Morning in the Hall of Jade Mirrors
It began with whispers.
Before the court assembled, the halls were already filled with the sound of speculation the kind that fluttered like moths but burned like fire.
"The Southern Envoy's quarters were searched."
"They say a letter was found."
"With her seal."
"Impossible! Consort Ruyi?"
When the Emperor entered, silence dropped like a blade.
Every noble bowed, every head lowered, but every eye flicked toward her.
Ruyi stood beside the Dowager's seat, robes of soft ivory and muted jade, the color of quiet confidence. Her expression was unreadable.
Grand Chancellor Wen cleared his throat, voice cutting through the room.
"Your Majesty, we have troubling evidence."
A guard stepped forward, kneeling, and presented a small scroll sealed with a lotus crest Ruyi's household mark.
Ruyi's fingers did not twitch.
The Emperor's did.
The Reading
"Read it aloud," Zhao Long commanded.
The Chancellor obeyed, tone deliberate and grave.
"To His Highness Lie Xian, envoy of the Southern Tribes.
I remember the promise of alliance made before my entry into the palace.
I believe the time to rekindle it has come."
A ripple of gasps.
In return, I offer you my favor, and my voice beside the Dragon Throne.
I await your word."
The Emperor's gaze was a storm barely contained.
Ruyi simply blinked once, slowly, and then looked up at him.
"Your Majesty," she said evenly, "do you wish to hear the rest of the letter?"
He frowned. "There is more?"
She smiled faintly. "There always is, when someone forges my words."
"The Turn"
Chen'er stepped forward, bowing. "If I may, Your Majesty."
She produced a second scroll, identical in seal but older, creased from use.
"The ink used in this letter," she continued, "contains ground plum resin a blend abandoned months ago by Her Grace's household. However, a fresh purchase of it was made last week by the attendants of Consort Mei's west court."
Gasps again.
Ruyi's gaze never left the Emperor's face. "I do not ask that you believe me without proof. But perhaps you should look at the edges of the seal, Your Majesty."
He hesitated, then took the forged letter himself.
The lotus crest shimmered faintly under the light too bright, too fresh.
He looked back at her.
"You knew," he said quietly.
Ruyi inclined her head. "I suspected."
"Why didn't you speak sooner?"
"Because I wanted to know who would hand you the knife."
The Emperor's Judgment
The room was suffocatingly silent. The Dowager's gaze was sharp as a hawk's.
Grand Chancellor Wen bowed low. "Your Majesty, such deceit must not go unpunished if indeed the accusation proves true."
Zhao Long exhaled slowly. Then, to everyone's shock, he laughed softly, bitterly.
"True or not, I see now who holds my court by the throat."
His eyes found Ruyi's. "You win again."
She bowed gracefully. "Your Majesty, I wasn't playing."
After the Assembly
Later that evening, Ruyi stood alone by the Lotus Bridge. The water shimmered beneath her, each ripple scattering fragments of the moon.
Zhao Long approached without a word.
"You could have humiliated Mei before the court," he said finally. "Why didn't you?"
"She'll undo herself more efficiently than I ever could," Ruyi replied.
He watched her, unreadable. "You frighten me sometimes."
"Then you're finally seeing clearly."
He almost smiled. "And yet, I find myself drawn closer."
Ruyi's gaze softened, if only slightly. "Be careful, Your Majesty. Even the most beautiful glass court can shatter if you step too hard."
That night, in the western pavilion, Consort Mei smashed her mirror into a thousand glittering shards.
Her maid trembled beside her. "What shall we do, Your Grace?"
Mei stared into the broken glass her reflection multiplied, fragmented.
"We don't fight her in light anymore," she whispered. "We fight her in dreams."
And as the moon rose over the palace roofs, every reflection in the glass seemed to bear Ruyi's face watching, waiting, untouchable.
The Poisoned Petal
The incense coiled higher, turning the lamplight bronze.
Mei's reflection trembled as if the mirror itself pitied her.
"She's stolen the Dowager's silence," she said again, quieter this time. as though admitting a crime against heaven.
