Khiuniu

Dawn crept over the battlefield like a hesitant observer, its pale light revealing the night's work in merciless detail. What darkness had mercifully obscured now lay exposed - the grotesque geometry of war where fallen warriors formed strange angles in the mud, their final poses frozen between attack and collapse. 

A thin rain fell through the golden domes, turning blood pools into watery rubies that reflected the ashen sky. The Xiaxoan forces moved through the carnage with the methodical exhaustion of men who'd stared too long into death's furnace. Veterans sorted through the human wreckage with grim efficiency, while a fresh-faced recruit retched behind a shattered merlon, his breakfast of millet porridge joining the biological mosaic beneath his boots.

Zakop limped along the battlements, his left arm bound in moss-poulticed bandages. "Straighten those barricades!" he barked, voice roughened by smoke and shouting. "The Kirati won't wait for your beauty sleep!" 

Below in the courtyard, Pupi lay propped against a supply crate, his torso wrapped in enough linen to mummify a lesser man. Between sips of bone broth, he directed the placement of anti-mana cannons with curt hand gestures, his good eye tracking every movement like a wounded hawk.

The air carried competing stenches - woodsmoke from the morning cookfires clashing with the sweet-rot reek of opened entrails. In the great hall, soldiers picked at their rations with hands still trembling from battle. The clatter of wooden bowls echoed strangely loud in the vaulted space, as if the stones themselves were holding their breath.

In the armory's shadowed corners, armorers muttered incantations over shattered totems, their chisels coaxing faint glimmers from fractured runes. Each repaired sigil wept golden sap-like residue - the lifeblood of Xiaxoan magic congealing in iron bowls to be distilled into healing tinctures. A young apprentice trembled as she poured the luminous slurry into clay urns, her reflection warping in the molten glow like the faces of forgotten ancestors.

Beyond the fort's walls, the occupied town huddled under its own private storm. Shutters remained latched despite the morning hour. A mother dragged her children into a root cellar as Xiaxoan patrols passed, her fingers white-knuckled around a rusted kitchen knife. Rumors slithered through the cobbled streets - tales of headhunters in black armor, of spirits that drank blood from skull-cups. The townsfolk knew better than to trust imperial lies, but truth offered little comfort when caught between the boot and the blade.

Near the smithy's cold forge, an imperial conscript's helmet lay crushed beneath a fallen beam. A Skull framed in coins crest - symbol of Kirati's "Defeat of death and coin" - now cradled rainwater and the bloated corpse of a carpenter bee. The insect's iridescent wings still quivered in the damp breeze, as if trying to memorize flight patterns one last time.

High on the eastern tower, Larin perched like a carrion bird surveying its domain. Raindrops flowed down his skin while the [Sinlung Resonance] was still active as if he was one with it. His fingers traced the unfamiliar contours of his left forearm, where foreign blood pulsed beneath the surface like captive lightning. 

"Conceptual magi." The words circled his mind like vultures. He'd shattered five Cosmic Magi like glass baubles, yet their masters still drew breath. His victory tasted of ashes and unkept promises.

"Son." Zakop's voice cut through the drizzle. "The living require tending as much as the dead."

Larin turned to find his father standing ramrod-straight despite the bandages, a steaming clay bowl cradled in his good hand. The familiar scent of smoked boar and fermented black beans wrapped around Larin's senses like a childhood blanket.

The bathhouse steam carried echoes of better days - of harvest festivals and coming-of-age rites. Larin sank until the water lapped at his chin, watching battle-grime swirl into abstract patterns. His muscles remembered every parry, every spell-channeled strike. The Kirati magus' final expression haunted the condensation - not fear, but... recognition?

He dressed mechanically in fresh linens, the officer's quarters smelling of beeswax and unresolved tension. When the knock came, he already knew the weight it carried.

Zakop entered like a man approaching a shrine, Hwehwe hovering at his shoulder like a shadow. Their eyes scanned Larin's unmarked skin, his pristine armor laid out like a museum exhibit. 

"You've given us more than hope," Zakop began, fingers worrying his belt of office. "You've given them proof." A calloused hand gestured toward the courtyard where soldiers joked while scrubbing blood from swordbelts.

Hwehwe's chuckle sounded dangerously close to girlish. "When you bisected that fourth magus? I nearly wet myself. And I've birthed three children!"

Larin's salute froze halfway. "This power... it's not what you imagine."

