahead curved between dense clusters of pine and black spruce while muddy slopes rose sharply along both sides of the caravan path. Rain dripped steadily from branches overhead, muffling sound beneath the canvas covering of the wagon.

Too quiet. Kenna’s eyes narrowed slightly. There were no birds, no insects and no movement. Even the wagon drivers had unconsciously lowered their voices.

The swordswoman slowly straightened from her seated position near the rear opening. Xiulan observed her. Kenna never moved unnecessarily.

“What is wrong?”

Kenna did not answer at first. Her eyes continued scanning the tree line. Then she murmured softly but with intention, “It is too narrow… Too quiet. There are too many places to hide.”

Xiulan’s expression shifted. Not into panic or fear. It was pure focus, her Palace training returning to her mind and she unconsciously brushed her hands over her healing herbs.

Outside, one of the horses snorted nervously. Kenna rested one hand against the hilt of her katana.

“Something is watching us.”

Both women began to don their armors. Xiulan strapped into her breastplate with a slight moan of discomfort.

Xiulan lowered her eyes briefly. Then her fingers touched the small ancestral charms hanging beside her belt. Tiny carved dragons. Worn spirit tokens.
Fragments of old prayer wood darkened with age and handling.

Kenna heard some of Xiulans words as the woman whispered in a soft Shou language the sound of rain.

Xiulan lowered her eyes and touched the worn dragon wood at her belt. “Road offices beneath open sky, keepers of wheel, hoof, foot, and returning breath, this small servant submits request. These travelers pass under hardship, not pride. Let harm lose its proper road. Let those who stand guard keep strength enough to return.”

The warmth that followed was not dramatic. It entered the wagon like permission rented.

The wagon seemed warmer afterward. Again, something had moved. Kenna felt a presence. No, presences. Subtle. Brief. Yet unmistakable. Kenna exhaled slowly, feeling stronger and more agile.

The strange calmness settling across her thoughts felt familiar now. Not strength forced into her body. Balance gently offered, as if her ancestors were watching her.

Xiulan opened her eyes again. “This one think danger coming.”

Kenna nodded once. “Yes.”

Then the first arrow tore through the canvas side of the wagon.

[Kronan]

Chapter 3 – Reflections

The absence of students made the dojo grow quieter by the time they returned from the small bath chamber. Steam no longer clung to the air. The scent of sweat and polished wood had faded beneath softer fragrances now. Candles burned spreading the scent of cedar water, herbal oils, warm tea leaves.

Xiulan sat comfortably among a collection of floor cushions near the low table, now dressed in loose dark sleeping trousers and a soft deep violet robe tied casually at the waist. Her damp black hair hung partially loose for once, falling around her shoulders while she slowly dried the remaining strands with a cloth.

Kenna sat opposite her in a lighter red indoor kimono, one leg folded beneath herself while calmly pouring fresh tea into small cups once more. Neither woman spoke immediately.

The silence felt earned now. Comfortable after exertion. The kind that followed training rather than awkwardness. Xiulan accepted the tea with both hands.

“This one think Kenna enjoy winning too much.”

Kenna looked mildly offended. “You struck me twice.”

Xiulan narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You allow maybe one.”

“I did not.” A pause. “…Perhaps the forearm.”

Xiulan pointed triumphantly. “Aha!”

Kenna shook her head faintly while hiding the beginning of another smile behind her cup. The rain outside intensified briefly before softening again.

Xiulan leaned backward slightly into the cushions with a long exhale. The earlier sparring had left a pleasant heaviness throughout her muscles. She could still feel the ache in her legs from repeated lunges and failed attempts to keep pace with Kenna once the dojo master stopped holding back entirely.

“You move strange,” Xiulan said eventually.

Kenna raised an eyebrow. “That is not usually how people compliment swordsmanship.”

“No, this one mean…” Xiulan searched carefully for the words. “…No wasted. Every move already know where go next.”

Kenna considered that quietly. “My teachers would probably be pleased to hear that.”

Xiulan nodded slowly. “This one try use reach too much.”

“You use instinct too much.”

Xiulan blinked once. Kenna lowered her cup.

“You fight like someone adapting constantly to survive pressure.”

Xiulan became still, thoughtful. Not defensive, but deep in thoughts. Because the observation was painfully accurate. Kenna continued gently.

“You are fast because hesitation was punished.”

Xiulan looked down into her tea. Rain whispered softly outside. For a few moments neither woman spoke again. Then Xiulan smiled faintly without looking up.

“Sisters hit hard.”

