"Stillness is not absence of motion. It is mastery over it."— Codex of the Stoneheart Path
Stormguards led the charge—Chaghan first, his leaf-shaped blade red to the hilt, shield arm bruised and trembling. No voice guided them, only motion, discipline, and the sound of boots pounding over blood-slicked stone.
The palace grounds were lined with corpses. The Emperor's finest, twenty handpicked elite from the capital garrison, stood between the gate and the final stairs to the throne hall. Robes crimson, faces painted in war-lacquer. They did not flinch.
Ten Stormguards met them head-on.
Steel struck steel, shields collided with ribcages, and breathless violence erupted in the garden of stone. A spear took one Stormguard through the side, puncturing armor and flesh alike. Another dropped two elites with a single sweep of his saber before collapsing from a glaive driven under the arm.
The ground became mud—blood and soil churned into a dark paste. Blades broke, bones shattered. There were no cries, only impact and exhalation, the grim rhythm of close-quarters killing.
Chaghan ducked a sweep, drove his shield upward into a jaw, then pivoted. The Thousand Weight Pressure flowed through his frame as he absorbed a sword strike and reversed it with a brutal, echoing slam. The elite's chest caved inward. He did not rise.
Another Stormguard was surrounded—three against one. The Iron Hand leader raised his shield to parry a halberd, took a dagger in the thigh, and rammed his knee into the attacker's jaw. Blood sprayed across lacquered armor. He finished one with a backhand saber thrust, even as the last drove a spear into his chest.
By the time the last defender fell, only five Stormguards remained standing. Chaghan's breath came ragged. His shield was cracked, sword edge chipped.
Then the master general came.
Tall, silver-haired, clad in reinforced red lamellar. Two war mages flanked him—robes rippling with elemental qi. One held fire, the other wind. They had waited.
Altan entered the gate like a warlord.
Not a king. Not a hero. A figure carved from war and silence. He stepped forward—long hair loose and matted, eyes steady. He wore the same unadorned armor as the Stormguards—darksteel chestplate and pauldrons, plain and without insignia. No helmet hid his face. Shin guards wrapped his lower legs, but his feet were bare, splashed with drying blood not from injury, but from the gore of the fallen—warriors and defenders whose lives had ended beneath him. His skin was cracked by cold stone and the march through death, but not broken by blade. He bore no weapon, no shield. His body was enough.
He looked like he had walked through the mouth of death and kept going.
An invisible weight followed him—an aura not of magic, but presence. Like stone dust shaken loose from a buried tomb. The air thinned. The enemy mages faltered without knowing why.
The wind mage struck first—both arms raised, hurling a gale meant to break the warlord's footing.
Altan didn't move. The wind parted around him like mist breaking on a mountain.
"Now," he said—silent but clear. A sonic whisper, directed behind. Chaghan heard it deep within the ear.
"When you master the Stoneheart Resonance, I will teach you the next path. Waterheart."
The fire mage roared and released a chain of burning lashes.
Altan stepped into it.
He moved like riverstone—fluid yet solid, yielding at angles that let fire slip off his skin without catching. His sigils lit in sequence: spine, ribs, ankles.
Dust Veil. Mist-Step. River Breaks Stone.
He crossed the field in heartbeats and drove his palm into the fire mage's throat. The body hit the wall with a sound like wet pulp.
The wind mage tried to retreat—too late. Altan's leg swept his feet, and his elbow shattered the skull before the mage hit the ground.
Only the general remained.
Chaghan watched. Every step Altan took carried the essence of something deeper—fighting forms refined not for flash but for precision. Stoneheart was discipline. Waterheart was clarity. Together, they crushed what stood before him.
The general snarled and charged, blade humming with spirit force.
They clashed.
Steel met hand.
The general struck low—Altan shifted. His shoulder caught the blade's flat, redirected it, then used the general's own momentum to drive him off balance. A pulse of energy from Altan's ribs exploded outward. The general reeled.
Altan stepped forward, and with one precise movement, struck at the solar plexus. The general collapsed, eyes wide, sword falling.
The courtyard went still.
A final group of royal retainers rushed in. Too late. The remaining Stormguards, bloodied and unflinching, moved with shield and saber through the panic. One elite tried to flee—
Chaghan's stance shifted. Gravelwalk Technique.
His foot twisted through fractured ground. The fleeing man stumbled as his step caught uneven stone—Stumblefield Mirage.
Chaghan appeared beside him, blade rising. The edge of his broken sword punched through the man's throat. His hands did not shake.
Altan stood above the corpses of Zhong's finest.
Chaghan dropped to one knee—not in submission, but in clarity. He had seen a path. One not born of fury or elemental supremacy—but of control.
Stone. Water.
The storm had breached the gate. The throne room waited.
And judgment would follow.