Gray water rolls under the junk with slow, heavy breath. Wind comes in hard and flat, and the salt in it scrapes skin raw. The sky is a lid of dull light.

  The original Seop war junks carrying Jin Na and his soldiers are no longer alone.

  At first the extra sails appear as pale smears on the horizon—too distant to be threatening, easy to pretend they are merchant craft or mist tricks. Then the smears sharpen into hulls. Then into war junks, broad and heavy, moving with disciplined certainty. They slide into formation.

  One on the port quarter. One on the starboard flank. Another behind, offset, close enough that Jin Na can see cannon muzzles like black mouths. Another further out, making the perimeter wider than any one ship but tight enough that every angle is watched.

  Jin Na stands on the quarterdeck and watches it happen without moving his face.

  He clocks it instantly. As they get closer to land, if he mutinies now—if he puts his sword through Bimen and his crew’s throat and tries to seize the helm—those other junks are positioned to sink his ship before his men can even understand which way the wind is blowing. They can rake the hull. They can shear the mast. They can turn the deck into a red, wet floor and let the sea finish the rest.

  Behind Jin Na, his survivors huddle in clusters along the deck like spilled grain, still too land-born to distribute themselves intelligently on a moving vessel.

  Ruo and Ran stand near the mast shadow again.

  Hui leans on the rail, hands empty, face tight. She watches the horizon like she wants to stab it until it bleeds a road back to land. The wind whips her hair against her cheek and she doesn’t flinch.

  Gao sits near a coil of thick rope, his donkey wedged beside him. The animal’s ears flick at the creak of timbers. It snorts and shifts its hooves.

  Hui mutters without looking away from the horizon, “If that animal survives this war, it deserves a crown.”

  Ran answers dryly, “It already thinks it has one.”

  Jin Na hears the exchange and does not smile. His mind is already chewing on the next moves.

  He looks at Bimen, standing near the helm, posture rigid enough to be carved.

  Jin Na speaks quietly, close enough that only Bimen hears.

  “You brought friends,” Jin Na says.

  Bimen doesn’t look at him. “I did,” he replies.

  Jin Na’s eye narrows slightly. “To protect you,” he says.

  Bimen’s mouth does something small—almost a twitch. “To protect the ship,” he corrects.

  The armada tightens further as Ri Island’s shape rises out of gray sea—dark shoreline, low hills, the hint of fortification lines cutting across the harbor mouth like scars.

  Jin Na watches the harbor approach and feels the sea turn from open threat into a narrow corridor.

  Chains hang from piers. Signal towers stand on both sides of the inlet, flags ready, horns mounted like teeth. Banner patrols move along the docks in steady rhythm.

  The fort above the harbor is visible from the water: stone and timber, repaired, expanded, practical. Its walls look like they’ve been measured by a different species.

  As the junks glide closer, Jin Na sees bodies waiting on the dock.

  Lang stands at the front. He wears a Banner cloak over Seop uniform, sleeves rolled, posture straight.

  Behind Lang, Seop Banners line the dock in neat ranks. Some carry polearms. Some carry muskets. Some carry nothing but rope and iron cuffs.

  Bimen issues crisp, neutral commands as they approach. “Reduce sail.” “Hold angle.” “Slow to docking speed.” His voice is flat, efficient. If Jin Na didn’t already know the net had closed, Bimen’s tone might almost make this feel like a routine arrival.

  Jin Na watches Lang’s papers, then watches the cannons on the surrounding junks.

  He considers violence anyway—because a man like Jin Na always considers it.

  He imagines grabbing Bimen, putting steel through him, throwing his body overboard as a statement, using shock to seize the helm for the span of one breath.

  Then he imagines the other junks turning their guns toward this one. He imagines his own men screaming as the hull cracks. He imagines water rushing in and pride becoming a drowning weight.

  He abandons pride with the same clean efficiency he abandoned wagons on the retreat lane.

  The junk bumps the dock with a soft thud. Ropes fly. Sailors catch them. Knots are tied with practiced speed. The gangplank drops.

  The moment wood touches wood, Lang steps forward as if inspecting cargo.

  He holds up a seal board, the kind used for port judgments. The seal pressed into it is crisp, official, absurdly calm. He glances at Bimen as if confirming the paperwork matches the manifest.

  Then Lang looks at Jin Na.