Jinglu dared not speak. She merely replaced the rouge pot with trembling fingers.
"Ruyi walks through the court like she owns the breath of every man there," Mei whispered. "Even the Emperor looks at her as if she's a verdict he cannot appeal."
Her voice cracked; she caught it with a thin smile. "But every lotus rots from its stem first."
She turned sharply.
"Send word to the Minister of Grain. Tell him the next shipment from the southern provinces will be delayed. I want his panic to reach the Emperor before the truth does."
Jinglu hesitated. "Your Grace, the Emperor will"
"Do as I say," Mei snapped. "A hungry court listens to whispers louder than facts."
The maid bowed and fled, leaving Mei alone with the curling smoke and her reflection two women watching each other, both afraid to blink first.
The Emperor's Unease
Across the palace, Zhao Long couldn't sleep.
The candles in his study had burned down to stubs, dripping wax like frozen tears.
He reread the latest reports grain shortages, merchant unrest, a sudden price rise in salt and realized all of it came from the same chain of ports tied to one man.
The same man Ruyi had marked weeks ago with a faint red circle.
He leaned back, pressing a hand to his temple.
Ruyi had seen the pattern before he did.
That unsettled him more than any rebellion ever could.
"Summon General Han at dawn," he told his guard.
"And find out who last spoke to the Minister of Grain."
The eunuch bowed. "Yes, Your Majesty."
When the door closed, Zhao Long exhaled.
In the silence, he heard her voice again the calm certainty with which she'd once said, You doubted me.
And he wondered, not for the first time, if the empire would survive both of them.
Ruyi's Calculations
In her chambers, Ruyi studied the palace map by candlelight.
A thin line of ink connected the Minister of Grain to Consort Mei's brother.
Another linked Mei's brother to the southern trade routes.
And another faint, almost erased led back to the Chancellor's estate.
She didn't smile, didn't frown.
She only tapped the brush once against the rim of the ink bowl.
"Chen'er," she said, "send a courier to the western barracks. Use the merchant route. Deliver this under the name He Qinghua. No imperial seals."
Chen'er nodded, already folding the parchment. "And if they intercept it?"
"Then the wrong people will start accusing each other."
Ruyi looked up, eyes gleaming like tempered glass.
"That's all the truth needs to survive doubt."
The Dowager's Warning
The next morning, Dowager Wei summoned Ruyi to the Lotus Hall.
"You play a dangerous game," the old woman said, voice thin but steady.
"Do you know what they're calling you now? The Lotus with Fangs."
Ruyi bowed slightly. "A lotus without thorns is easily plucked."
The Dowager studied her for a long time. "You remind me of myself when I was young."
"Then you know I don't intend to lose," Ruyi replied softly.
The Dowager's laughter was almost kind. "You think survival is victory. Wait until you're asked to choose between peace and power. Only one lasts."
Ruyi met her gaze without blinking. "Then I'll choose memory. Because memory outlives both."
Seeds of Rebellion
By twilight, the first rumors spread through the capital.
Farmers whispered of missing grain shipments.
Soldiers complained of unpaid stipends.
And in the western garrison, a shadow passed through the camps a man calling himself Commander Zhao Yi, bearing the Emperor's crest and none of his mercy.
Han Zixuan rode through the rain toward the palace with a sealed dispatch:
Your cousin has returned from the grave.
The Emperor's Realization
When Zhao Long broke the seal, he felt the air leave his chest.
Zhao Yi.
The cousin who vanished a decade ago, the one he'd believed dead at the border.
If this was true, it meant the empire's bloodline had split and someone was using that name to ignite rebellion.
He looked toward the western horizon, where thunder was beginning to bloom.
"She knew," he murmured. "Ruyi knew."
The Silent Meeting
That night, he went to her chambers.
No guards, no announcement, just a man stepping into the quiet that smelled of lotus and ink.
Ruyi was at her writing table, hair unpinned, brush mid-stroke.
She didn't rise. "The storm reached you," she said simply.
"You knew my cousin still lived," Zhao Long said. Not accusation. Not surprise. Just truth.
"I knew someone was using his name," she replied. "Now I need to know if it's him or your ghost."
