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

The Southern Outpost

The body was still warm.

Sun Longzi knelt beside the corpse, his fingers brushing the edge of the uniform coat. The stitching was wrong—too clean. The buttons were brass, polished to court standard. No soldier in the south had time to shine their chest. No real soldier would even bother.

Three men had been found this morning, crumpled near the ravine just south of the Sanzhou border checkpoint. All of them wore Daiyu colors. Two carried swords etched with the official mark of General Wei's western command.

And yet none of them were Daiyu men.

The blood pooled at the base of the hill was real enough. Sticky. Still fresh. But the angle of the wounds—throat to jaw, back to spine—were done with surgical precision. Silent, quick, intimate.

An assassin's work.

Yaozu had trained his Shadow Guard to leave bodies like that.

But Longzi knew this wasn't Yaozu's doing.

This was Baiguang, wrapped in Daiyu's skin.

"They're wearing our uniforms," the scout beside him whispered, as if saying it aloud would make it more real. "They're… they're trying to—"

"Frame us," Longzi finished, voice quiet. "Yes."

He stood, brushing dirt from his gloves.

"Bag the weapons. Burn the uniforms. Send the bodies to the southern pavilion. Lady Zhao needs to see this herself."

The scout hesitated. "Do you want the heads removed?"

Longzi paused. Then nodded. "Yes."

It wasn't cruelty. It was clarity.

The only way to distinguish a lie from a warning was to strip it down to bone.

Back at camp, the wind had shifted.

He knew the moment he stepped into the strategy tent that something had already changed. The smell of metal and fire still lingered on the parchment walls. And there she was.

Zhao Xinying.

She was sitting on the chair by the desk, reading something by candlelight.

Longzi didn't speak right away. He waited until she set the paper aside and met his eyes.

"Three bodies," he said. "All wearing Daiyu's crest. All dead at the ravine."

"Names?"

He shook his head. "They don't have any."

That made her frown. Slightly.

He stepped forward and laid the folded coat on the table between them.

It still bore a bloodstain at the collar.

She stared at it.

Then lifted one edge and flipped it over.

The threads at the shoulder seam were green.

Not dye. Not fresh.

Woven in.

"Baiguang's tailors," she said flatly.

Longzi nodded. "They've started wearing our colors and attacking our villages. They let the survivors live just long enough to whisper the right name before dying."

"Mine."

"Yes."

Her face didn't change. But the temperature in the room seemed to drop.

"They want you to burn," he said. "Not just our fields, but your reputation. They want the southern lords to turn on you before the smoke even clears."

"They already have."

"You're not angry?"

"I'm dealing with my emotions."

She stepped around the table, her boots soundless on the woven mat, and picked up one of the uniform buttons. Brass. Engraved. But the curve was too round. Not Daiyu standard.

She rolled it between her fingers, then flicked it into the fire.

It didn't scream, but it hissed.

"I don't burn easily," she said. "Let's see if they do."

Outside the pavilion, the camp was already shifting again.

Orders flew past lips and horses were saddled. Messengers were dispatched without formal writs.

Sun Longzi didn't follow her immediately. He stayed behind, watching the coat he brought burn.

This war wasn't about territory anymore.

It was about truth.

And Baiguang had decided to wear lies like armor.

He stepped into the light and muttered, "It's time to tear the armor off."

-------

Earlier that morning, when the scout had first brought him word of the attack, he hadn't reacted with surprise. Baiguang's tactics had been growing bolder. Sloppier, too. Like they were no longer trying to win through strength, but confusion.

You could kill a soldier.

But a rumor?

A whisper dressed in your uniform?

That could move faster than an army.

He'd seen what those whispers did. In the northern campaign, false reports had cost them seven days and two outposts. Not because the enemy was smarter.

But because someone had believed the lie first.

This was different, though.

Because this time, the target wasn't a general.

It was Zhao Xinying.

He'd watched her bend this empire to her will one silent nod at a time.

And now he was watching someone try to unravel her name before she could finish what she'd started.

He didn't feel only loyalty to his soon-to-be Empress.

He felt certainty.

If she fell, they all would.

Later, he found her near the edge of the ridge, staring toward the burned terraces.

Shadow stood beside her, tail flicking in slow rhythm.

He said nothing at first. Just waited.

Finally, she spoke.

"They think this ends with a signature. A letter. A court vote."

"It won't."

"No," she said. "It ends when the men who claim that they were mine are buried under their own."

He nodded once. "Then I'll start digging."

She didn't smile. That wasn't who she was.

Instead, she stepped forward—just once—and crouched near the ridge's edge. The wind shifted, lifting her hair slightly, tugging at her sleeves. The burned terraces stretched below them like a black ocean.

"I used to wonder," she said quietly, "if war was about breaking the other side's sword."

"And now?"

"It's not," she said. "It's about making them drop it."

He watched her hands.

They weren't clenched. They weren't trembling.

They were still.

Not out of peace—but out of certainty.

He remembered a soldier from his first campaign. A friend. Executed at dusk in the capital square, hung with a traitor's sign around his neck. The man had only delivered a message—but the uniform he wore had been sewn with the wrong crest. A detail no one noticed until after the body cooled.

Deception killed faster than blades.

This was worse.

Because this time, it wasn't one man wearing the wrong crest.

It was an army of shadows—draped in her name.

"I won't let them rewrite your victories," he said.

Her voice was calm. "They won't live long enough to try."

They stood in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Below them, the hills smoked like a giant's lungs.

And far in the east, the wind carried the faint echo of a bell.

A warning.