In the upper palace courtyard, Yan stood atop the watchtower, the warning bells tolling like iron heartbeats across the city. Her crimson cloak snapped in the wind, a banner of defiance against the storm rising below. From her vantage, the oncoming horde stretched toward the horizon, dark and shifting. Still as stone, she watched them come, her eyes narrow, her stance unflinching and Ryu stood beside her.
She didn't look away, her gaze looked focused upon the oncoming swarm. "He's marked."
Ryu narrowed his eyes. "The broken crest, do you know what that is about?"
She nodded. "He was one of ours. Or tried to be."
Kalavan appeared moments later, armour half-donned, blades already in hand. "How do you want to play this?" Then a voice echoed from close by.
Oliver's voice thundered. "We hold the outer wall. But this isn't a battle to win by numbers. It's surgical. We need to cut the head, I need some of you to hold the gates, reinforce barricades, keep the enemy from scaling the walls, and I will head for the leader."
He looked to Ryu and Yan.
"Kalavan I need you to help guide my men and help if they get overwhelmed. Yan, Ryu, you're with me."
As the city below rallied, civilians moved to the inner sanctum, warders lit protective arrays and signal flares were launched into the sky. General Oliver Phoenix donned the armour of his younger years. A lighter crimson armour for mobility etched with the crest of his bloodline, its flame-shaped pauldrons glowing faintly with stored vitality from years of battle.
He turned to his granddaughter.
"Let them see what it means to challenge the Phoenix."
The sun had already passed its peak and begun casting long shadows across Phoenix City. The light, once golden, had turned pale, muted by the haze of stirred earth and ash on the horizon.
From the palace battlements, the scale of the horde became clear. It wasn't a force, it was a plague with legs, a living wave of corrupted Qi.
Creatures that once bore the shapes of beasts, wolves, stags, boars, now twisted with over-saturated Qi. Their bodies glinted with unnatural light, bone protruding in jagged edges, Qi visibly leaking from their wounds. Their breath steamed not with heat but with pressure.
And above them all, the figure in green-black robes waited, silent. The broken phoenix crest at his chest glinted as if mocking the city ahead.
Within the city, preparation surged like a second heartbeat.
On the upper wall, archers lined up in rows, bows creaking as they bent to draw. Qi crystals were slotted into groove-carved sockets, and the fletched shafts began to hum, responding to the tension in the air. Officers barked orders, correcting stances, reminding younger recruits to breathe.
Down below, in the main courtyard and outer approaches, foot soldiers tightened their grips on spears and swords. Armor buckles were checked twice. Some kissed family pendants tucked beneath their collars; others muttered quiet prayers. Qi-infused blades were drawn with a whisper of steel and light, glinting as though aware of what was coming.
Warders finished their arrays along the inner walkways circles of runes traced in chalk, then sealed with heat. Flame Guard captains moved between squads, voices calm but firm, their presence anchoring the rising dread. This wasn't a skirmish. This was war.
Oliver Phoenix stood at the southern gate's inner wall, armour glowing in places with dormant fire runes awakened by his presence. Behind him, the elite ranks of the Flame Guard formed lines, their shields and blades humming faintly with focused Qi discipline.
Even during the long silence when Qi had vanished from the world, General Oliver Phoenix had remained a formidable warrior, one of the kingdom's finest, easily counted among the top ten. His body, tempered by discipline and battle, had retained its strength even without the flow of energy.
But with the collapse and the return of Qi, those who had long trained their bodies found themselves awakening once more, power returned not as something new, but as something earned. For the General, it was not a transformation, but a restoration. The strength he should have possessed now coursed through him in full, refined by decades of experience. In body alone, he stood beyond the Practitioner's Stage, his Qi dense and potent enough to overwhelm most adversaries.
Yet in this new world, power no longer followed old rules. The elemental stage had become reachable, even common among awakened cultivators. Strength was no longer rare, it was shifting, evolving, and for the first time in generations, the battlefield was uncertain.
And now General Oliver Phoenix stood in position.
He said nothing.
He simply raised his sword, a long curved weapon of phoenix-forged steel, etched with flame-patterned grooves along its fuller. Its surface shimmered faintly, not with reflected light, but with its own quiet glow, as if the fire within still breathed. The hilt, wrapped in blackened leather and bound with golden wire, fit perfectly in his hand. Despite its size being closer to a Greatsword for most men, he wielded it like a longsword, effortless and precise. It was the blade that had carved through siege lines, split ash-born titans, and earned him the name The Undying Flame.
From the parapets, a Flame Guard commander shouted:
"Release!"
A rain of arrows briefly blotted out the sky, hand-fletched and Qi-reinforced, tips flaring mid-flight. The volley struck the front ranks of the mutated beasts, piercing some, slowing others.
But they did not stop.
Through the pain they surged forward, trampling their own, snarling in unison. The ground shook beneath them as corrupted Qi twisted into a visible haze that spread like a sickness.
Yan stood beside Ryu atop the second wall, eyes narrow, her phoenix-fire coiling around her arms.
"Arrows won't stop them," she muttered. "We go to the line."
Ryu's hand tightened on his blade. "Then let's go."
As they descended toward the city's second defence line, Kalavan passed them on the steps, already mid-sprint toward the flank. His twin daggers gleamed, curved like waves, etched with water and wind runes.
Elyra stood further back on the high terrace with a warding circle already forming beneath her feet, bending light in a slow spiral.
Below, the gate shuddered.
Not from impact.
From Qi unravelling.
The masked cultivator at the head of the horde raised both arms and the iron-banded southern gate split open, as if they had rotted from within.
He stepped through the crumbling arch as his beasts poured in around him.
From beneath his rotted hood, his voice carried like a curse:
"Your flame cost me everything, now I will return it... with ruin."
But standing in his path were two generations of fire.
Oliver Phoenix, still and tall, the heat rolling from his body like a hearth made flesh.
Yan Phoenix. Blade drawn, her Qi sharp and luminous.
With another burst of Qi coming from the third of them, his star-mark glowing steadily, eyes burning with clarity and the void Qi he had gained from the very beginning, swirling throughout his body.
Oliver stepped forward, lifting his blade.
"I don't care what we took from you," he said. "You won't take what's mine, you will not harm this kingdom!"
And the battle began.