Behind him, the river fell from the sky in a single crashing wave. Before him, the black pillar grew teeth. And somewhere in the chaos, a fox laughed.

“The kingdom of storms,” Jiang Ziya said, and his voice carried without thunder, without sorcery—just the quiet authority of a man who had once served tea to gods and learned that even deities could be late, “is not the storm’s kingdom. It is ours. And we are not done with it yet.”

The sky broke before the battle did.

The battle for the Mandate of Heaven had begun not with a trumpet, but with a choice: to break, or to order .

That was the first sign that this was no mortal war. Above the Yellow Earth, clouds churned like a dragon’s gut, spitting rain that fell sideways, then upward, then not at all. Lightning did not strike—it lingered , forked and furious, stitching the heavens to the mud in threads of white fire.

Jiang Ziya chose order.

And the storm chose to answer.

So , Jiang thought. They’ve begun to rewrite geography.