The world had not yet decided whether it was dead or merely dying.
Lin Yao stood at the edge of the valley where the first convoy had been slaughtered. The air was a stew of mud, rot, and smoke — thick enough to taste. The snow had melted into a black sludge that sucked at his boots with every step. He could still see the outlines of wagons half-buried in it, wheels jutting like ribs from a carcass. The crows had already done their work. What was left of the bodies looked more like meat than men.
Behind him, what remained of his force waited — twenty soldiers, maybe fifty slaves, all hollowed by hunger and the long march. The soldiers no longer spoke in ranks; the slaves no longer flinched when ordered. Their eyes were dull, their movements slow. They had crossed the river, followed the smoke, and arrived here to find nothing worth saving except the act of trying.
"Spread out," Yao said. His voice carried no weight, but they obeyed anyway. "Search the wrecks. Anything we can use — take it."
The wind dragged his words thin across the field.
The first wagon they uncovered still had a wheel intact, frozen in place by coagulated mud. A soldier pried open its bed, and the stench that poured out sent the men stumbling back — a stew of blood, rot, and grain gone rancid. A swarm of flies rose, black against the gray air.
"Rotten," one muttered. "Everything's rotten."
"Not everything," Yao said. He reached into the muck, pulled free a half-crushed crate of arrows. The fletching was damp but usable. "Gather what still holds shape. Wood. Rope. Nails. Anything that burns."
They began scavenging in silence. Some of the slaves muttered prayers under their breath — to whom, Yao didn't know. Others tore strips from uniforms to use as bandages. The air was thick with the sounds of dragging, breaking, and the occasional soft moan of something not yet fully dead.
By noon, they had six wagons that could still move, if dragged by hand. The horses were gone. The men tied ropes to the axles, leaning forward as one, muscles trembling. Each yard gained was paid in sweat and breath.
The sun hung pale and useless above them, like a dying ember.
When the first arrow hissed out of the fog, no one reacted at first. It struck a slave in the neck, and he collapsed silently, clutching at nothing. The next arrow came seconds later, then another.
"Down!" Yao barked.
The group scattered. The mud exploded in small plumes around them. The fog hid everything beyond ten paces. Shapes moved there — quick, low, ghostlike.
"Skirmishers," Yao said. His tone was flat, analytical. "Five, maybe six. Testing the edge."
A soldier looked at him, eyes wild. "Orders, commander?"
Yao scanned the wreckage. The broken wagons, the slopes of the ditch, the rotting beams — all useless in formation, but not in death.
"We use the field," he said. "Collapse the wagons. Build cover. Pull the bodies. Stack them if you must."
They obeyed without question. The soldiers kicked over the nearest cart, letting it crash into the mud. Two men dragged corpses by the arms, laying them in heaps against the wheels. The air filled with the wet slap of flesh and the rattle of wood.
"Arrows low!" Yao shouted. "Wait until you see movement."
He moved through the chaos like a man assembling a machine from scrap. Every thought was stripped of emotion. He remembered flashes of other places — old memories that didn't belong to this age. The principle was the same: break the line of sight, force the enemy to come close, then strike where they think you're weakest.
He found a shattered wagon wheel, wedged it into the mud, and stretched rope between its spokes. Crude, but enough to trip a charging man. He layered it with splintered spears, their tips glinting faintly through the filth.
"Pull the ropes tight," he ordered a pair of slaves. "When you hear the first rush, let them go."
The men nodded, eyes wide with exhaustion and fear.
The fog thickened, pressing in. The world felt smaller, condensed to breath and heartbeat. The skirmishers' shadows flickered just beyond sight. Then, all at once, they came — shapes bursting from the mist, screaming.
"Hold!" Yao shouted.
The ropes snapped free. The first two attackers tripped, impaled themselves on broken spears. The others stumbled into the collapsed wagons, meeting a wall of arrows. The sound was wet and fast — wood cracking, metal biting flesh.
The survivors fell back into the fog. Silence returned, save for the groans of the dying and the creak of ropes.
Yao exhaled, slow. "Move the wagons," he said. "We don't stay still. They'll circle."
The men obeyed, wordless. They pushed, dragged, lifted. Mud clung to their legs like chains. One slave collapsed mid-step, face-first into the muck. No one moved to help him.
By dusk, the fog turned red with the last light. They reached a ridge overlooking what had once been a road — now a scar of churned earth littered with bones.
"We rest here," Yao said.
Rest meant collapsing where they stood. Some lay against the wagons, others simply dropped to the ground. The air reeked of iron and sweat. A few of the slaves murmured for water. There was none left.
Yao sat apart, sharpening a blade with a rock. The edge was chipped, like everything else that had survived. He watched the horizon — a line of smoke rising where the enemy had camped. He could almost feel them watching back.
A soldier approached, limping. "Commander. We can't move the wagons much longer. The men— they're finished."
Yao nodded once. "Then we move without them."
The soldier stared. "Without—?"
"We take only what we can carry. Food, medicine, weapons. The rest burns."
The man hesitated, jaw tightening, then bowed and left.
Yao rose and walked among the survivors. Faces turned toward him — hollow, expectant. He gave them tasks without raising his voice: stack what's left of the grain, check the wheels, prepare the oil. His tone carried no judgment, no hope. Just necessity.
When they began burning the unusable wagons, the fire caught weakly at first, then roared. The smoke drifted low, mixing with the mist until the world smelled like scorched wood and human breath.