  His mouth twitches the smallest bit—humor or contempt, hard to tell. His voice carries across the dock and up the gangplank with the tone of a man announcing a dock fine.

  “General Jin Na,” Lang says pleasantly, “you are under arrest.”

  The words land heavier than cannon.

  A ripple goes through Jin Na’s survivors—confusion, then anger, then the instinctive tightening of grip on weapons.

  One of Jin Na’s officers steps forward, chest puffing with outrage. “By whose authority—”

  Lang doesn’t look at him. He looks at the paper in his hands as if the officer is a smudge on the margin. “Ri Island recognizes only its governor,” Lang says. Then, without lifting his eyes, he adds, “And the North Khan who appointed him. And that “him” would be me, by the way.”

  The officer’s mouth opens. The Mandate speech is ready on his tongue like a rehearsed prayer. Jin Na cuts it off with one raised hand. Lang’s Banners shift subtly. Muskets angle. Ropes are readied.

  Jin Na steps down the gangplank anyway. His boots hit dock wood. The sound is loud in the quiet. His posture remains straight. His face remains calm. He gives Lang the faintest incline of the head.

  Lang gestures, and the procedure begins.

  Weapons are stripped first.

  A pile forms on the dock: swords, spears, knives, a few damp muskets salvaged from the bay. Each weapon lands with a clatter. A Seop Banner-sailor takes Hui’s knife belt with careful hands. Hui watches him do it with a smile. “Keep it sharp,” she says, sweetly. “I’ll want it back.” The sailor doesn’t answer. He just steps away faster.

  Names are taken.

  Clerks sit at a table under a tarp, ink pots weighted against wind. They ask questions in flat voices: name, rank, unit, origin. They write.

  Jin Na answers with the patience of someone who understands paperwork as another battlefield. He gives his name. His rank. Nothing more. He does not volunteer stories.

  Ruo and Ran are separated without drama—quiet hands guiding them into different lines. Ran’s eyes flick toward Ruo once, then forward. Ruo’s face remains blank, but his shoulders tighten slightly as if memorizing the distance.

  Injuries are logged.

  A man with a broken arm is ordered to hold it up so a clerk can see the angle. The clerk writes “fracture” with the same care he might write “missing oar.” A soldier with frost-blackened toes is told to remove his boot; he whimpers, then does, and the smell that escapes makes a nearby Seop Banner gag once and swallow it.

  Prisoners are bound.

  Rope first. Then iron cuffs for officers. Then thicker cord for those who look like they might bite.

  One of Jin Na’s men spits at a Banner’s boots. The Banner doesn’t flinch; he simply nods to another, and the spitter is yanked forward and punched in the gut hard enough to fold him. No extra beating. No spectacle. The system doesn’t waste energy on theater.

  Gao’s donkey is led off separately, because nobody knows where to categorize it.

  A clerk looks at the animal, pen hovering. “Name?” he asks, genuinely uncertain.

  Gao opens his mouth, then closes it, because if he gives the donkey a name, it becomes real in the ledger, and then it can be taxed.

  The donkey brays.

  The clerk, dead-eyed, writes something anyway.

  The prisoners are marched uphill to the fort in tight columns, guarded by Banners who move like they have done this a thousand times and are bored by the novelty of famous captives.

  Jin Na walks in the center of his column, hands bound, posture upright. He doesn’t drag his feet. He doesn’t look at the ground like a defeated man. He looks at walls, angles, guards, doors.

  Storing faces.

  Storing routines.

  Storing where keys hang.

  Bimen remains at the dock, calm, watching. Lang speaks to him briefly, papers exchanged, seals pressed.

  At the fort gate, the air is colder. The stone holds damp like a secret. Torches hiss. A guard opens a heavy door and the corridor beyond looks uninviting.

  Jin Na is pushed forward. He steps into the cell without stumbling. The door shuts behind him with a sound that feels final to men who don’t understand games.

  Jin Na does.

  He stands in the dim and listens to the fort breathe, already planning the next move.

  ...

  Inside the command hall in one of Pezijil’s palaces, Naci stands over a table. A felt map covers the wood, pinned down with iron weights. WindMarks scribbles run along its edges in a script that looks like wind caught and forced to behave. Red beads mark forts. Black beads mark choke points. White beads mark questions.