Kenna exhaled softly through her nose.

“Yes,” she said dryly. “I suspected as much.” That earned a quiet laugh from Xiulan. The tension dissolved naturally afterward. That was another thing Xiulan appreciated about Kenna. She noticed things, but did not attempt to pry them open.

Eventually Kenna set her cup aside and leaned slightly toward the table where several parchment maps had already been laid for observation. The expression alone caused Xiulan to straighten immediately. She could feel the change.

“The Cold Roads,” Kenna said quietly.

Xiulan nodded once. The warmth from the sparring session faded slightly beneath the reality of those words. Kenna unfolded one of the maps carefully across the table between them. The northern territories spread beneath lanternlight.

They displayed Norwick, Peltarch, the remains of Jiyyd. They marked caves and old, abandoned, forts and stretched as far as Uthmere. To the south they reached well beyond the Dead Horse Inn. Xiulan studied them silently.

“There,” Kenna said eventually, pointing toward the roads of the far south.

“Three caravans disappeared within the last tenday.”

Xiulan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Bandits or is monsters?”

“Either is what was first that was assumed.”

Kenna’s finger moved farther north. “Then patrols stopped returning.”

Xiulan’s posture shifted subtly now, more alert.

“Undead not hide bodies.”

“No.”

Kenna’s voice remained calm.

“That concerns me.”

Xiulan lowered her eyes toward the map again.

“What else know?”

Kenna rested one hand lightly against the parchment.

“Travelers speak about abandoned camps.”

“Cold fires burning.”

“Shapes moving near old battlefields.”

“And roads becoming… quiet.”

Xiulan made a facial expression of dislike.

The Cold Roads were dangerous, there was no question about that, however they did pass by the ancient Narfellian market area, where clans met each year to celebrate, and resolve differences in a, if not disciplined matter, settle issues. The Cold Roads should never become quiet. Silence along a major road usually means fear. Or death.

Kenna seemed to notice Xiulan arriving at the same conclusion. “Yes,” she said softly.
Xiulan stared toward the rain-darkened windows. Then finally she spoke, “We should leave before more disappear.”

Kenna nodded once and regarded the expression of her friend for a moment. She didn’t hear any dramatic speech, no oath, no heroic declaration. Just agreement. Kenna pondered while examining Xiulans eyes as she was looking at the maps, and thought to herself “How are you so quick to make a determination?” Kenna thought that the acceptance of duty in Xiulan was remarkable. She had her suspicions, however.

Kenna had heard mainland priests speak of offices, spirits, and proper petitions, but Xiulan’s island phrasing carried turns she did not fully know.

Xiulan immediately leaned forward toward the maps again, she was invested and her eyes darted over the map as she planned when and where to take breaks and eat food. In her mind, she had already started to plan dishes and ingredients.

“This one bring herbs, food for travel. Also bandages.” A short pause. “And maybe buns.”
Kenna gave her a long look. “…Travel buns?”

“Yes.”

“Those are absolutely going to become hard enough to kill someone.”

Xiulan looked thoughtful for a moment. “Useful.”

Kenna laughed quietly again. The sound blended warmly with the rain. For the next several hours they planned together beneath lanternlight.

Outside, rain continued falling gently across Peltarch. Inside the dojo, two women quietly prepared to travel toward something ancient and wrong waiting along the Cold Roads.

[Kronan]

Chapter 2 – Sparring

The last of the steamed buns disappeared surprisingly quickly.

Xiulan sat back upon the cushion with visible satisfaction while Kenna poured the final remains of the tea into their cups. Steam still curled gently upward from the empty bamboo baskets stacked beside the low table.

“This one think Kenna eat much.” Xiulan said grinning.

Kenna raised an eyebrow calmly. “You brought enough food for twenty people.”

Xiulan nodded proudly. “Yes!”

That answer alone caused Kenna to laugh quietly again. The sound seemed to brighten Xiulan’s expression.

Outside, evening deepened across Peltarch. The dojo windows reflected warm lanternlight against polished wood while the training hall beyond remained silent now that the students had departed for the night.

For a while they simply rested, reflecting on the flavors from the dinner.

Xiulan sat with one leg folded beneath herself, cradling her tea while watching candlelight flicker across the weapon racks lining the walls. Her body felt pleasantly heavy from travel, food and warmth. For perhaps the first time in several tendays, she did not feel the constant instinctive need to remain alert.

That realization alone was dangerous, and comforting. Kenna seemed to notice the slight lowering of Xiulan’s guard.

“You look less prepared to stab someone.”

