Altan's name no longer needed to be spoken. It moved with the wind, coiled through burnt villages, shattered outposts, and rebel camps like a breath drawn before the killing blow. Across fractured provinces, whispers turned into banners, and banners became armies. In places where no Gale soldier had ever set foot, the people tore down imperial standards with calloused hands and smeared the sigil of the storm in ash and blood across their walls. Some called him warlord, others prophet. He answered to neither.
Rebellion spread not in straight lines, but like fever. Market squares swelled with chants, old sects emerged from decades of exile, and deserters reenacted Stormguard drills from memory, practicing stances barefoot in riverbeds. By the time the Gale army reached the cities, the gates had already swung open. Defenders vanished. Streets filled with silent watchers holding torches low, eyes lowered, not out of fear but reverence. In these places, Altan did not conquer. He passed like a storm cloud, dark and inevitable.
But that mercy ended the moment they crossed into the valleys of Huilan. There, the Empire's core clenched its fist. The walls were carved from jade-steel, layered with resonance glyphs, and the garrisons had trained under high elemental strain. The air itself pressed down like a drawn blade, heavy with metal qi. Lightning whispered through the breath of the defenders. Altan halted at the ridge, hands folded behind his back.
"From here on, no noise," Altan said, calm but firm. "No horns. No banners. Just do the job."
Chaghan stepped forward, knuckles brushing the iron ring on his belt. "Stormguard leads. Groups of three. Breathe, hit, pull back. Fast and clean."
Altan gave a nod. "They're flashy. Doesn't matter. We're not here to impress. Just finish it."
In the first engagement, the Stormguard collided with flame-dancers from Ironsmoke Temple. Their bodies moved with furnace precision, conjuring liquid fire that licked across the ground like a tide. One soldier—young, face half-melted from the first wave—threw herself into the blaze a second time, grappling with three chanters in a burning lock. Her scream was brief. Her name was recorded in ash ink in the war log that night.
Burgedai led his Rootwake squads through old aqueducts, disrupting spiritual relay lines beneath the city. With each breath, his feet grounded into soil, his chest rising in sync with the earth's tension. Then he exhaled, and stone walls cracked. Hidden anchors shattered. Empire cultivators staggered as their qi wells lost tether, cut from the flow they had relied on.
Far above, hawks circled. Batu, the scout commander known now as Stormwake, crouched at the city's edge with his beast-bonded vanguard. His voice was low, eyes fixed on movement patterns across the rooftops. "Patrols shifted. They're reacting to the energy flux," Batu muttered. "We go right. Soon as their spells drop, unleash the wolves."
"You sure?" one scout asked.
"Guessing's for dead men," Batu said. "I've got eyes. Trust them."
At Daluin Ridge, thunder traps detonated beneath the feet of the advance wave. Entire squads disappeared in a burst of divine sound and pulverized stone. Smoke rose in spirals. Blood steamed on shattered outcrops. Stormguard formations buckled.
Altan walked into the ruined field alone.
He knelt beside the broken remains of a young ranger. Fingers still wrapped around a bowstring. Eyes open but unseeing.
He closed them, then whispered, "Get to me. Pulse formation."
Chaghan barked out orders. Three-point squads reformed. Each carried stone-core training from the Chasm, each one silent. They advanced without flair. Their steps syncopated to internal breath cycles. When the imperial cultivators released arcs of lightning and flame, the Stormguard met them with qi-hardened limbs and counter-pressure. No shouts. No wasted movement. Element met stone. Stone held.
On the cliff paths of Seling Pass, mountainbinders fought as the earth. They anchored themselves to the stone, breathing in sync with the mountain, and rained down slabs of jagged rock as if casting divine judgment. Altan's climbers used hooks heated in their mouths to avoid elemental detection. They advanced under burning ropes and qi-slicked surfaces. Every ten paces cost three lives. Still, they rose.
