In the hour when night clung stubbornly to the world, Chu Hongying awoke.
It was not a natural waking. A sharp, grating sensation—like a file scraping bone—erupted from the Scarlet Bloodlock on her arm. Her eyes snapped open. The tent was dark, save for the faint, dead-fish-belly gleam of snow-light through a tear in the canvas. Her breath fogged in the frigid air; her chest felt heavy as stone.
She sat up, fingers finding the cool shaft of her Storm-Piercing Spear. The lingering crisis receded slightly but remained, a festering presence pointing unmistakably south—not the thunder of an army, but something more precise, more coldly malicious, cutting silent gashes across the snowy plains.
One day after the flag-raising. Within and without the fortress, a tense silence had settled. Cheers and tears were gone, scattered by the wind, leaving behind concrete things: the panic of dwindling supplies, the smell of festering wounds, the silent dread of retaliation.
Chu Hongying threw on her cloak. Pre-dawn darkness was deepest. Watchfire remnants glowed and died in the square. Sentries huddled against walls. Above, the Crimson Heart flag whipped and cracked—the only war drum in the world now.
She began her rounds.
In the infirmary, Lu Wanning stood with her back to the door. Dozens of Li-silver needles hovered before her, connected by threads of faint silver light into a shimmering web over the gravely wounded. The light in her heterochromatic eyes flickered with over-concentration. Sweat dotted her temples; her fingertips trembled.
The moment Chu Hongying stepped inside, the Bloodlock on her arm throbbed with a resonance not her own. She felt it—the searing pain of wounds, the chaotic terror of fever, even… the subtle tremor in Lu Wanning's own will as she fought for calm.
"Wanning?"
Lu Wanning flinched. The web flickered. She did not turn. "Don't come closer. Your 'Blood'… disrupts my 'Logic'. I cannot afford distraction."
Chu Hongying saw the deep, self-inflicted crescent marks on Lu Wanning's other hand.
"You're bearing their pain?"
"Not just pain," the voice was strained, bitter. "Fear. Despair. Chaos… They flow back along the network. I must filter, but…" She shook her head.
Chu Hongying understood. The closed loop of the Four Poles shared more than power.
Gu Changfeng found Shen Yuzhu on the eastern wall.
The Mirror-Seal bearer sat on frozen stone, head buried in knees, hands clutching his hair, knuckles white. He radiated a brittle, snapping tension. The mirror-runes in his eyes glowed with a sickly, cerulean luminescence beneath his skin.
"Yuzhu!" Gu Changfeng placed a hand on his shoulder.
Contact.
"Don't touch me!" Shen Yuzhu's head jerked up, a ragged cry. His eyes were bloodshot, dilated, churning with raw fear and chaos. The 'wind' around Gu Changfeng churned violently. A torrent of shattered images and emotional fragments blasted into his mind:
—Chu Hongying's spear shattering, body pierced…
—Lu Wanning consumed by backlash…
—Soldiers dissolving under a pale sky…
—Himself, crushed, bones groaning…
Death-fragments, flashing, overlaid. Icy despair. Boundless regret.
"Ugh!" Gu Changfeng snatched his hand back, stumbling, cold sweat on his brow.
Shen Yuzhu drew ragged breaths, gaze focusing. "You saw?"
"What… was that?"
"Possible futures. Or rather… everyone's deepest fear of 'failure', of 'death'." Shen Yuzhu wiped his face, motion stiff. "The Mirror-Seal… went rogue. It forcibly calculates 'possibilities'… especially the negative ones. I can't shut it off."
A bitter smile. "I'm soaking in an icy bath of everyone's pooled fears. Every moment, a new 'way to die' is stuffed into my head."
Gu Changfeng looked at him in silence, then extended his hand again, not touching, just holding it steady. "Get up. The ground's cold." He pointed to his own ear, expression annoyed. "I'm not having a peaceful time either."
Shen Yuzhu looked up.
"Voices in the wind. Thoughts. Emotional scraps. 'How long will the food last?' 'Will the Empire come tomorrow?'… A damned messy noise. Every breath feels like inhaling chilled anxiety. My 'wind' is a broken funnel now."
As if summoned, Chu Hongying appeared. Her pace was steady, face paler, a faint frown between her brows. The Bloodlock on her bare arm shimmered faintly beneath her skin like living magma.
"All here, then," she said, gaze sweeping over them. Calm, carrying weight. "Seems none of us slept well."
The first sliver of dawn light pierced the clouds, offering no warmth, only illuminating the ruin and their exhaustion.
As the sun climbed, divisions erupted in the square.
"Wait? Wait to be starved out?" A one-eyed veteran, face scarred, was vehement. "General! Strike now, hit the southern supply convoys!"
"Strike? With what?" A herdsman in tattered sheepskin, eyes wide with fear. "Half of us are the old, weak, women, children! We need to repair the walls, store food, survive!"
A cold voice from Hánshān Sect disciples: "The 'Heartfire' power is chaotic. Gathering mass will here risks destabilizing the northlands' energy balance. What we might invite… could be more than Imperial blades."
Soldiers wanted to fight. Refugees wanted safety. Sect feared the unknown. Dozens of eyes fixed on Chu Hongying.
