The wind howled over the Kharan Chasm, dragging with it the smell of stone, iron, and something older. The chasm stretched before them like a wound in the earth. Its walls were crooked and pale, shaped not by time but by force, as if something had clawed it open and left the bones of the world exposed. Mist rose from its depths, drifting against the wind. It tasted faintly of copper and incense. The place was forbidden. Not by decree, but by instinct. No Orontai had mapped it. Not because they could not, but because those who entered did not return whole—if they returned at all.
Altan stood at the plateau's edge, the wind tearing at his cloak. Below him, the abyss fell away into silence. Around him, the first of the builders had arrived. Clans from across the steppe. Carpenters, stoneworkers, engineers, scouts. They came not because they understood, but because they trusted.
Khulan watched as Altan knelt and began etching into the stone. The runes he carved weren't decorative. He worked with a strange blend of calm and urgency, his movements steady, deliberate. The glyphs flared faintly under his fingers. Old symbols. Not Orontai. Not imperial. Something else.
Burgedai came up beside her, arms crossed. "He's putting something into the stone."
"Not just design," Khulan said. "It's... like magick."
"You think it's safe?"
"I think it's already done, whether we like it or not."
They watched as Altan moved to the foundation of the bridge that would cross the mouth of the chasm. It wasn't flat. A slight slope, no more than one percent, leaned it upward toward the citadel. A small detail, but intentional. It would feel like walking uphill, like moving against the pull of the world.
As he etched more runes into the stones—some on the edges, some tucked into gaps only he seemed to notice—the bridge began to feel... different. The wind shifted when they stepped closer. The stone felt warm, as if exhaling. No one said anything, but more than one worker paused, stared, and stepped back.
"It feels alive," Chaghan muttered, joining them. He had dirt on his hands and a hammer in his belt. "Like it's watching."
Altan didn't look up. "It's not alive. But it will remember."
"Remember what?"
"Who crosses. And why."
Work began with the morning frost still clinging to the rocks. Over five months, the Gale Citadel took shape. Built atop the plateau at the edge of the Kharan Chasm, its outer walls blended with the land. Towers rose sharp and sloped, designed to catch light and redirect signals. The only path across was the bridge—narrow, curved slightly like a bowstring, and sloped back toward the chasm.
Altan laid glyphs into the bridge stone by stone, sealing them into place with breathwork and strands of focused Spirit Qi. Each had a purpose. Some bound weight. Some repelled. Others triggered discomfort, even fear, in those who approached with intent to harm. One set weighed the soul. If a man's spirit was heavy with doubt or violence, he would feel it dragging against his bones the moment he stepped onto the bridge.
At the same time, he laid out the Maze. Beneath the citadel, carved into the ridge of the chasm itself, the tunnels twisted without symmetry. A single entrance, dozens of wrong paths. Altan carved illusion glyphs into the walls by hand. A corridor might vanish. A door might lead nowhere. A breath out of rhythm could cost a man his sense of direction for hours.
Burgedai tested it again and again. "I know these halls. I helped dig them. But every time I walk them, I feel like I'm being pushed somewhere else."
"You are," Altan said. "If you don't focus, the walls will push you where they want you to go."
Chaghan tapped one of the glyphs with the end of his pickaxe. "What happens if someone breaks one of these?"
"They don't break. They break you."
Outside, the citadel buzzed with movement. Horses hauled timber. Crates of dried meat and rock salt stacked by the keep. Children ran messages between camps. Khulan oversaw logistics. Burgedai handled armaments. Chaghan drilled the younger warriors when he wasn't reinforcing the wall corners with his crew.
They built in shifts, slept in waves. Every night, Altan walked the perimeter alone, inscribing more glyphs. Some were for defense. Others were harder to explain. Runes that drank in wind. Sigils that held the heat of the sun hours after it had vanished.
One evening, Khulan stopped him as he was carving into the underside of the bridge.
"You're embedding sorcery into the bones of this place," she said quietly.
Altan sat back, wiped stone dust from his hands. "Not sorcery. Intent."
"You know most of them don't understand half of what you're doing."
"They don't need to."
"And if it turns against us?"
"Then we deserved it."
She didn't reply. Instead, she handed him a flask of warm broth and sat beside him until he finished the last sigil of the night.
By the end of the fifth month, the Gale Citadel was a living thing. Every tower, wall, and corridor knew its purpose. Only six people knew the safe path through the Maze. The bridge stood ready. Its slope subtle but unmistakable. Its stones humming with restrained presence.
On the final day of construction, they lit torches along the outer ring. As the firelight touched the glyphs, they shimmered like ice catching sunlight. The wind didn't scream that night. It listened.
Far away, across the eastern plains, in the Zhong Empire's northern war camp, Lord Qiu stood beneath a silk canopy, watching his officers drill formations in the snow.
Eight legions. Cavalry, siege weapons, and support divisions. They moved like clockwork, precise and brutal.
He turned to the imperial scribe. "Begin the final phase. We move when the thaw starts."
The scribe hesitated. "And the Citadel?"
Qiu's eyes narrowed. "Let them build. We'll burn it from the inside."
He didn't smile. There was no joy in the task ahead. Only certainty.
The first war of the steppe had ended in embers. The next would begin with stone and blood.