He studied her. "And if it is him?"
Ruyi's eyes lifted to his.
"Then your empire's greatest threat isn't in the west. It's the lie buried in your bloodline."
Silence filled the room thick, electric.
Then Zhao Long said, almost reverently, "You terrify me."
Ruyi's smile was calm, nearly gentle. "Good," she whispered. "Fear means you're still alive."
And outside, thunder cracked like a promise, the first storm of a war neither of them had yet named.
The Poisoned Petal
The incense coiled higher, turning the lamplight bronze.
Mei's reflection trembled as if the mirror itself pitied her.
"She's stolen the Dowager's silence," she said again, quieter this time as though admitting a crime against heaven.
Jinglu dared not speak. She merely replaced the rouge pot with trembling fingers.
"Ruyi walks through the court like she owns the breath of every man there," Mei whispered. "Even the Emperor looks at her as if she's a verdict he cannot appeal."
Her voice cracked; she caught it with a thin smile. "But every lotus rots from its stem first."
She turned sharply.
"Send word to the Minister of Grain. Tell him the next shipment from the southern provinces will be delayed. I want his panic to reach the Emperor before the truth does."
Jinglu hesitated. "Your Grace, the Emperor will"
"Do as I say," Mei snapped. "A hungry court listens to whispers louder than facts."
The maid bowed and fled, leaving Mei alone with the curling smoke and her reflection of two women watching each other, both afraid to blink first.
The Emperor's Unease
Across the palace, Zhao Long couldn't sleep.
The candles in his study had burned down to stubs, dripping wax like frozen tears.
He reread the latest reports of grain shortages, merchant unrest, a sudden price rise in salt and realized all of it came from the same chain of ports tied to one man.
The same man Ruyi had marked weeks ago with a faint red circle.
He leaned back, pressing a hand to his temple.
Ruyi had seen the pattern before he did.
That unsettled him more than any rebellion ever could.
"Summon General Han at dawn," he told his guard.
"And find out who last spoke to the Minister of Grain."
The eunuch bowed. "Yes, Your Majesty."
When the door closed, Zhao Long exhaled.
In the silence, he heard her voice again, the calm certainty with which she'd once said, You doubted me.
And he wondered, not for the first time, if the empire would survive both of them.
Ruyi's Calculations
In her chambers, Ruyi studied the palace map by candlelight.
A thin line of ink connected the Minister of Grain to Consort Mei's brother.
Another linked Mei's brother to the southern trade routes.
And another faint, almost erased led back to the Chancellor's estate.
She didn't smile, didn't frown.
She only tapped the brush once against the rim of the ink bowl.
"Chen'er," she said, "send a courier to the western barracks. Use the merchant route. Deliver this under the name He Qinghua. No imperial seals."
Chen'er nodded, already folding the parchment. "And if they intercept it?"
"Then the wrong people will start accusing each other."
Ruyi looked up, eyes gleaming like tempered glass.
"That's all the truth needs to survive doubt."
The Dowager's Warning
The next morning, Dowager Wei summoned Ruyi to the Lotus Hall.
"You play a dangerous game," the old woman said, voice thin but steady.
"Do you know what they're calling you now? The Lotus with Fangs."
Ruyi bowed slightly. "A lotus without thorns is easily plucked."
The Dowager studied her for a long time. "You remind me of myself when I was young."
"Then you know I don't intend to lose," Ruyi replied softly.
The Dowager's laughter was almost kind. "You think survival is victory. Wait until you're asked to choose between peace and power. Only one lasts."
Ruyi met her gaze without blinking. "Then I'll choose memory. Because memory outlives both."
Seeds of Rebellion
By twilight, the first rumors spread through the capital.
Farmers whispered of missing grain shipments.
Soldiers complained of unpaid stipends.
And in the western garrison, a shadow passed through the camps a man calling himself Commander Zhao Yi, bearing the Emperor's crest and none of his mercy.
Han Zixuan rode through the rain toward the palace with a sealed dispatch
Your cousin has returned from the grave.
The Emperor's Realization
When Zhao Long broke the seal, he felt the air leave his chest.