She held her spear and listened. A fine, burning resonance came from the Bloodlock. She sensed the clash below: hatred, fear, vigilance… Invisible waves beating against her nerves.
As argument grew hotter, Gu Changfeng shouldered through. He threw a charred beam down before the platform with a thud.
"What's all the shouting?" His voice cut through. "Can principles fill your belly? Mend a wall? When you're hungry and the walls are falling, all talk is empty! Do the work in front of us, one solid task at a time!"
Crude, but icy water on heated faces.
Chu Hongying stepped forward, spear butt striking ground.
"Gu Changfeng is right. Before we debate the path, secure our footing."
Her gaze swept over them, deliberate, clear:
"From today, three groups."
"One, Gu Changfeng. Construction. Fortify walls. Defensible in three days."
"Two, hunters, herdsmen. Hunt, forage, scavenge. No raiding villages."
"Three, Lu Wanning. Tend wounded, prepare herbs."
Pause. Resolute:
"Laborers, eat together. Wounded, cared for together. Afraid, find solace together. First Covenant of the Crimson Heart Army."
"Unwilling? Leave now. Take three days' rations. No one stops you."
Silence. Wind swirled snow-dust. People looked at one another. Fervor, fear, doubt—settling before this severe, pragmatic pact.
The veteran spat, turned to rubble. Herdsmen dispersed for tools. Hánshān leader nodded, led his people away.
A rough, friction-filled order began to grow.
Night fell, deeper, colder.
Atop the ruined tower, under its half-collapsed dome, the four gathered. A small, smoky fire of scrap wood burned.
Shen Yuzhu, wrapped in felt, leaned against stone, pale, weary. Lu Wanning lanced blisters on her fingertips. Gu Changfeng sharpened his blade, scrape-scrape steady.
Chu Hongying stood at the broken edge, looking into dark and falling snow. The Bloodlock's faint heat persisted. The instinct of being watched had grown sharper.
"South. Fifty li. Something moves. Cold Order. Scent of blood."
Shen Yuzhu closed his eyes, mirror-runes flowing. "Arbiters. Scattered routes. Target… not directly us."
"They're killing," Gu Changfeng stopped sharpening, listening. "Wind carries echoes of screams. New fear drifts from the south."
Lu Wanning's fingers twitched. "The Empire… defines the 'price' of following us."
Silence. Fire crackle.
"We can't just sit." Gu Changfeng, tone grim. "Charging out plays into their hands."
"The closed loop is a shackle. Perhaps a way out." Shen Yuzhu, weak, analytical. "What if we actively coordinate the resonance? Guide it?"
"Heart-Rhythm Synchronization." Lu Wanning's eyes brightened.
Shen Yuzhu explained: Logic as bridge, Mirror to calibrate, Blood as anchor, Wind as shield. Daily, fixed time, deep resonance. Harmonize. Stable "Four Poles Frequency."
"Dawn," Chu Hongying turned, firelight etching her profile. "When heaven and earth shift. Vital pulse most active."
Decision made.
Before dispersal—
Woooooo——!
A low, mournful, earth-penetrating horn-call from the far north, borne on the wind, rolling across the sky. Older, wilder. Ice plains and blood.
All four stiffened, rushed to the edge, looking north.
Edge of the world, dark sky. Three jet-black columns of wolf-smoke shot straight up! Thick, solid, pure night and battle-will compressed and ignited. Palpable violent presence. Beneath, a vast, blurred figure striding south. Each step, a faint, thunder-like tremor from the horizon.
The blizzard around that figure… seemed to part, making way.
"Helian Sha…"
"His challenge has arrived." Chu Hongying's grip tightened on her spear. The Bloodlock burned—boiling impulse to meet it.
Simultaneously, south, a lookout's cry, shrill with terror:
"Smoke! Black smoke south! An inverted flag!"
They whirled.
South. Several thin, dirty plumes of black smoke. A village that sent refugees yesterday. A stained, tattered Imperial black flag hung upside-down from a tall pole, limp. Beneath, shadowy forms swayed.
Icy, gripping dread seized every heart.
Not battle-smoke.
Execution marker. The Empire's coldest proclamation.
North, wolf-smoke testing their banner.
South, bloodied blades enacting collective punishment.
Chu Hongying stood unmoving in the gathering storm. She looked north at rising battle-will, south at spreading blood-price, finally down at faces turning upward—alarm, terror, lost, helpless confusion.
She drew in icy air. It stabbed her lungs, cleared her mind with brutal sharpness.
The enemy host is not yet here, but the Heartfire already burns us. Whether the Crimson Heart can last three days… that is the true first battle.
She turned. To the three behind, to all looking up, her voice clear over wind and snow:
"At dawn, mend walls, hunt food, treat wounds."
"Then, learn how to breathe together."
Night swallowed the world. Only at the roof of the northlands: three pillars of wolf-smoke like spears driven into the sky's vault. South, dirty smears like weeping blood. Upon this ruin, a single spark of heartfire, under immense pressure, learned to contain its glow, bank its heat.
The true tempering had just begun.
[VOLUME TWO: MIRRORGATE WARS — PROLOGUE END]