The Red-Tasseled Spear Beneath Yanmen Pass

"Get lost!" Shen Yi's red-tasseled spear was pressed against the mute groom's throat, but its tip stopped at an old scar on his neck. It was an arrow wound, and the shape of the arrowhead was identical to the one that had pierced her father's back when he fell in battle twenty years ago. How could this wreck of a man have the distinctive arrow scar of the Northern Guard? She was about to demand an answer when the wolf riders' horns tore through the night sky.

In the chaos, he snatched up her fallen spear, and his flourish was even sharper than the one she'd practiced for ten years. When evil spirits lunged at them, he crushed the dark flames with his bare hands. The black iron spear sigil that appeared in his palm matched the emblem of the "God of War, Zhaowu" in her family's ancestral spear manual.

"I'm a remnant soul sealed away." He wiped the blood from her face. "But I remember the smoke from the army's kitchens. I remember the cadence you shouted while drilling your troops..."

As dawn stained the walls of the pass red, she thrust her spear through the seal. He took up his own black iron spear, and together they pointed toward the sands of the northern frontier. "In this life, our spears shall stand with the land, and our souls shall return together."