The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis

The petition was written in a soldier's hand, not a clerk's.

He knew it before the chamberlain unrolled it, before the ink caught in the curve of the candlelight. Stiff strokes. Letters pressed too hard, as if the brush were a blade meant to leave scars. Mingyu set the scroll aside after a few lines. Reading wasn't necessary. The intent carried in the weight of the strokes alone.

Sun Longzi wanted a place in the palace. Not as a general. Not as a commander of borders. But as the Captain of the Emperor's personal guard.

Absolute madness.

"Bring him in," he ordered. His voice was too calm, though the air in his chest had gone sharp.

The chamberlain bowed, shuffling backward. A moment later the door opened. Boots struck the stone, not quick, not slow.

Longzi entered wearing no rank, no polished armor—just plain cloth, travel creased, and a scarf knotted tight against his throat. He looked more like a veteran returning home than the man Daiyu's northern regiments called their shield.

He bowed, shallow. Not groveling. Not careless either.

"Majesty," he greeted, straightening.

Mingyu studied him from the throne. Behind him the bronze cranes of the screen caught the firelight, wings outstretched in mock flight. Longzi looked at him, not them. The fire behind his eyes wasn't rage. It was hunger, steady and dangerous.

"You wrote this," Mingyu said, tapping the scroll in front of him.

"I did."

"You resign your command. Hand over your banners. Leave the men who bleed under your name."

"I do."

The answer was simple. Too simple.

"Why?"

"Because they no longer need me as much as you do."

The audacity would have been laughable if his voice hadn't been so level. Mingyu leaned back in the throne, fingers drumming the armrest once. "You think my guard needs a general?"

"I think your guard needs someone who can't be bought."

"Bold," Mingyu murmured, though his jaw had begun to ache from holding back sharper words. "And what of your fiancée? Your family's honor? You would discard them for this?"

"Honor means little when a man is shackled with strings tied by others." His eyes never left the other man's. "I choose to cut them. I want to cut them."

Mingyu knew that he should have dismissed him then. Should have laughed him out of the chamber and sent him back to the north where madness and frost were welcome companions.

But instead, he could hear her voice, as clear as if she stood beside him: He is yours now. Captain of your guard. Do not waste him. Even if he is just useful enough to take a blade for you, that is enough for me.

The Empress had already moved the piece.

Longzi's presence here was not madness. It was placement. And Mingyu was the board he'd been set on.

Mingyu reached for the scroll again, reading a line this time. I will place myself between His Majesty and any who would strike. I will serve without rank or title beyond what the Emperor allows. My life is his wall.

No general wrote like this. No man surrendered his command willingly. Unless…

Unless she had told him it was the only way.

"You would give up steel for parchment halls?" Mingyu asked, narrowing his eyes, trying to find the motive that was hidden beneath the words.

"I give up nothing," he replied. "I simply traded something that I no longer wanted."

"For what?"

He didn't answer. He didn't need to. His silence said enough.

Mingyu closed the scroll, pressing his palm flat against the rough strokes. "You are not what a court expects for a captain of guards. They will call it insult, desperation, even madness."

"Let them," he replied with a shrug. "It will make them underestimate me."

And underestimate her, Mingyu thought. That was always a danger.

He let the chamber still for a long moment. The bronze cranes gleamed. The guards at the pillars didn't shift. He imagined their ears straining like dogs who hear wolves beyond the fence.

Finally, he rose.

The sound of silk over stone was louder than it should have been. "You are no longer General Sun Longzi," he declared. "You are Captain of the Emperor's guard. Every route I take, you take first. Every hall I cross, you measure. If a blade cuts my way, you take it before I feel it. That is your oath now."

His bow this time was deeper. Not quite reverent. Just enough to mark the change.

"Majesty," he answered.

Mingyu sat again, his pulse steady, voice colder. "Do not mistake this for favor. You are here because the Empress decided it would be so. If you fail, it is not only your blood that will stain these stones. It is hers for misplacing you. Remember that."

Longzi's mouth twitched, almost a smile, though it bent with something harder. "Then I will not fail."

He turned as if to leave.

"Wait," Mingyu snapped. Sun Longzi stopped. "Your fiancée," the Emperor reminded him.

"What of her?"

"She will scream treachery when she hears you've taken this post. She will accuse the Empress, she will accuse me. She may even accuse you of betrayal before your family."

He didn't flinch. "Then she will waste her throat."

Mingyu almost admired the calm. Almost.

"Go, then," he told him. "Take the oath with my Guard Commander before the bell rings twice. Your place is no longer the frontier. It is in my shadow."

He bowed once more and left, boots striking the stone with the same controlled weight as before.

The chamber was quiet again. Too quiet.

Mingyu stared at the scroll, its scarred strokes catching the light like wounds that hadn't healed.

The ministers would come in the morning. They would whisper of madness, demand trials of fitness, argue that a general belonged in the field. They would say the Empress had seduced him into abandoning his command.

And he would sit, and he would listen, and he would smile when he reminded them that the Emperor's guard answers only to the Emperor.

But even as he rehearsed the words, he knew the truth. This was not his choice.

It never had been.