The wind on the lip of Kharan Chasm screamed like a wounded beast, echoing through jagged cliffs with relentless fury. No birds flew here. No trees dared take root. The plateau above the chasm's entrance stood barren and narrow, its surface scarred by ancient upheaval. On one side: windswept highland. On the other: the chasm.
The Kharan Chasm stretched before Altan like a wound in the earth. Its walls were crooked and pale, shaped not by time but by force—clawed open by something vast and old, leaving the bones of the world exposed. Mist rose from its depths, drifting against the wind, tasting faintly of copper and incense. It was said the chasm was forbidden—not by decree, but by instinct. No Orontai cartographer had ever mapped it. Not because they could not, but because those who entered did not return whole—if they returned at all.
Altan stood on the plateau's edge, a silent silhouette against the roiling sky. Behind him, Khulan and Burgedai waited with growing unease. Chaghan stood farther back, arms crossed. His eyes scanned the swirling fog that clung to the chasm like breath to bone.
"This is where we make our stand," Altan said, unfurling scrolls onto a makeshift table of slate. The maps were hand-drawn, etched with lines and looping sigils that shimmered faintly in the dim light. "Here, at the gate of the chasm. We will build the citadel where even the brave dare not tread."
Burgedai frowned. "That place… it eats men."
"And so it shall eat armies," Altan replied, eyes fixed on the bridge site. "We will raise the walls above it—not beside it. The chasm itself will guard one flank. We'll reinforce only what must be held."
He tapped the sketch of the bridge. "One crossing. Narrow. Sloped one percent back toward the steppe. To cross will feel like climbing a hill. Subtle. Psychological. The longer they march, the more it takes."
Khulan squinted. "You want to build over a chasm that bleeds mist and smells like old gods?"
"Yes."
Altan's voice was calm, but beneath it lay something sharper—conviction forged in fire and shadow.
"Most would build away from the edge," Chaghan said, stepping closer. "You mean to make it part of the defense."
Altan gave a slow nod. "Let their fear work for us."
The wind howled louder.
In the weeks that followed, the steppe came alive with motion. Riders brought word to the clans. Wagons creaked over frost-hardened ground, laden with timber and quarried stone. Forges were lit. Camps sprang up in the shadows of cliffs, full of hammer blows and shouted names. The Gale tribes did not ask why. They followed Altan's vision with the certainty of dreamers chasing a storm.
Workers filled the plateau, hauling beams and chiseling stone. Altan moved among them, robes tattered, his hands black with chalk and ash. With every stone laid, he carved unseen patterns—glyphs too ancient to be from this age. Some shimmered faintly and vanished. Others pulsed for days before going silent.
He spoke little during those months. He worked. He bled. He listened to the stone.
Khulan found him one evening tracing sigils into a tower's foundation, fingers moving with unnatural precision, as if guided by something deeper than thought.
"You're embedding magick into this place," Khulan said, not quite accusing.
Altan didn't look up. "I'm reminding the earth of what it once knew."
The Kharan Chasm loomed beside them, ever silent. Mist drifted from its depths like breath from a sleeping god. No one went near its edge. Even animals avoided it.
While the walls climbed skyward, Altan worked below. In a sealed tent reinforced with runes of privacy, he began laying out the Maze. A spiraling network of tunnels beneath the citadel, aligned not by engineering—but by ley lines. The earth below the chasm thrummed with buried force, and Altan wove his design through it like a spider through web.
Chaghan stepped into the tent once, gaze lingering on the twisting paths drawn in ash and bone dust.
"You plan to let the enemy inside?" he asked.
"I plan to let them lose themselves," Altan replied. "Pride is louder than fear. The Maze will hear it first."
As autumn passed into frost, the citadel neared completion. Towers stood defiant, sharp-angled and silent. The bridge rose from the steppe and crossed over the lip of the chasm, sloping upward like the back of some dormant beast. Beneath it, the abyss waited.
Altan sealed the final runes a week before the snows came. He pressed his palm into the last stone laid, blood mingling with the ink of his mark. It vanished the moment his hand withdrew. Only a faint warmth remained.
That night, they stood upon the tower. Altan. Khulan. Burgedai. Chaghan. The wind howled around them, but the stone beneath their boots was quiet—watchful.
Below, the Kharan Chasm sighed like something sleeping.
Chaghan exhaled. "Five months. And still no name."
Altan looked toward the eastern sky, where stormclouds curled like dark omens.
"It has one," he said. "It just hasn't been spoken yet."
Far beyond the horizon, beneath the banners of crimson and gold, the Zhong Empire stirred.
In the war camps of Mount Dailan, drills beat like war drums through the day and into dusk. Eight legions were conscripted—infantry, archers, siege crews, cavalry, support—arrayed in perfect formations, drilled with ruthless efficiency. Horses were broken and branded. Blades tested and bloodied.
At their heart stood Lord Qiu, black-robed, face unreadable. He watched the lines march and reform, then turned to his map—marked now with a chasm he had never seen.
"We strike before the spring rains," he said.
An officer bowed. "And if the chasm proves impassable?"
Qiu smiled without warmth. "Then we fill it with bodies."
And the wind carried their preparations toward the steppe.