At the summit, a geomancer captain stepped into view. He bore the sigil of the Imperial Doctrine across his chest and the smug calm of a man who believed stone itself answered to him. He slammed his palm into the cliff and chanted. The ledge cracked.
Altan didn't flinch. He stepped forward and pulled from his core, not fire, not water, not light, but something heavier. A stillness drawn from all five elemental trials. He stepped and struck—not the man, but the leyline beneath him. The captain never screamed. There was no time.
The cliff shattered. The corpse fell without ceremony.
Beyond Quolin Ford, they faced beasts grown in blood rites, hulking abominations inscribed with binding scripts, their eyes wide and blind with devotion. The Stormguard did not scatter. They rotated into impact formations. Shield-bearers absorbed the charge. Spear-kin pierced tendon and eye. One beast surged past the front, tusks raised high, rage channeled into raw heat.
Altan stepped into its path.
He didn't raise a blade.
He breathed.
Then shifted. A spiral of intent, a pivot of weight, and a final palm strike. The qi surged from his center and out his spine, through his shoulders and fingers, in perfect harmony. The beast's skull cracked from the inside. It dropped. The handler fell to his knees, weeping—not in pain, but awe.
Later, they fought on mirrored salt flats under a sky so clear, the heavens seemed closer than the earth. Mirage casters shattered perception. Enrik, one of Batu's scouts, vomited mid-run as visual horizons folded on themselves.
Altan walked with eyes closed. He followed breath, pressure, intent. When a blade struck at his side, he was already gone. When fire roared in the wrong direction, he stepped into it. Not to resist, but to redirect. At the center of the field, he stood alone. The enemy could no longer see him, because they could not perceive silence.
When it ended, the salt turned red.
After every battle, Altan sat still. Robes scorched. Hands folded. The ground beneath him humming. He said little. Sometimes nothing at all. But his silence no longer felt like absence. It felt like preparation.
The five elements within him no longer fought for space. They turned in a slow, unified orbit, circling something deeper. Something older than war, older than the clans, older than the Empire itself.
As the Gale army neared the Empire's final ring of cities, the wind grew heavy. The skies darkened. And still, Altan walked, the weight behind each step growing louder than drums.
Author's Note – Start of the Second War Campaign
At the dawn of the Second Gale-Zhong War, Altan knew brute force alone would not be enough. With new allies joining the cause, he restructured the Gale Army to better reflect their unique strengths. Blending nomadic tactics, martial cultivation, and coordinated arcane warfare into a single, devastating force.
Gale Army Structure – Quick Overview
Altan – Supreme Commander; master of Stoneheart Resonance and strategist behind the army's fluid, terrain-based warfare.
Chaghan – Leads the Stormguard, an elite force trained in null-elemental combat; Altan's first disciple and vanguard reformer.
Khulan – Right-wing commander and cavalry master; leads fast-moving saber units and executes pincer tactics with deadly timing.
Burgedai – Burgedai commands the Rootwake Infantry and regular infantry
Stormwake (Batu) – Scout leader and beast-bonded warrior; directs aerial recon and flanking operations using bonded creatures.
Stormguard – Shock troops that absorb and counter elemental techniques with sheer internal force and discipline.
Rootwake Infantry – Ground-holders and disruptors; their breathroot arts tear up enemy formations and reinforce terrain.
Cavalry & Light Wings – Rapid-response divisions under Khulan and Burgedai; perfect for feints and battlefield reshaping.
Qorjin-Ke Scouts – Stealthy beast-linked recon units; masters of terrain, perception, and coordination.
Gale Rangers – Shadow operatives under Khulan; ambush, assassination, and pursuit specialists.
Glyphcutters – Arcane and healing corps; wield battlefield sigils, elemental disruption, and environmental manipulation.
Stoneheart Resonance – Altan's personal martial path; a cultivation style of endurance, stillness, and internal shock force, mastered only by him and his inner circle.