The bells tolled across the capital, each strike a nail driven into silence.
Prince Ning is dead, the city whispered. The phoenix girl struck the blow.
Snow fell in slow, deliberate flakes, muffling the rush of feet as Li Ziyan followed the stranger through narrow alleys that stank of damp smoke. Ministers and servants peered from shuttered windows, their whispers already sharp as knives. Every step she took felt like wading through accusation, as if the stone beneath her feet had already judged her guilty.
The stranger never faltered. His scarf shadowed his face, but his steps carried the rhythm of someone who had walked these veins of the city long before she had learned her first characters. Through hidden gates, past shrines so neglected their incense had turned to mold, he led her until the cries of "Traitor! Regicide!" dimmed behind them.
At last they halted beneath a crumbling shrine, its guardian lion cracked and half-buried in snow. Ziyan leaned against the wall, her breath clouding in the frigid air. Her pulse still hammered with the memory of Prince Ning's body slumped against jade screens, blood spreading like spilled ink.
She fixed her eyes on the stranger. "Who are you? And why save me when the whole court would rather see my corpse hanging above the gates?"
The man tugged the scarf lower, revealing a face neither young nor old, marked with the steady gaze of someone who had weathered too many winters. "Names are cheap," he said softly. "But once, long ago, I carried messages for your grandfather. The ciphers I bore were bound to the Education Ministry—the same threads you tug now."
Her breath caught. "Then you're—"
"Not your enemy," he cut in. "Not yet. Listen to me. Ning's death cannot be undone. The court will not seek truth. They will carve the story they need, and you are already the knife in their hand. Survival will not clear you. It will only let you cut back before the tale hardens into history."
Ziyan's fingers closed around the greasy silk square in her sleeve, the knot of three threads still intact. Education blue. A mark of home, or betrayal. She wanted to ask more—but the man had already turned, fading into the mist with the silence of someone who belonged to shadows more than light.
Only his words lingered. The wrong river will win if you die now.
Elsewhere in the palace ruins, Wei's blade flashed against halberds. Li Qiang fought at his side, his shoulder bloodied but his stance unyielding. The trap had sprung too perfectly: Ning slain, the ministers shrieking, Ziyan gone with the snow. Soldiers pressed from all sides, their cries echoing: "Catch them! Kill the traitors with her!"
When at last they broke through into a scholar's abandoned courtyard, the frost-cracked tiles beneath their boots, Wei slammed the gate behind them. His breath came harsh. "She's gone."
Li Qiang's face was iron. "Alive or dead?"
Wei's silence was answer enough.
But in his eyes flickered something rare: fear, not for himself, but for the girl whose defiance had carried them all this far. "If the court brands her Ning's killer," he said, "then the Empire itself becomes her executioner."
Li Qiang gripped his sword hilt tighter. "Then we cut our way back to her, even if we must carve through the whole Censorate."
Across the city, Lianhua stood by the teahouse window. Jasmine steam coiled untouched at her elbow, her fingers drumming a restless rhythm against the sill. The Minister's words still echoed in her ears—your family still watches—until the shape of them felt carved into her bones. She had known threats before, but never with such calm finality, as if Ziyan's death were already tallied in some hidden ledger.
When the door-bell chimed she startled, but it was only one of her couriers, face flushed from running. He bowed low.
"My lady. News from the outer ministries. They have declared it openly—Qi will march on Xia. No more border games. The Emperor himself has signed."
Her heart jolted. "And the Merchant Guilds?"
"Already tightening supply lines. Prices are leaping. Some caravans refuse the roads entirely, fearing seizure. And…" he hesitated, voice dropping. "They say if Ziyan keeps meddling, she'll be crushed between Qi's armies and Xia's vengeance."
Lianhua dismissed him with a nod, but when he left she pressed her palms hard against the window frame. Outside, snow curled with smoke from refugees' fires, rising like prayers that needed no altars. She whispered into the cold glass:
"Stay alive, Ziyan. Just stay alive."
On the riverbank, Li Ziyan stood alone. The stranger had vanished into mist as though he had never been. Only the ruined shrine and the endless black current remained, carrying the city's secrets eastward where none would return. She pressed her hand to the rail where he had touched earlier, the wood cold and unyielding.
Survival, he had said, was not enough. The accusation of regicide was already rooted. If she let the court weave its tale unchecked, she would remain a traitor in memory long after her bones were dust.
Her pulse steadied. She drew out parchment, ink still unthawed, and began to write. Two letters—one for the Censorate, its voice plain and steady; one for Ning's allies, penned in the shape of his hand, as though dictated from beyond the grave. Lies perhaps, but lies that carved open space for truth to breathe.
Wei's voice from earlier returned unbidden: Play both sides.
No. She would cut. Not with blades, but with words, sharper than any steel her enemies wielded.
Snow thickened, veiling her from the city. She lifted her sleeve, pricked her finger against the hidden dagger, and pressed blood to the parchment. The characters glowed faintly red, alive as if written by Heaven's own decree.
"If they will not forgive," she whispered to the dark river, "then I will force them to remember."
Far away, the palace drums thundered. A courier staggered through snow to the gates of the Censorate, his voice hoarse with the decree he bore.
"By order of the Emperor—Li Ziyan, daughter of the disgraced Minister Li, is charged with regicide. She is to be seized and brought in chains, dead or alive, for the murder of Prince Ning."
The words rolled like thunder through every alley, echoed in every whispering court.
Ziyan tucked the silk square deeper into her sleeve and straightened, the snow burning her cheeks like ash. The river surged black beneath her, carrying lies, truths, and blood alike without care.
"The river does not choose," she murmured. "But I will."
She turned from the shrine and walked into the storm, toward the cranes, toward her father's winter, toward the knives waiting in silence.