Zhao Yi.
The cousin who vanished a decade ago, the one he'd believed dead at the border.
If this was true, it meant the empire's bloodline had split and someone was using that name to ignite rebellion.
He looked toward the western horizon, where thunder was beginning to bloom.
"She knew," he murmured. "Ruyi knew."
The Silent Meeting
That night, he went to her chambers.
No guards, no announcement just a man stepping into the quiet that smelled of lotus and ink.
Ruyi was at her writing table, hair unpinned, brush mid-stroke.
She didn't rise. "The storm reached you," she said simply.
"You knew my cousin still lived," Zhao Long said. Not accusation. Not surprise. Just truth.
"I knew someone was using his name," she replied. "Now I need to know if it's him or your ghost."
He studied her. "And if it is him?"
Ruyi's eyes lifted to his.
"Then your empire's greatest threat isn't in the west. It's the lie buried in your bloodline."
Silence filled the room thick, electric.
Then Zhao Long said, almost reverently, "You terrify me."
Ruyi's smile was calm, nearly gentle. "Good," she whispered. "Fear means you're still alive."
And outside, thunder cracked like a promise, the first storm of a war neither of them had yet named.
A Poisoned Petal
The thunder that broke above the palace did not sound like weather.
It sounded like history remembering its own voice.
Ruyi moved to the window, the candlelight behind her bending around her silhouette like a halo that had learned to sharpen itself.
"Every storm brings something back," she murmured. "Sometimes a name. Sometimes a secret."
Zhao Long watched her in silence.
"You think this storm carries both?"
"I think," she said, "the past has grown impatient."
He approached, the hem of his robe grazing the floor like a sigh.
"When my cousin vanished, the court blamed the rebels of the western pass. His body was never found."
Ruyi's tone was soft, but not gentle.
"Bodies are overrated proof. Words buried properly last longer."
She turned to her desk, drew out a sealed packet, and laid it between them.
Its seal was made not of wax, but of pressed white-lotus resin the kind used only by the late Empress's private physician.
Zhao Long stared at it as though the air itself had turned to knives.
"Where did you find this?"
"In the Dowager's library," Ruyi said. "Behind the records of your mother's funeral rites."
Her eyes flicked up to meet his. "Your mother did not die of fever, Zhao Long. Nor of poison from her cups. The mixture that killed her was designed for a man."
He went still.
"For me?"
"For your father," Ruyi corrected. "But your mother drank it first."
The storm outside flashed white against the paper screens, carving their faces into light and shadow.
"The physician's notes were written in code," she continued. "Half medical, half confession. He speaks of an 'Order of the Red Lotus' a sect that served the throne long before your reign. They used medicine as a message, cure as code. They erased bloodlines quietly."
Zhao Long's voice was barely human. "Why would they kill her?"
"Because she discovered what the Emperor before you had done. Your cousin's birth was not a scandal it was insurance."
Ruyi placed her hand flat on the packet. "The late Emperor legitimized two heirs under separate seals. You were crowned. He was hidden. One to rule. One to replace."
The Emperor's breath trembled.
"All this time"
"You inherited a throne with a ghost built into it," Ruyi said. "And now that ghost is walking again."
For a long moment neither spoke.
Only the rain answered for them, beating against the eaves like drums from another century.
At last Zhao Long whispered, "Why tell me this now?"
"Because silence is no longer safety," she said. "It's invitation."
He reached for the packet. "And you kept this secret until today?"
"I kept it until you were ready to believe me."
When he looked up, she was already watching the storm again, the reflection of lightning caught in her eyes like twin blades.
The Unrevealed Mystery Begins to Fray
Later, when the Emperor left her chambers, Ruyi unrolled a smaller scrap of parchment she had hidden inside her sleeve.
The physician's seal was identical but this document bore no handwriting she recognized.
Only a single phrase written in faded cinnabar ink:
"When the dragon forgets its twin, the empire bleeds itself clean."
She traced the words once with her finger, then folded the paper and pressed it into the hollow base of the incense burner.
Smoke curled upward, swallowing the message whole.