Xiulan blinked once before snorting softly into her tea. “This one still can stab if needed.”
“I do not doubt that.” A faint smirk touched Kenna’s lips.

Then her eyes drifted toward the training weapons mounted nearby.

“Though I wonder if your sisters would approve of your current defensive discipline.”
Xiulan narrowed her eyes slightly. “Sister Wuying always think Xiulan defense bad.”

“Was she wrong?”

Xiulan immediately pointed toward the stacked empty steam baskets. “This one defend buns perfect.”

Kenna actually laughed aloud this time. Xiulan looked deeply satisfied with herself. The calm eventually settled again. Then Kenna rose smoothly to her feet.

“Come.”

Xiulan looked up.

Kenna tilted her head toward the training hall.

“You carried food across half the north. It would be disrespectful not to exercise afterward.”

Xiulan groaned softly. “Cruel dojo master.”

“Mm.”

Kenna’s expression remained entirely serious. “You may complain while changing.”

Some time later, the dojo floor echoed once more with movement. Xiulan emerged from the adjoining chamber first.

Her heavier travel garments had been replaced with fitted dark training shorts ending above the knee, flexible training boots and a sleeveless deep violet training top wrapped tightly for mobility. Without the layers of robes and armor, her athletic frame became much more apparent. Lean muscle shaped by travel, palace training and constant pressure to earn approval moved fluidly beneath lanternlight while her black hair remained tied in a bun to keep it from her eyes.

She carried a polished white oak rokushaku bō training staff across her shoulders.

Kenna stepped into the hall shortly afterward.

Unlike Xiulan’s lighter attire, Kenna wore a dark red training kimono tied securely at the waist with black bindings around her forearms. The clothing was simple, worn and practical from repeated use. In her hands rested a wooden bokken shaped in the style of her katana.

Xiulan pointed immediately. “Wood sword unfair.”

“You have reach advantage.”

“This one small.”

“You are not small.”

Xiulan considered that carefully. Then nodded once.

“True.”

Kenna stepped barefoot onto the center training mat.

“Remember. Friendly sparring.”

Xiulan spun the staff once through her fingers. “Yes yes. No smash dojo.”

“I would appreciate that.”

The two women bowed toward each other. Then movement exploded instantly. Xiulan lunged first. Fast. Much faster than most people expected from her calm demeanor.
The staff whipped forward toward Kenna’s shoulder in a sharp thrust, as if a spear.
Kenna pivoted smoothly aside. Wood cracked against wood as the bokken redirected the strike harmlessly past her body. Xiulan immediately reversed grip and swept low toward Kenna’s legs. Again, Kenna moved with precise and controlled moves. Least amount of necessary moves. Not a single wasted motion.

Xiulan pressed harder and made her staff strikes come more rapidly now, high, low, thrust, sweep, reverse. The air snapped sharply with each movement.

Kenna continued yielding ground while deflecting carefully, her bokken intercepting the staff with calm precision. Xiulan suddenly realized something irritating.

Kenna was absolutely holding back.

“This one see!”

Kenna angled aside from another strike. “See what?”

“You not trying!”

Kenna’s eyes narrowed slightly with amusement. “You wish me to?”

Xiulan attacked harder immediately. The staff slammed downward with enough force to crack bone had it been real combat. Kenna moved at last. The shift was immediate.
Suddenly the dojo master flowed forward instead of backward.

The bokken struck Xiulan’s staff aside. A second strike tapped harmlessly against Xiulan’s shoulder. A third stopped barely short of her ribs.

Xiulan blinked.

Kenna stepped back calmly. “There.”

Xiulan stared at her. “…Rude.”

Kenna’s composure finally cracked slightly. “You asked.”

Xiulan grinned suddenly. Then attacked again. This time both women laughed during the exchange. The dojo was filled with movement and noise. The sound of rapid footwork across polished wood, sharp cracks of training weapons, heavy breathing.

Laughs after playfully, occasional, teasing remarks, the soft hiss of lantern flames overhead. Xiulan lost more exchanges than she won. But not all.

Twice her staff caught Kenna unexpectedly, once against the hip, once against the forearm. Neither strike carried real force. But Kenna nodded approvingly both times.

“You adapt quickly.”

“This one survive sisters.”

“That explains much.”

Sweat eventually glistened across both women’s skin. Xiulan’s breathing grew heavier at first, Kenna noticed and deliberately slowed the pace slightly.

Not enough to insult her, just enough to keep the sparring enjoyable. Xiulan noticed that too, and appreciated it more than she admitted aloud.

