"Every rebellion begins with a broken oath, and ends with a sharpened truth." – Saying among wandering monks
The sun rose red over the charred hills of Fenghou Valley — not from light, but from smoke. A dozen villages had already burned this week, and word spread like wildfire: the Emperor's tax collectors had been butchered, and now the Iron Banner Legion marched to make an example.
Huai Shan stood in rank, shoulder to shoulder with farmers-turned-fighters, faces hollow with dread. They wore mismatched leather, rust-bitten helmets, and bore weapons salvaged from the dead. They had no banners — only old plows reborn as spears and the bitter resolve of the wronged.
Beside him, Xu Liang, the grizzled veteran who'd taken command of this makeshift warband, walked the line.
"When the drums sound," Xu barked, "you don't run. You hold."
His voice cracked like thunder. "We've no walls. No cavalry. Only this ground beneath our feet. So make them bleed for every step."
Huai Shan clenched his jaw. His fingers itched around the grip of a chipped sword — once an officer's blade, now dulled by a dozen scavenged kills. His heart pounded. The men to his left prayed. The ones to his right vomited into the dirt.
Then came the sound.
Drums.
Not their own. Imperial drums — deep, slow, thunderous. From the far ridge, they appeared: a wave of silver and red, banners unfurling like the wings of a hungry god. The Iron Banner. Disciplined. Armored. Trained.
The rebels were outnumbered two to one.
"Hold!" Xu roared.
But the Iron Banner didn't wait. They charged — a tide of steel surging down the slope, lances glinting, voices raised in that chilling battle hymn of the old empire.
The rebels did not break.
Not yet.
They met the charge in the mud.
Huai Shan's world became noise and heat. The first man he struck was barely a man — a conscript with baby fat still on his cheeks. The sword caught the boy in the collarbone and stuck. Huai had to kick him off to retrieve it.
Then came another.
And another.
All blurred together in a dance of blood, screams, and steel. His arm went numb. His legs cramped. He fought on instinct — not trained, not graceful — but alive.
A horn blew — sharp, panicked. Something was wrong.
Huai glimpsed it through the clash — an imperial flanking force, emerging from the western woods. A trap.
"They're surrounding us!" someone yelled.
Commander Xu Liang tried to rally the men, calling for a retreat to the tree line — but a spear caught him from behind, punching through his back.
He fell without a sound.
Huai didn't think. He grabbed Xu's standard — a tattered length of cloth painted with an ox skull — and raised it high.
"TO ME!" he roared, voice hoarse. "TO THE STANDARD!"
And to his own shock, they came.
Men he didn't know. Fighters who had never looked at him twice. They rallied around the boy who dared to raise the fallen standard.
Huai Shan — once peasant, now soldier — found himself leading the last retreat, cutting a path through chaos.
By Nightfall
The rebels fled into the woods. One-third were dead. The Iron Banner did not follow.
Around a smoky campfire that night, the survivors gathered. No one spoke of Xu. No one wept. They just stared at Huai Shan — the sword still bloodied in his lap, his knuckles cracked open.
"He held the line," someone whispered.
"He saved the standard," another added.
"What's your name, boy?"
He didn't answer right away.
"Huai Shan," he said finally, voice raw. "Of no house. From no land."
"Then maybe now," a gruff rebel muttered, "you belong to all of us."