From the darkness came the faint sound of movement — the enemy again.
"Positions," Yao said quietly.
They arranged themselves in a loose semicircle around the flames. The light was both shield and signal — drawing the enemy closer. Yao knelt by the fire, stirring the ashes with the tip of his sword.
He waited until he heard the whisper of boots on wet soil. Then he said, without looking up, "Now."
A line of torches burst to life along the ridge — oil-soaked rags tied to broken pikes. The sudden light blinded the attackers for a heartbeat. The slaves hurled rocks, wood, anything with weight. Arrows hissed in reply.
The clash was brief and brutal. Blades met in mud, slipping, dragging. The air was a chorus of grunts, gasps, the slick percussion of flesh splitting. Yao fought with no rhythm, no elegance — only precision. A cut to the tendon, a thrust under the ribs, a knee to the throat. He moved like a man conducting work, not battle.
When it ended, the fog was darker. The ground steamed from spilled blood.
"Count," Yao said.
A soldier coughed. "Seventeen left standing."
He nodded. "Collect the arrows. Bury the rest."
The men hesitated — too tired to dig, too broken to refuse. They used helmets as shovels, hands as spades. The earth gave reluctantly.
By the time they finished, night had fallen. Only two wagons remained intact.
Yao walked to the edge of the ridge and looked down at what they had crossed. The valley below glowed faintly from the scattered fires. In that dim light, the field looked alive — shifting, breathing — as if the dead themselves were stirring beneath the mud.
Behind him, a slave whispered, "Commander… will we make it?"
Yao didn't turn. "Make it where?"
The man didn't answer. The question dissolved into the wind.
Hours passed. The men slept in clusters, huddled for warmth. Yao remained awake. He studied the remnants of their salvaged supplies — sacks torn, grain damp, bandages stained. It wasn't enough to feed ten men for a week.
He stared at his hands — cracked, blackened with soot — and tried to remember what they'd once felt like clean. He couldn't.
The silence stretched until it became a sound of its own — heavy, suffocating.
In that stillness, Yao felt the war breathing again. Not as an army or an enemy, but as something deeper — a hunger that consumed men and left only function behind.
At dawn, the survivors stirred. The sky was white, the color of fatigue.
"Form lines," Yao said softly. "We move before the fog burns off."
They hitched ropes to the last wagons, dragging them forward through mud that sucked at every step. The wheels shrieked like wounded things. The land offered no path — only resistance.
By midday, one wagon's axle snapped. They left it behind.
By afternoon, three men collapsed and didn't rise.
By dusk, they reached the edge of a burned forest. The trees stood like black spears, their bark charred to ash. Yao ordered camp there. The firewood smoked, reluctant to burn.
No one spoke. They sat in the glow, heads bowed, waiting for orders that never came.
Yao stood apart, looking at the two wagons — the last fragments of purpose. Inside lay salvaged grain, a few jars of medicine, a crate of arrows. Enough to pretend they still served a cause.
The men were ghosts now. Their faces had shrunk inward, eyes lost behind exhaustion. Even the slaves no longer prayed. They simply existed, waiting for the next demand from the man who refused to die.
Yao knelt beside the fire. Sparks rose, flickering against his armor. The flames reflected in his eyes like memories of something distant and cruel.
He thought of the march, of the snow, of Xu Heng and the laughter that had once escaped him among the ashes. Now even laughter felt like a story told about someone else.
A soldier approached, voice trembling. "Commander. Should we rest the slaves? They're falling where they stand."
Yao looked at him — really looked. The man's face was gray with fatigue, his hands shaking. Beyond him, two slaves had collapsed by the wagons, breath shallow.
"No," Yao said finally. "If they sleep, they won't wake."
The man nodded, too broken to argue, and walked away.
Yao turned his gaze to the dark horizon. Somewhere beyond it lay the next outpost, the next ruin, the next circle of death that called itself duty.
He thought, We're already dead. Only the body refuses to know it.
The fire cracked, a single loud snap like a bone breaking. The sound startled him — not because it was loud, but because it reminded him that silence had become the truest enemy.
He rose and walked to the nearest wagon. The slaves guarding it looked up, too tired even to salute.
"You did well," he said.
They nodded weakly. One smiled — or tried to. His lips split, bleeding.
When Yao turned back to the fire, the night seemed larger. The stars above were faint, swallowed by the smoke that still drifted from the valley behind them.
He realized then that there would be no victory, no home, no end. Only the motion forward — one step, one breath, one heartbeat beyond collapse.
When the last slave died before dawn, no one moved his body. They simply hitched the ropes tighter and kept walking.
By the time the sun rose, Lin Yao was alone at the head of two broken wagons and a handful of men who no longer looked human.
The road stretched ahead — endless, colorless, silent.
He looked back once at the trail they had carved through the mud — a line of footprints and drag marks that would soon fill with water and disappear.
Survival, he thought, was just another word for delay.
The wind shifted, carrying the faint stench of burned flesh. He didn't flinch.
As night fell again, he stopped on the ridge, watching smoke rise from the horizon where the valley had once been.
It looked almost beautiful in the fading light — like the last breath of something too stubborn to die.
He whispered, almost to himself, "This is what remains."
And beneath the dead sky, with the last wagons creaking behind him, Lin Yao kept walking through the mud and the silence — a man dragging the remnants of a world that refused to rest.