er cane, narrowing her eyes as she stared at the banner.

  Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Expeditionary Army, Grand General Jin Mugwang.

  The name, rippling in the wind, was read aloud by the people.

  What began as a low murmur swelled like a rising tide.

  “It's the Grand General!”

  “General Jin Mugwang has returned!”

  “The man who crushed the barbarians!”

  Some bowed deeply.

  Others clasped their hands in reverence.

  Children waved toward the camp.

  The people’s acclaim was unadorned.

  There was no imperial edict, no beating drums, no officials stepping forward—yet the voices rose naturally.

  It was an instinctive response offered to a commander who had bled on the battlefield.

  From atop the gate, the imperial soldiers looked down with studied indifference.

  The same army, the same calling—yet not the same.

  Their spearheads remained steady, but their eyes wavered.

  They knew well what kind of army stood before them.

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  Outside the gate, life surged.

  Banners snapping in the wind, cheers rolling like waves, horses snorting, spades biting into earth as trenches were dug, the ring of steel striking steel.

  The field before the capital had become, in a single day, a living war camp.

  Inside the gate, however, everything was different.

  The sound that passed beneath the arch struck stone and died.

  The cheers thinned, footsteps softened.

  The road leading toward the palace lay unnaturally quiet.

  Officials avoided eye contact.

  Even while hurrying past with stacks of documents, they did not slow.

  Within the walls, it was as though nothing had happened.

  No drums announced victory.

  No ceremonial banners were raised.

  No preparations for welcome were made.

  Instead of reception, there was silence.

  Deep within the palace, behind sealed halls, the outer world was cut away.

  Thick doors, heavy draperies, and stillness.

  A report was delivered.

  “The Commander of the Northern Expeditionary Army, Jin Mugwang, is encamped outside the western gate.”

  A brief nod.

  Nothing more.

  It was not that the cheers could not be heard.

  They were simply not allowed to be heard.

  The palace did not accept the heat of the people’s fervor.

  It let it pass, cold and untouched.

  Outside the gate once more, Yi Hui stood listening to the roar of the crowd.

  His eyes burned.

  The man who should have been welcomed stood instead in a field, forced to camp beyond the walls.

  The absurdity of it filled him with anger, yet there was nothing he could do.

  Still, the people had come of their own will to cheer.

  The palace remained silent; the people cried out.

  The sharper the contrast, the deeper Yi Hui’s fury sank.

  He bit his lip until blood welled.

  The way he looked at the closed gate was more than anger.

  It was hostility toward the power that had shut itself away.

  Yet he did not charge.

  He did not draw his blade.

  Instead, he raised the banner higher.

  He strengthened the encampment.

  The more the palace withheld acknowledgment,

  the more firmly he chose to stand before the people.

  Inside the walls, silence.

  Outside the walls, life.

  One side was the suffocation of power.

  The other, the breath of the people.

  The capital was closed.

  But the name was already open.

  Jin Mugwang.

  His name could not cross the stone walls—

  yet it traveled on the lips of the people, seeping inward,

  toward the very heart of the palace.