The rain had been falling for days, washing the streets of Henglu Entertainment District in a steady rhythm like the ticking of time counting down a man's last moments.
Yichen sat alone in the editing suite, the fluorescent lights humming faintly overhead. The room reeked of stale coffee, dried sweat, and something more pungent—defeat. His eyes were bloodshot, fixed on the frame frozen on the screen: a crown prince kneeling beneath a tree, eyes upturned to heaven.
He had spent three years building this film. The Last Mandate. Three years of pouring heart, soul, and sanity into historical details, actor training, costume research, and editing choices that would satisfy no one but himself.
And yet, now, it would never be released.
The call came that morning—cold and final.
> "Director Li, the studio is pulling funding. Your contract has been terminated. The executives have decided to shelve the film indefinitely."
No explanation. No hearing. Not even a proper apology. Just silence after years of loyalty.
He wasn't even angry. Just numb.
The assistants stopped showing up after the third week. The co-producer he trusted, Tao Yun, had already moved on to a new project, pretending the years of friendship were nothing but a handshake in the wind. Rumors whispered through the industry like smoke: "Li Yichen's become unstable," "He's over-budget again," "He clings to aesthetics, but can't sell tickets."
It didn't matter that his previous films were critical darlings. Art, it seemed, had an expiration date.
His fingers hovered above the keyboard. Should he delete the final cut? Or keep it as a monument to his failure?
A slow, familiar knock echoed through the editing room door.
"Come in," he said without looking.
No one entered.
Yichen frowned. He turned, but the hallway outside was empty.
Another knock. This time from behind. The wall.
His breath caught.
He stood, slowly, staring at the blank wall behind the editing screen. Just drywall and faded posters of his older works. But the knock came again—dull and deliberate, as if someone—or something—waited inside the wall.
A chill crawled down his spine.
He took a step forward. And then another. Until he was only inches away from the surface. A fine dust fell from the ceiling, stirred by a draft he couldn't place. His screen behind him flickered on its own, playing the film in reverse—images warping, crown princes bleeding backwards, bodies rising from death in eerie rewinds.
Yichen stared at the screen. His own voice echoed from the speakers: a line he never remembered recording.
> "The director never belongs in the story… but the story remembers him."
Then, silence.
A single file appeared on his screen. Mandate_Final_Cut_v6.66.mov
He didn't click it. He didn't need to.
The lights went out.
---
He woke the next morning on the floor. The room was untouched. The screen dark. The file gone.
Just a dream, perhaps.
But his reflection in the dark window stared back a little too long. His eyes sunken, his hair damp with cold sweat. When he turned away, the reflection did not.
---
It all began unraveling a few months earlier.
The whispers had started even before post-production. Investors complained that his methods were "too traditional." Actors grumbled about the strict period behavior he enforced—no modern gestures, no Westernized expressions. Yichen had insisted the film remain untouched by popular trends.
He remembered the fight with Tao Yun vividly.
> "The studio wants a love triangle. A powerful prince, a strong female lead, and a rebel general. Audiences love it."
> "That's not what this story is. It's about decay. About loneliness in power. Not some palace romance!"
> "They'll pull the plug, Yichen. You think your name is enough to save you? It's not."
He didn't listen.
He thought integrity would be enough. But integrity didn't sell tickets. And loyalty in the film industry was like ink on water—visible only for a second before it vanished.
Then came the scandal.
A blog post from an anonymous insider accused Yichen of "verbal abuse on set," of "obsessive control" and "ignoring safety protocols."
None of it was true. But that didn't matter.
Comments flooded in. He was branded difficult, toxic, washed-up.
He called friends. Most didn't answer. The few who did offered vague sympathies and avoided meeting.
Within a week, his name became a cautionary tale.
---
Yichen stopped going out. His phone battery died one night, and he never charged it again.
The outside world became noise. Irrelevant.
Only one thing kept him moving—the footage.
He watched it obsessively, like a dying man studying old family photos. Scene after scene. Line after line. He wept during editing, not for the characters, but for the passion he had once believed in.
He remembered directing the scene where the prince kneeled in a field of snow, confessing his loneliness to the wind. The actor, just 19 then, had shivered in the real snow. But his eyes had held centuries of sorrow. It was real. It had meant something.
Now it was all gone.
The morning he planned to leave the suite for good, he packed only one item—a silver USB, engraved with the characters 「命断」—Mandate Severed.
He would bury it at the ancestral tomb in Shaanbei, far from the neon decay of the city. A director's last offering to the gods of story.
But fate had other plans.
---
The car crash wasn't loud.
One moment, he was driving through fog. The next, the curve disappeared beneath his wheels.
The sky flipped. Earth met steel.
In that half-second before impact, he saw the prince again—on the screen of his mind—looking directly at him.
And smiling.
---
There was no pain.
Just silence. Floating.
A voice, distant but calm, whispered in an ancient tongue he did not recognize.
> "You shaped the world. Now live in it."