Snow fell thick as ash over the Black River Pass. The air stank of smoke and iron — the ghosts of battle clinging to every breath.

General Shen Lian rode through the aftermath, his wolf pelt stiff with frost, his blade still dark from the kill. All around him, the valley lay broken — shattered banners half-buried in the snow, corpses like stones scattered by a careless god.

The Rouran had won. But victory felt hollow, as it always did.

He dismounted beside a cluster of fallen soldiers. A flicker of movement caught his eye — a body shifting, a faint cough. One of the enemy yet lived.

“Bring that one,” he ordered.

Two of his riders hauled the figure upright — a slender young man in imperial armor, blood smeared across his cheek, eyes burning with defiance even in defeat. He looked far too young to have seen battle, and yet the calluses on his hands and the steadiness in his stare spoke otherwise.

“Name?” Shen Lian asked.

The boy spat blood onto the snow. “Li Wei,” he said, his northern accent faint but clean.

Shen’s brow lifted slightly. “You speak our tongue.”

“I’ve fought your kind long enough to learn it.”

There was no fear in the soldier’s voice — only a sharp, contained fury. It stirred something in him, a faint echo of the pride he once had when he still believed in purpose.

He circled the prisoner slowly, studying him. The armor hung a little loose at the shoulders, and his movements were… odd. Not clumsy, exactly — too graceful, too measured. Like a dancer pretending to march.

Still, his defiance intrigued him.

Shen drew his blade and let its edge rest under the soldier’s chin. “Do you know who I am?”

The boy met his gaze squarely. “The Wolf of the North,” he said. “A man who slaughters for kings who’ve forgotten mercy.”

A low laugh escaped Shen’s throat — the first in weeks. “Careful, little fox. Wolves bite.”

The boy’s jaw tightened. “Then bite. I won’t kneel.”

Shen held his gaze for a long moment. There was no trembling, no begging — only the steady heartbeat of something wild and unbroken. He lowered his sword.

“Take him to the camp,” he said at last. “He lives.”

One of his captains frowned. “General, he killed four of our men—”

“I said he lives.”

The men obeyed. Shen lingered a moment longer, watching the boy being dragged away. There was something strange about him — something that didn’t fit the shape of any soldier he’d seen before.

As the snow thickened and the river whispered beneath its frozen skin, Shen Lian turned away, his thoughts already haunted by those defiant eyes.

He did not yet know that the prisoner he had spared was no boy at all — but the woman who would unravel everything he thought he knew about honor, loyalty, and love.