  Old Ji stands on her left, thin hands folded, eyes unreadable. He has the posture of a man who knows how to survive any regime by being useful to it. A clerk sits at the far end with a brush poised, waiting for permission to exist. Kuan lounges near a column.

  The door opens.

  Then, before the first messenger can cross the threshold, it opens again.

  Two runners arrive nearly simultaneously, breathless, boots wet, faces raw with speed and fear. For a moment they stare at each other like they’ve collided in a corridor that is too narrow for two catastrophes.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  One wears Seop salt on his eyebrows. The other smells of mud and smoke—Hua river stink carried inland.

  They kneel at the same time, as if rehearsed.

  Naci doesn’t tell them to speak. She just looks at them.

  The Seop runner goes first. He holds up a sealed packet with hands that shake from cold. “From Governor Lang,” he says, voice tight. “And Admiral Bimen.”

  Old Ji’s gaze flicks once. Naci takes the packet and breaks the seal with her thumbnail. Wax cracks like ice.

  She reads. Her face doesn’t move.

  The letter is brief. Jin Na has been delivered to Ri. Arrest executed. Seop ring secure. Prisoners processed. Containment confirmed. The child is in Pinan.

  Naci folds the paper once, twice, precise.

  Before anyone can exhale, the mud runner thrusts forward his own packet, dirt-stained, poorly sealed, as if it was written in haste and pain.

  “From Zhou Liwei,” he says, and the name tastes like blood in the room. “From the Hua front.”

  Old Ji’s mouth tightens almost invisibly. Kuan’s smile brightens.

  Naci breaks that seal too. Linh has been taken by Shag’hal Tyn riders. Li Song is dead. The Hua front is broken into pieces.

  Naci sets the second letter down beside the first.

  Her eyes lift slowly to Old Ji.

  “Write,” she says.

  Old Ji doesn’t ask what. He already knows what the next move must be. He only shifts his weight and reaches for the clerk’s brush, because sometimes old hands still want to feel control.

  Naci points at the map without touching it. “Pinan,” she says.

  The word lands like a nail.

  The clerk blinks. Kuan’s mouth twitches, amused and interested at once.

  Old Ji’s voice is soft. “The old capital,” he says, as if naming a ghost.

  “Yes,” Naci replies. “The child emperor is there.” She turns her gaze to the mud runner. “Liwei has men?”

  The runner nods, swallowing hard. “Enough to move fast,” he says.

  “Good,” Naci says.

  Old Ji’s pen scratches. He’s already drafting the order before she finishes speaking, because he knows speed matters more now. Legality can be rewritten after the body is secured. Mandate is a thing you can carry, wave, drown, or steal—what matters is whose hands hold it when the crowd looks up.

  “Order Liwei,” Naci says, voice flat as iron. “Rush to Pinan. Take the emperor. Alive.”

  Naci continues. “If loyalists resist, burn their bridges. If towns delay him, cut around them.”

  Old Ji drafts the order that turns theft into restoration with the same calm he used when stamping imperial decrees

  Naci turns to the Seop runner. “Tell Lang,” she says, “to keep Jin Na breathing.”

  The runner blinks. “Breathing?”

  “Yes,” Naci replies. “I want him alive. For now.”

  Kuan’s eyes gleam. “For later,” he murmurs, fondly.

  Naci’s gaze slides to him. “You’re coming,” she says.

  Kuan bows with theatrical grace. “Always.”

  Outside the hall, the palace continues to pretend it is still imperial—painted beams, carved screens, gold that doesn’t know it’s meaningless. Inside, Naci’s decisions strip it bare.

  She steps away from the table. The movement is abrupt enough that the clerks tense, ready to follow like frightened birds.

  “Columns,” Naci says.

  A Banner captain snaps upright. “How many?”

  “Enough to breathe,” Naci replies. “And enough to kill.”

  ...

  Banner columns move. Supply wagons roll in disciplined lines, axles greased, loads strapped tight. Signal riders come and go, WindMarks tabs pinned to their sleeves like small flags. The air smells of horse sweat and cold iron and the faint sweetness of dried blood that never fully leaves armor.

  Naci rides at the front with Kuan beside her.

  Her cloak snaps. Her face is set.

  Behind them, soldiers march with muskets slung and pikes on shoulders, breath steaming in unison.