Zakop stepped closer, his scent of healing salves and old steel cutting through the room's herbal musk. "The Dryad's Spring," he murmured. "We begged for that blessing. Pleaded. But the forest spirits deemed us..." His throat worked around the confession. "Unworthy."

The admission hung between them, as delicate as a spider's bridge. Hwehwe's fingers brushed the ritual scars peeking above her collar - the mark of failed communion with Sinlung.

Larin's chest tightened. "I took no special rites. Only..." His hand rose to the phantom ache in his sternum. "Necessity."

Zakop's laugh boomed sudden and bright, startling a pair of doves from the windowsill. "Modesty ill becomes a living legend! When the scouts report your exploits-"

"Will they report the villages I couldn't save?" The words slipped out sharper than intended. "The mothers who'll never-"

Hwehwe's combat-calloused hand closed over his wrist. "Child, you carry tomorrow's hopes. Let us bear yesterday's ghosts."

The dismissal should have stung. Instead, Larin felt the strange relief of a shared burden. He watched them leave - the aging warrior hiding his limp, the shadow-caster humming a lullaby - and wondered when he'd stopped seeing them as giants.

Sleep came swift and deep, dragging him down into the marrow of existence. The [Tune of Sinlung] resonated in his bones as reality unraveled into stardust and whispers.

"Young child."

The voice vibrated through his non-body, equal parts mountain avalanche and birdsong. Galactic tapestries swirled around his consciousness, each thread thrumming with primordial power.

"I am Khiuniu." The name arrived unbidden, tasting of volcanic soil and comet trails. 

A constellation shifted into something almost humanoid. "We spin the great loom, but even our threads fray." The cosmic tapestry rippled, showing blurred visions - a silver-eyed child drawing first breath, a mountain range crumbling into the sea, warships burning in unfamiliar skies. "I am a kin to Sinlung, we helped mankind in their first steps, we have vowed not to manifest on the world anymore, and Sinlung has sacrificed their body to stop the world from destruction. You correctly called the world Sinlung. They are still alive."

"Your trials have been... rough." Stars died in the entity's wake as it drew near. "The true storm gathers beyond your horizon. Forgive us for giving you such a burden."

Larin's awareness fractured into sensory overload:

- The metallic tang of alien blood bonding with his DNA

- The gravitational pull of a black hole birth

- The scream of a planet's tectonic death throes

- The beating of the planet's depths

When his consciousness returned, glowing sigils burned themselves into his essence:

Larin 

Age: 18 

Art: Sinlung Art

Breathing: Sinlung Resonance 

Body: Human

Parts: Left and Right arm empowered with foreign blood 

Stage: True Magi 

Mana: 1000/1000 

Strength: 67

Agility: 56

Intelligence: 78

Designation: Magi of Sinlung 

Natural Spring: Stage 2

Credit: 100,000

"Wake now." Khiuniu's presence receded like a vanishing tidepool. "But remember - even gods were mortals once."

Larin's eyes snapped open to dawn's second coming. He felt empowered yet so small, he was just beginning his journey, his first steps. He felt justified in his weariness and meekness. Yet, he had countless information to unpack from experiencing Khiuniu.

Larin's foreign-blood arm itched beneath the skin, as though buried shrapnel remembered its original form. He pressed the twitching flesh against cold stone, savoring the dissonance - mammalian warmth fighting whatever cosmic chill the magi's essence carried. The wall's moss left chlorophyll tattoos on his palm, temporary markings that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Beneath the tower stones, the fort's new totem pulsed like a transplanted heart. Its roots had already begun knitting with the building's foundation, tendrils of gold-flecked quartz spreading through mortar joints. Larin's Sinlung Resonance attuned to the low thrum - three distinct rhythms now entwined: The breath of the world and its mana, the beating of the totem and the hopes of the people who have now purged the empire's corruption in their hearts. He realized he had to learn more about totems and why the people's hearts and their practices produce rhythms.

In the courtyard below, soldiers cheered as the first supply caravan arrived. A child peeked from behind her mother's skirts, clutching a doll made from ration cloth. The supply caravan's lead ox lowed nervously as townsfolk emerged bearing wilted radish bouquets. A grey-bearded farmer placed cracked ceramic jars of pickled cloudberries at the gatehouse - traditional Xiaxoan grave offerings repurposed as tribute. When Hwehwe's lieutenant accepted one with a warrior's bow, the man's shoulders relaxed a bit, his trembling hands beginning to slowly unfurl from his fists. She returned each tribute promising that Xiaxoan rule over Massam would be just, no tributes, just taxes and trade and policy, she promised as Zakop instructed.