Finally, after another rapid exchange, Xiulan attempted an ambitious spinning strike. Her footing slipped slightly against accumulated sweat on the wooden floor.

She landed with a loud thudding sound on the training mat, followed be the sharp sound of her cheek and side of head smacking against the floor. For a moment she did not understand how she looked up at the ceiling.

“Xiulan, are you well?” Kenna asked with worry.

Then Xiulan burst into exhausted laughter. “This one think floor attack now.”

Kenna exhaled quietly, still slightly breathless herself. “A dangerous opponent indeed.”

Xiulan let the staff roll from her grip along the floor and wiped sweat from her forehead. Kenna aided her as she rose up back on her feet. Both women stood there breathing heavily in the lantern lit dojo while evening winds whispered softly beyond the paper walls. Tired, after the sparring. Happy, after the tea and dinner.

Xiulan smiled first, a genuine one this time. Uncontrolled. Untrained. Kenna noticed immediately and she smiled back. Neither woman spoke for several seconds.

They did not need to. The friendship between them felt strong enough to not urge to fill silent moments with words.

[Kronan]

Chapter 1 – Tea Ceremony

Xiulan closed the door behind her quietly. She left her boots at the designated location and slid her feet into the provided slippers. The training hall was not silent, as the clattering of training weapons crashing against each other echoed through the air.

Xiulan spotted Kenna instructing a group of students. Defensive positions, it seemed like. She remembered how her older sister, Wuying, relentlessly tried to teach her defensive positions with the spear and shield. Her lips smiled at the memory as she proceeded to the hearth. She still had time to prepare the buns and begin steaming them.

Some hourglasses later, Kenna knelt beside the iron kettle, one hand resting lightly upon her knee while the other adjusted the small brazier beneath it. Warm amber light from hanging lanterns painted long shadows across the polished wooden floor. Beyond the paper-paneled walls, evening winds whispered through the streets of Peltarch, carrying distant tavern laughter and the faint creak of harbor ropes from the docks below.
Xiulan sat opposite her at the low table, carefully regarding the steaming baskets, stacked five high. Steam flowed out the layers of round, bamboo pots.

The scent reached the room first.

Soy, ginger, fermented herbs, garlic and steamed dough.
Kenna glanced upward, and for perhaps the third time since Xiulan arrived, the calm swordswoman’s composure softened visibly.

“You truly carried all this from Norwick?”

Xiulan looked almost confused by the question.

“This one is do, yes!” She spoke as though no other answer existed.

“Kenna say is for miss buns made good, this one bring for to eat.”

Kenna’s lips twitched faintly upward.

“That was months ago.”

Xiulan tilted her head slightly while arranging the ingredients with almost ceremonial precision. “Yes.”

Kenna watched her quietly for a moment.

There was something unusual about Xiulan when she worked with her hands. The guardedness diminished. Her movements became fluid, instinctive. Not relaxed exactly, Kenna was not entirely certain Xiulan knew how to fully relax, but closer to peace than during most conversations.

“You rode the roads instead of taking the ferry?” Kenna asked.

Xiulan nodded. “Sister say bandits make boat no safe now.”

Kenna’s expression darkened slightly. “I heard similar rumors from travelers arriving from the east.”

Xiulan finally sat fully, folding her legs beneath herself with practiced grace. Her eyes wandered briefly toward her spear and shield resting near the doorway, opposite Kenna’s katana, respectfully placed in an ornate sword rack. Xiulan remembered the name of the exquisite blade. The Jitsugetsu.

She could fairly understand the name, but it was in a different dialect from her own.
Kenna poured tea into two small cups with a careful adherence to the ceremony. Every drop, every move measured and deliberate.

Xiulan accepted the cup carefully with both hands. The warmth spread pleasantly through chilled fingers. For a time, neither woman spoke.

But unlike silence shared with strangers, this one felt inhabited rather than empty.

Comfortable.

The dojo itself reflected Kenna strangely well, Xiulan thought.

Ordered but not rigid.

Simple but not barren.

Disciplined without feeling severe.

The wooden weapon racks along the walls were meticulously maintained. Candles burned evenly. Training mats were aligned perfectly. Yet nothing felt untouched or ceremonial.

The dojo lived. It breathed. It carried the quiet signs of repetition and practice.
Kenna noticed Xiulan studying the room.

“You disapprove?”

Xiulan blinked once, surprised.

“No.” A pause. “This one feel warm also safe in place here.”

Kenna lowered her eyes toward the tea. “I try to make it so.”