  Kuan rides like he’s enjoying himself, which is always an alarming sign. He squints at the horizon, then at the map strapped to a runner’s saddle, then at Naci.

  “So,” he says conversationally, “we’re going to Behani.”

  “We’re going to the corridor,” Naci answers.

  Kuan grins. “Ah. Closing the veins.”

  Naci’s mouth tightens. “Don’t call it that.”

  Kuan shrugs. “But that’s what it is,” he says. “Pezijil is a heart. Roads are veins. Shag’hal Tyn aid is blood. We cut the flow, the limb dies.”

  A nearby Banner soldier glances sideways, unsettled, as if he didn’t sign up for anatomy lessons.

  They ride through villages that have already learned the new rhythm: people stepping aside, eyes lowered, hands on children’s shoulders. Some stare with resentful awe. Some stare with hope. Most stare with the blankness of people who have seen too many uniforms to believe any of them are permanent.

  Scouts return with reports: Shag’hal Tyn sightings on distant ridges. Tracks in snow. Smoke from camps that vanish when approached. The kind of aid that is never offered for free.

  Naci listens and says nothing.

  By the time the Lion’s Den fort rises into view again—stone squatting against gray landscape—her column has the look of something that will not be negotiated with.

  The fort’s gate opens fast.

  Packed dirt, damp walls, the same thin winter sun—but now the space is crowded with soldiers, wagons, and the smell of preparation. Ropes are stacked. Provisions are counted. Horses are watered. Every corner is occupied by someone doing something that will matter later.

  Borak waits near the center, posture loose, expression unreadable. Meicong stands beside him, quiet, eyes sharp.

  Between them are the weapons-in-chains.

  Meice first.

  Her wrists are cuffed. A chain runs from her waist to a guard’s hand. She wears the restraints like jewelry anyway, chin lifted, grin bright, eyes glittering with the wrong kind of delight. She looks at the marching Banners and seems to see a stage rather than an army.

  Amar second.

  Her chains are heavier. Her posture is rigid. Her eyes burn with a fury that has been postponed too many times. She looks at Naci like she wants to carve her name into her throat.

  When Amar sees the army behind Naci, her hatred spikes—sharp, visceral.

  Meice’s grin widens. “Oh,” she says brightly, voice carrying just enough to be heard by the nearest soldiers, “you brought a parade.”

  Borak’s gaze flicks to her. Meice beams at him.

  Amar jerks against her chains, furious. “You’re going to drag us like dogs,” she snaps at Naci. “You want to use us as bait for Linh!”

  Naci dismounts without hurry.

  She walks toward them and stops just out of Amar’s reach, because she is not careless, and because she likes watching Amar remember she cannot lunge whenever she wants.

  “We march,” Naci says.

  Amar’s jaw tightens. “To Behani,” she spits, making the word sound like an insult.

  “To war,” Naci corrects. “Behani is not a pilgrimage.”

  Meice claps once, chain rattling.

  Borak shifts half a step closer. The movement is small. It reminds Meice that jokes have limits here.

  Naci’s gaze stays on Amar. “I didn’t forget our duel,” she says, almost gently, “it is still later.”

  Amar’s eyes blaze. “Coward.”

  Naci’s expression remains calm. “Silence, tool,” she replies.

  Meice laughs softly. “She called you a tool,” she whispers to Amar with delighted cruelty.

  Amar snaps, “Shut up,” and tries to step forward, but the chain bites, yanking her back. Her breath comes hard, embarrassed by restraint.

  Meicong watches this exchange without moving her face.

  Then her gaze slides to Meice.

  It is a quiet moment, easily missed in the noise of an army preparing to move. But the look is sharp enough to cut.

  It says: you wanted Behani; you didn’t ask what it would cost.

  They leave.

  Hooves and boots drum the frozen ruts. Wagon wheels creak in disciplined rhythm. Breath rises in white plumes and vanishes as if even air is impatient to be elsewhere. The line stretches long enough that a village watching from a hilltop can mistake it for a river.

  A Banner captain calls intervals. Runners slip along the flanks, small and fast, carrying tabbed messages pinned to their sleeves. A clerk rides in a wagon with his knees pulled up, clutching a ledger like it’s a talisman, eyes wide at every sound.