Behind her, Chen'er whispered from the doorway, "You told him?"
Ruyi's answer was almost lost to the rain.
"I told him enough to keep him alive. The rest he'll uncover when the right ghost knocks."
Outside, thunder rolled again closer this time.
And somewhere beyond the western garrison, a rider carried the banner of the Red Lotus, crimson petals painted over the emblem of the Tang.
The Western Front: The Ghost Wearing a Crown
The western wind carried dust like a memory fine, relentless, and impossible to wash away.
In the encampment beyond the Liao River, soldiers spoke in half-whispers around their fires, as though afraid their words might summon the dead.
At the center of the camp stood a man draped in crimson armor that caught the dying sun.
He looked enough like Zhao Long to make the heart hesitate same proud line of jaw, same imperial bearing, but the eyes, the eyes were older, quieter, as if they had seen the empire's rot from underneath.
They called him Commander Zhao Yi.
He never corrected them.
The Return of a Shadow
"Your orders, Commander?" asked Lieutenant Fu, a young officer still clinging to belief.
"Move the caravans tonight," Zhao Yi replied, voice even. "Let the court think we're rationing supplies. When they start asking why grain isn't arriving, the cracks will show."
Fu hesitated. "And the Emperor's men?"
Zhao Yi smiled faintly. "They'll come searching for rebellion and find hunger. That's all they ever see symptoms, not cause."
He dismissed the lieutenant and turned toward his tent. Inside, beneath the map-strewn table, a scroll sealed with white lotus resin waited unopened. The emblem was faintly scorched, as if meant to look like it had survived a fire.
He touched it once, thumb tracing the petals, and whispered,
"Still your hand, Ruyi. You're three moves early."
A Message Misread
Three days later, Ruyi received a report from one of her desert informants, an encoded message carried by a merchant caravan.
The message bore Zhao Yi's troop positions and a signature confirming collusion with the Order of the Red Lotus.
But the courier who brought it had been intercepted mid-route and interrogated by palace guards loyal to the Dowager.
Under threat, he gave a false translation, twisting one line of the cipher:
What originally read "He wears the crest to hide the shadow"was recorded as "He wears the crest to claim the throne."
When Ruyi read the report that night, her hand stilled halfway through the scroll.
"He's building an army," she whispered.
Chen'er looked up, startled. "Who?"
"Zhao Yi," Ruyi said. "And he's not hiding from the court anymore. He's challenging it."
The Emperor Reacts
By dawn, the Emperor's war council convened.
The mistaken report spread like wildfire, every minister agreeing the western garrison was preparing to march under the rebel cousin's banner.
Zhao Long slammed his fist onto the jade table. "I should have executed him when I had the chance."
Ruyi, composed beside him, replied, "You can't execute a ghost, Your Majesty. You have to unmask it first."
The council bowed to her words, mistaking her calm for certainty.
None of them realized her intelligence was already compromised.
None of them knew the cipher had been mistranslated.
And in that single line of error, the empire's future began to tilt.
The False Victory
A month later, imperial troops surrounded a border fortress rumored to harbor Zhao Yi's forces.
They found no rebellion, only sick refugees and merchants driven off their routes by famine.
The Emperor's generals reported it as a minor skirmish and called it a success.
But far to the south, the real Zhao Yi moved under a new banner one that bore no lotus, no dragon, only a single red petal on black silk.
He was not claiming the throne.
He was emptying it.
The Hidden Loophole
In the palace, Ruyi studied the grain reports again, unsatisfied. Something didn't align the shipments had stopped before Zhao Yi's army ever moved.
But she couldn't prove it.
Not yet.
"I'll find the thread," she told Chen'er quietly.
And Chen'er, loyal as always, whispered, "Threads pull back, Mistress. Be careful what you unravel."
Ruyi smiled faintly, eyes on the inked map.
"Every knot begins as a misunderstanding," she said.
"Let's just hope this one isn't written in blood."
Outside, the rain began again, soft and steady washing away footprints but not intent.
The mistake would stay buried for now, quiet and invisible.
By the time they discovered it, the worst would already have happened.