The drums did not beat for Shen’s Wolf Army. There was no brass fanfare, no silk banners snapping in the wind. Instead, there was only the soft, terrible whisper of hundreds of paws on frozen earth, and the low, guttural rhythm of men breathing as one.
Shen’s lips curled into something that was not quite a smile. “That men can be unmade. But a wolf pack? It only grows stronger when you cut it.”
By dawn, the governor’s head hung from the Moon Gate, and every wall in Jinsha bore the same mark: a wolf’s paw print, stamped in soot and blood. Shen’s army had vanished back into the northern forest, leaving behind no prisoners, no parley, no terms. Only silence, and the distant sound of howling—fading, merging with the wind, as if the mountain itself had learned to hunt.
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