  Kuan rides near Naci again. He points with his chin at the line of wagons. “Looking nice,” he says approvingly, as if complimenting a horse’s posture.

  Naci doesn’t answer.

  Borak rides behind them, not too close, not too far. Meicong keeps pace on the other side, quiet, eyes scanning. Between them, chained to saddle rings by long rawhide leads, ride Meice and Amar.

  Meice’s chains clink merrily with each step, as if she’s wearing jewelry to a festival instead of being dragged toward a front. She leans sideways in her saddle to look at the passing land with theatrical appreciation.

  “I missed the smell of cold dirt,” she says loudly. “Sarqad smells like constipation.”

  Borak’s voice comes without turning his head. “If you keep talking, I’ll help you miss your teeth.”

  Meice beams. “It’s always threats with you people.”

  Amar rides rigid, wrists bound, jaw clenched so hard it looks painful. She stares forward as if willing the horizon to offer her the duel she was denied.

  On their way, villages are “secured.” Banner riders enter first—muskets slung, eyes flat. They disarm the local militia if there is one. They nail a WindMarks notice board to the central post, pinning the village to a new tax system. They take a head count. They take grain counts. They take names of young men who can carry and older men who can repair.

  A village elder tries to negotiate with a tremble of dignity. “We have already paid—”

  A Banner clerk answers without looking up from his page. “Then you understand payment,” he says.

  Roads are measured.

  Men with cords and stakes walk the route ahead of the wagons and mark distances. They note where a cart can turn. Where a wheel will sink in spring. Where an ambush ridge overlooks a bend. They scratch symbols onto stones, little spirals and slashes that make the land readable to the army following.

  Kuan watches them and smiles. “This is my favorite part,” he says to Naci.

  Naci’s gaze stays forward.

  Supply depots appear like nails hammered into earth. A flat hill becomes a storehouse. A ruined shrine becomes a powder cache. A barn becomes a clinic. Banners dig shallow pits and line them with boards and cloth, then stack shot and grain and spare musket parts inside like they’re burying seeds.

  A young Banner sergeant supervises a depot build and shouts, “No poetry!” at a soldier carving a woman’s name into a support post.

  The soldier looks up, offended. “It’s not poetry, it’s—”

  “It’s stupidity,” the sergeant snaps. “If we get attacked here, your romance becomes a handhold.”

  Meice laughs and calls across the line, “Listen to him, he’s the true romantic.”

  The sergeant flushes and pretends he didn’t hear.

  Scouts return with Shag’hal Tyn sightings.

  Always at a distance. Always just enough to confirm presence without offering target.

  A rider gallops in one afternoon with his horse lathered and his eyes bright. He kneels in the mud and reports, “Three riders on the ridge line north. Black tack. Masks. Shirtless.”

  Another returns the next day with a different report: “Smoke at the pass entrance. Campfires, small. Gone when we approached.”

  A third says simply, “They’re watching.”

  Kuan hears that and sighs with satisfaction. Naci finally speaks, voice cold. “We reclaim the corridor,” she says. She points on the felt map unrolled briefly on a wagon bed. “This strip of land between Pezijil and Behani,” she says, “is a throat.”

  Kuan’s smile flashes. “And we’re putting a hand on it.”

  Naci doesn’t correct him this time.

  The campaign is framed as reconquest. That’s what the notices say. That’s what the riders shout in villages.

  But it is also a hunt.

  Because Linh is missing.

  Naci rides as if she can feel the missing piece in the air.

  Meice, sensing the tension like a cat sensing a storm, tries to make jokes about it. Amar jerks against her chain. The rawhide lead bites her wrist. She hisses and swallows the sound, refusing to give anyone the satisfaction of hearing pain.

  ...

  Far away from Naci’s moving spine, Liwei rides the road to Pinan like a man trying to outrun a ghost.

  He receives Old Ji’s order in the middle of a half-ruined checkpoint—an old imperial toll post with its roof burned out and its signboard hanging crooked like a broken jaw. His rebels are scavenging the place for anything useful: nails, rope, dried grain, a half-intact water barrel.

  A runner arrives with mud up to his knees and a seal pressed into a strip of cloth instead of wax.

  Liwei takes the strip, reads, and his mouth tightens.

  Liwei’s eyes flick up to the horizon as if he can see Pinan through fog and distance.

  He folds the strip and tucks it into his coat.

