Altan was already walking the path where once dissenters had bled.
The execution courtyard of the old empire had been swept clean, but stains still soaked beneath the stone. Now it served another purpose. Under moonlight, laborers hammered iron bolts into a towering slab of obsidian, quarried from beyond the frost line and dragged here by oxen that died on the way.
There would be no statue. No gold. No throne.
Just a monument of names. Chiseled one by one. No titles. No hierarchies. Villagers, soldiers, broken lords—all cut into the stone with bare hands and dull tools. City after city. Tribe after tribe. The artisans cried while they worked, not out of honor, but exhaustion.
Altan stood and watched, face unreadable, cloak stiff with dried blood from a campaign already forgotten by those not in it.
He wrote the final words himself, using qi-infused ink pulled from the roots of a cursed pine grown in war-fed soil:
"Here lies the memory of those who died so others could choose.
Here begins the Covenant that binds no man by blood, no city by fear, and no crown by force.
This is not an empire. This is the Kingdom of Free Cities.
And its first law is remembrance."
People came in silence. They touched the stone. Some wept. Others didn't. A few laid weapons at its base. Most just stared, as if waiting to see their own names carved next.
Lord Qiu stood beside him.
"They'll ask why your name isn't on it."
Altan didn't look away. "Because I'm not done yet."
The banners were gone. Burned. Folded. Lost. What mattered was movement—forward, east, home.
The Gale Army didn't march. It trudged. Broken boots. Filthy cloaks. Scarred armor. They weren't soldiers now. Just survivors walking through what remained.
No horns sounded. No songs were sung.
Through the ravaged provinces, they passed burned fields and grave pits. Entire towns were gone, pulled down brick by brick for siege material. And yet, people emerged—thin, soot-faced, eyes sunken—offering what little they had. Dried roots. Cracked bowls. Prayer stones.
Altan never rode ahead. He walked. Sat among them. Listened.
There were no speeches. Just ruined voices telling ruined stories.
He heard about daughters who drowned during the evacuations. Grandfathers flayed by cultists. He didn't respond. He didn't need to. Sometimes the listening was enough. Sometimes it wasn't.
And when they thanked him, it wasn't with joy.
It was with disbelief.
As if freedom itself had come too late.
Of the five Stormguard legions that marched west, only half survived.
The rest lay buried across the empire's carcass—crushed in trench battles, shattered by siege runes, or burned in retreat. No memorials marked them. Their names were remembered only by those who still bled.
Those who did return came back altered. Faces hidden, vows hardened. They didn't speak of mercy or conquest. Only duty. They would follow Altan not because of command, but because there was no other soul left worth following.
They marched east with him in silence. And when they reached the Wujin Grasslands, they would not scatter.
They weren't the only ones returning.
Three days into the march east, the army crossed a broken aqueduct near the ruins of Qishan. There, waiting beside a shattered supply wagon, stood six soot-marked figures and a half-salvaged forge sled.
Altan slowed as they approached.
Daalo stood at their front, bare-headed, his iron-scored cheek streaked with ash and sweat. Behind him stood five others—war engineers, all fire-bitten and bone-thin, still smelling of black powder and furnace smoke.
Altan frowned. "You weren't ordered to regroup."
Daalo shrugged. "Didn't need orders. We followed the smoke."
"You want to join the Stormguard?"
"I want to see what's next. I want to see what your mad mind builds after peace."
"You'll need to take the vow. Serve in black."
Daalo scratched his beard. "I'll swear, fine. But I'm not wearing those damn gloomy helms, and I don't do silence. I need my tongue to argue with fools."
A few Stormguards chuckled.
Chaghan turned. The laughter died.
Altan's voice remained steady. "You'll speak when needed. But you'll serve."
"I'll serve," Daalo said, then gestured to the battered sled. "We've got materials. Tools. Some cursed iron we lifted before the palace fell. Give us space, and we'll give you nightmares on wheels."
Altan nodded. "Fall in."
Daalo smirked. "We already did."
The steppe veterans, by contrast, would not stay.
Five hundred of them had survived the long war. And once they crossed the last river, they did not march on. They returned to their clans. To tents battered by time, to herds and family names that had nearly disappeared while they were gone.
They had no oaths left to give. Only stories.
Some would speak Altan's name. Others would not. But they would all carry it.
As the army limped east, more soldiers broke away. Some stayed behind, offered land, wives, or the promise of forgetting. Altan never stopped them.
He didn't believe in command by guilt.
They reached the Wujin Grasslands as a blade dulled by use.
No one said anything as the column broke formation.
That night, they made camp beneath the Hallowed Pillar. The ancient monolith watched them like a stone god, obsidian face slick with frost. The oldest symbol of the Gale tribes. Still standing. Still black.
Altan sat before it, sword across his lap.
Burgedai dropped into a squat beside the fire and passed him a cracked canteen.
"Still no taste for wine?" he asked.
Altan took a breath. "Tastes like regret."
Khulan arrived next, her spear planted in the dirt, eyes on the sky.
"Sky's too clear," she muttered. "I hate that."
"No cover," Chaghan added, speaking from just behind Altan, always a step behind. "We sleep in shifts."
Stormwake—Batu—remained at the ridge, watching the perimeter with his bonded hawk circling overhead. He didn't speak. He never did unless it mattered.
Altan didn't give orders. He didn't need to. They all knew.
"The world beyond the steppe will forget our names," he said. "But this place remembers."
No one toasted. No one replied. They just stayed close to the fire. Quiet.
Later, alone, Altan entered his tent and pulled out what remained of the Emperor's seal—just a shard now. He placed it beside a patch of dry grass and closed his eyes.
Breath. Stillness. Pattern.
Qi began to move. Not like flame or stone. Like wind across old scars.
Heaven's Vein did not shout. It endured.
He followed the path his ancestors taught: breath into spine, spine into pulse, pulse into ground. The internal art was silent. It didn't explode. It uncoiled.
He saw what mattered—his mother burning in the yurt. The first oath he swore. The banner he raised. The throne he refused.
He exhaled, and the lights came—floating from the grass like embers that couldn't decide whether to live or die.
Morning brought no ceremony.
Only a second monument.
A slab of blackstone, carved by frostbitten hands, marked with every city and every name that mattered. It said nothing about victory.
Only the price.
The Covenant was written below it in tight, crude script:
No kings.
No crowns.
No one above the cities again.
Memory will outlast the rebellion.
Peace will not be enforced. It will be chosen.
Altan touched the stone.
Qi passed through his hand, into the stone, into the land.
It was done.
The wind shifted.
To the east, thunder rolled.
Somewhere in the mountains—beneath the burned temples and shattered vaults of the old empire—something moved.
It had been sealed long ago. By blood rituals. By fear.
Now it stirred.
Sensing the throne was gone.
Altan opened his eyes.
The war was over.
The storm hadn't passed.
It had only just begun.