Chapter 1 - THE HANGING CAMP
When the first corpse fell from the ceiling, Lu An thought gravity had finally shown mercy.
Then the dead man landed on all fours.
Its neck bent backward with a wet crack. Its jaw split to the ear. White worms of bone pushed through its gums like new teeth, and its hands struck the ground with the speed of a hunting spider.
Han Chi was already moving.
The general’s massive blade flashed in the firelight and came down through the creature’s collarbone, splitting it from shoulder to ribs. Black blood burst across the packed-earth floor. Above them, the rest of the hanging bodies began to thrash.
Lu An stared for half a heartbeat too long.
Han Chi shoved him hard with one armored forearm.
“Either kill,” the warlord barked, “or die staring.”
The second corpse hit the ground in front of Lu An. Its face was upside down. Its eyes were still human.
That was the worst part.
Lu An snatched up his broken sword. The blade had been cracked near the midpoint ever since the night his village burned, but the edge still bit. He drove it under the creature’s chin with both hands. The thing screamed into the steel and clawed at him. Its fingers tore through his sleeve and scored his skin.
He twisted, kicked, and ripped the blade free.
Han Chi cut down two more.
Around them, the dead rained from the rafters.
The general’s camp—if it could still be called that—had once been a command hall inside an abandoned silk warehouse. Torn banners hung blackened by soot. War maps lay scattered under fallen tables. Every beam overhead held dangling corpses upside down like butchered meat. Now they were dropping by the dozens.
“You said my village had become these things,” Lu An shouted, slashing a clawed hand off another monster. “You expect me to believe that?”
Han Chi split a skull in half.
“I don’t care what you believe.”
Another creature sprang from a support pillar. Han Chi caught it in midair and smashed it into the wall hard enough to break stone.
“I care whether you can survive long enough to hate me properly.”
The answer should have made Lu An lunge for his throat.
Instead, it almost made him laugh.
The absurdity of it—the man he had crossed a dead province to kill, standing beside him in firelight while the ceiling vomited monsters—hit him like a fever.
More of the dead were moving now.
A woman in a soldier’s coat crawled upside down along the beam overhead and dropped behind Han Chi. Lu An saw it first.
“Behind you!”
Han Chi turned too late.
Lu An moved before he thought.
He grabbed a fallen spear shaft, drove it into the creature’s side, and shoved. The thing hit Han Chi’s armor instead of his throat. The general finished it with one brutal downward chop, then glanced at Lu An with something almost like surprise.
“Don’t misunderstand,” Lu An snapped. “You still die by my hand.”
“Of course.” Han Chi kicked a twitching body aside. “After tonight, if you earn it.”
A bell began to ring somewhere outside.
Not temple bronze.
War iron.
One deep note. Then another. Then a third, louder than the first two, rolling across Heiling City like thunder over a graveyard.
Han Chi’s expression changed.
For the first time since Lu An had entered the hall, the warlord looked afraid.
“The Black Bell,” he muttered.
A corpse with antlerlike bone growths dragged itself over a table. Han Chi cut it down and seized Lu An by the shoulder.
“We leave. Now.”
Lu An jerked free. “You think I’m following orders from you?”
“The Black Bell means the sleepers are waking across the city.”
“What sleepers?”
Han Chi pointed his blade toward the warehouse doors.
“Every dead body touched by the thing under the palace.”
As if summoned by the sentence, the heavy doors blew inward.
Flame-colored smoke rolled through the opening. Beyond it, Heiling City had become an inferno.
The night sky glowed red above rooftops. Bells rang from every district. Soldiers and civilians were already running through the streets. Some carried torches. Some carried children. Some were bleeding from bites and claw marks. On the nearest roof, three pale shapes skittered across the tiles and leapt down into the chaos.
Han Chi strode toward the door.
Lu An did not follow.
Instead he bent, snatched up the black cloth bundle he had left near the fire, and tucked it under his arm.
Han Chi saw.
“You carried that all the way to Heiling?”
“The head?” Lu An answered coldly. “Yes.”
Han Chi looked at him for one beat.
Then, unexpectedly: “Good.”
Lu An almost asked why.
The general was already outside.
The street beyond the warehouse was pure panic. Men in three different uniforms fought each other in the smoke while creatures crawled over their fallen. A horse ran riderless with its belly hanging open. Somewhere a building collapsed with a long, choking roar of sparks and timber.
Lu An stepped over a dead child and wished, not for the first time, that his heart would stop feeling anything.
A figure dropped from the roof above.
Lu An raised his broken sword—then paused.
The newcomer landed in a crouch and came up with a recurved bow in hand. She wore lacquered shoulder plates blackened by soot, a faded commander’s sash, and an expression sharp enough to cut wire.
The woman took one look at Han Chi and said, “You’re late.”
Han Chi’s eyes narrowed. “Shen Yue.”
“You sound disappointed I’m not dead.”
“Not disappointed.” He hacked down a creature rushing them from the alley mouth. “Surprised.”
Lu An looked between them. “Who is she?”
“Someone who still has better sense than either of us,” Shen Yue said. She loosed two arrows in quick succession, pinning a leaping corpse to a wall. “And if you plan to stand in the middle of the street asking questions, little monk-faced idiot, I’ll leave you here.”
“I’m not a monk.”
“Then stop looking so innocent.”
Han Chi didn’t waste time on introductions. “Status.”
“Southern quarter gone. Eastern wall gone. Half your Black Wolf army turned on the other half before sunset.” She drew another arrow. “And Xie Kang opened the lower gates.”
Han Chi’s face became stone.
“Say that again.”
“You heard me.” Shen Yue’s mouth hardened. “Your precious foster son sold the city.”
Even in the middle of the burning street, Lu An felt the tension shift.
Han Chi had the look of a man struck exactly where he kept the softest part of himself.
“Why?” he asked.
Shen Yue laughed once, bitter and humorless.
“Because he believes what the thing under the palace whispers. Same as the others.”
Another bell note rolled over the rooftops.
A second later the sewer grates around them exploded upward.
Hands came first.
Then faces.
Then whole bodies, slick and twisted, dragging themselves into the street from the darkness below.
Shen Yue swore.
Han Chi spun his blade in one hand and pointed west.
“The Black Bell Tower. If they keep ringing, every touched corpse in Heiling wakes.”
Lu An frowned. “Then why ring it?”
“To summon the dead and break what’s left of the city.” Shen Yue nocked another arrow. “Whoever controls the tower controls the panic.”
Han Chi looked at Lu An.
“Still want to kill me?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He raised his sword toward the tower rising dark and crooked above the roofs, where a huge iron bell glowed red through the smoke.
“Then survive long enough to make the choice with a clear mind.”
The street filled with shrieking dead.
Han Chi charged.
Shen Yue followed.
Lu An gripped the broken sword in one hand and the black cloth bundle in the other.
Then he ran after the man he had sworn to murder.
Together they cut through the burning city toward the sound of the bell.
By the time they reached the market square, Lu An already knew one thing with terrible certainty.
Whatever had destroyed his village had not ended there.
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It had only been hungry.
And somewhere inside the ruined Imperial Palace, beneath smoke and stone and a dead emperor’s crown, something had finally started to wake.