  A rebel captain, still breathing hard from the Hua massacre, steps close. “What is it?”

  “We ride to Pinan,” Liwei answers.

  The captain blinks. “Pinan? That’s—”

  “Far,” Liwei agrees. “So stop talking.”

  He swings into his saddle.

  His men mount, grumbling, pulling scarves up against wind. They don’t love being redirected. They have blood in their mouths and vengeance in their hands. Pinan sounds like a bureaucrat’s dream. Liwei makes it sound like a conqueror’s.

  “The Emperor is a lever,” he says. “If we don’t take it, someone else does.”

  They ride.

  The road networks toward Pinan are not roads so much as scars. Ruined checkpoints. Old garrisons with burned gates. Loyalist remnants clinging to choke points the way barnacles cling to stone, refusing to accept the tide has changed.

  The first obstacle is a bridge. It spans a narrow gorge, stone arches old enough to have carried imperial parades. Now it carries men with cracked lips and blood on their boots.

  Moukopl loyalists hold it.

  They’ve barricaded the far end with wagons and stacked timber. They’ve posted musketeers behind gaps. They’ve hung the old dragon banners from poles as if cloth can make stone obey.

  Liwei rides up to the near end and sees them.

  A loyalist officer calls across the gorge, voice amplified by cold air. “In the name of the Emperor—stand down!”

  Liwei laughs once, sharp. “Which one?” he calls back. “You keep losing them.”

  The officer flushes. “Traitor!”

  Liwei’s smile vanishes. “Yes,” he says. “Now die.”

  He doesn’t send negotiators. He sends fire.

  His men roll a barrel of lamp oil to the bridge approach and set it alight. Smoke blooms. Loyalist musketeers fire through it blind, shots cracking into stone and air. Rebels rush under the smoke like rats under a burning house, knives out, feet slipping on frost-slick stone.

  The fight is short and ugly. A loyalist bayonets a rebel in the gut and gets his throat cut in return. Someone falls off the bridge screaming and is swallowed by gorge air without ever hitting bottom in the story. Blood freezes in patches where it splashes.

  Liwei doesn’t linger.

  He leaves two men to burn the barricade until it becomes ash and moves his column across while the last loyalists run or die. Speed matters more than dignity. Mercy drags.

  The second obstacle is a town. Not a fortress. Not a strategic marvel. Just a place where people live and, unfortunately, where a loyalist captain has decided to make a stand.

  They’ve built barricades in the streets out of furniture and carts. They’ve stationed archers on roofs. They’ve nailed a decree to the town square post declaring treason punishable by death.

  Liwei reads it in passing.

  Street fights are worse than bridges because streets make everyone close enough to smell each other’s fear.

  Rebels push into alleys. Loyalists fire from windows. A woman screams as a musket ball takes the corner of her house and turns plaster into dust. A child runs with a loaf of bread and trips, falling hard; someone drags the child into a doorway without knowing whose child it is.

  Liwei’s men burn barricades. Flame eats wood and cloth and whatever hopes were piled there. Smoke fills the narrow streets and makes every direction look wrong. Loyalists cough and fire blindly. Rebels rush and stab.

  By dusk, the town square is a butcher’s floor.

  Bodies lie in heaps. The decree post is splintered. The loyalist captain is dragged out from behind a shrine and forced to kneel.

  He tries to say, “For the Emperor—”

  Liwei cuts him off with a single shot.

  No speech. No martyrdom.

  He leaves the corpse in the square and rides on.

  Night raids happen too. At one choke point, loyalists hold an old watchtower overlooking a mountain road. Liwei’s column cannot detour without losing a day. A day is a lifetime now.

  So Liwei sends men up the slope in darkness.

  They climb with knives between teeth, fingers numb, breath held. They reach the tower wall and throw hooks. Rope creaks. A guard leans over, yawning—

  A hand clamps over his mouth. A knife slides in under his ribs. The guard’s eyes widen, then empty. Inside the tower, loyalists wake to steel at their throats and die.

  Prisoners are taken and executed. A boy in imperial uniform drops his musket and raises his hands, sobbing. “I didn’t want—”

  Liwei looks at him for half a heartbeat, then turns away. A rebel behind him drives a spear into the boy’s chest with grim efficiency.

  He keeps moving.

  He leaves smoke behind like a trail.