Xiulan considered that answer carefully.

Not everyone tried to create peace. Many merely tried to survive long enough to rest briefly from conflict. There was a difference.

“You is for well do.” Xiulan said softly.

Kenna looked up then, studying her friend with the same quiet attentiveness she often reserved for sparring partners.

“You say that like peace is difficult to recognize.”

Xiulan opened her mouth slightly, then stopped. Because the truthful answer was complicated.

Peace inside palace walls had often been performance.

Silence had been obedience.

Stillness had been expectation.

Even comfort had usually belonged to someone else.

But here, seated in a wooden dojo far from home with steam curling gently between them, the quiet felt… real. And that realization unsettled her slightly.

So instead, Xiulan smiled faintly into her tea. “Is different here.”

Kenna accepted the answer without pressing further.

Another thing Xiulan appreciated about her.

Most people rushed toward silence in order to fill it.

Kenna seemed content to let silence breathe until answers arrived willingly.

Outside, wind rattled softly against the shutters. Kenna leaned back slightly.

“You carried enough supplies for a small festival.”

Xiulan’s expression brightened immediately.

“Yes! Always is important have tummy full of food!”

Kenna laughed quietly under her breath. The sound was rare enough that Xiulan looked almost victorious.

“This one you is help eat all, and feel good!”

“That sounds like it is going to be tasty.”

Xiulan nodded once. “Yes.” She began to prepare bowls and mix the dip. Garlic, spring onion and the rest of the vegetables was already prepared.

Kenna shook her head with faint amusement before taking another sip of the tea.
Then her eyes drifted briefly toward Xiulan’s shield near the doorway. “I heard something else besides the bandits.”

Xiulan’s posture shifted almost imperceptibly. “Undead?”

Kenna nodded once. “Along the Cold Roads.”

Xiulan was silent for several seconds. “Cold Roads...”

The warmth inside the dojo suddenly felt smaller.

Kenna’s fingers rested lightly against her cup. “Something is moving there.”

Xiulan’s eyes lowered slightly in thought. “Then… If help need for people… Maybe we move first?”

Kenna studied her carefully. She saw no fear in Xiulan. No bravado, no dramatic declaration, just calm acceptance. As though the possibility of danger naturally followed responsibility. Kenna smiled faintly again.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I was hoping you would say that.”

The kettle hissed softly between them while evening shadows lengthened across the dojo floor. And neither woman noticed how naturally the decision had already been made, they merely enjoyed the tea and the steamed buns.

[Kronan]

Foreword

Xiulan was very happy when she arrived to Peltarch to visit one of her few friends in this strange land. She had prepared carefully. In the saddle bags carried on her horse she had the dough for steamed buns, the minced meat with herbs and the soy and oils needed for the full experience. She smiled to herself in anticipation of the dinner she would serve. She would do what she was trained for, her purpose, to serve, to create happiness. Make people enjoy themselves and smile. Her sisters had been more successful in this, she could admit, herself being deemed lesser desirable, but she had learned other traits instead, even if she had her fair share of drunken soldiers. They need it, because they protect us. Then her sister told her that they had to move. And here she is, in a strange and cold land. At least she had made one dear friend. As she was riding, she was smiling, she knew what waited in the end.

The ride from her abode in the town of Norwick had been strenuous. Several days on horseback. She could have taken the ferry, of course, however, increased bandit ambushes on the logistic line between Norwick and Peltarch had convinced her to brave the roads instead.

When the large city came into view, as she crested a hill, she knew that she would soon be able to rest fully. She had seen some interesting herb along the road, but her many pouches, hanging from her belt, was fully stocked. And most importantly, filling for the buns. It was a minced beef, mixed with herbs and mushrooms, slightly fermented in soy. Xiulan thought that it would produce an amazing umami when steamed in the bamboo steaming baskets.

As she passed the gates and the Peltarch guards, she quickly proceeded to the Commerce District. She left her horse at the stables and head directly, with her bag containing the dough and filling, to Kenna’s dojo.

She opened the door with a warm but controlled smile.

[Kronan]

Disclaimer

This story adheres to the rules of D&D in general and the Narfell server specifically. The novel does take some creative freedoms in the application of those rules. Furthermore, inconsistencies of armor, weapons, shields etc. occur. There is only so much AI can do and sometimes “good enough, let’s move on” is sufficient. The images are meant to convey a feeling, not fully accurate depictions. While AI has been used to for advice, structure and formatting, the text and the plot is invented and written by a human. Hope that you enjoy the adventure.