Vivianna's POV
"By the gods… what the hell was that?" I muttered, not expecting an answer, merely seeking affirmation of my own existence. Victoria had collapsed at some point, her body a fragile weight on the floor.
"I don't think I've lived long enough for this…" I sighed, taking a sip of my now-cold tea. "It seems we must go to the Jade Palace; we have neither the madness nor the knowledge to handle this here." My gaze flicked to Victoria, motionless but strangely serene.
"We cannot wait for the mountain to come to us," I continued, deciding silently. "We must move." I lifted her into my arms, the weight of her unconscious form a reminder of the urgency pressing against us like the thick air before a storm.
---
Victoria's POV
The sky looked stained with fresh blood as the rose in the sky. Vivianna had told me we would be visiting her mother in some palace called the Jade Palace. I did not argue; discretion often demanded silence.
"Ha! I look more like the vampire I know than the vampire you really are," I said with a small genuine laughter, noticing my reflection absent from the train window. The absence of my image was oddly comforting, an affirmation of the strange power now tied to me.
Breakfast was black coffee; tea seemed too mild for such an occasion. Vivianna had some blood mixed into hers, as usual. The train looked powered by coal, yet emitted no smoke. The countryside rolled by in waves of farmlands, sunlit and silent. Words felt futile; the summoning had reduced my disappearance of one year to a pale echo.
---
The morning sun poured over the rolling hills as Vivianna led me up the pale stone steps of the Jade Palace. Every tile and carved railing gleamed in green-gold light, as if the palace itself had absorbed centuries of sunlight and justice, now exhaling it slowly.
The air smelled faintly of wet stone and something older, heavier—the scent of duty, centuries of observation, long-kept secrets. My shadow lagged, hesitant, my steps almost reverent. The mirror from the Pale Monarch remained clutched at my side, cold and impossibly silent.
Inside, the palace was quieter than expected. Windows of jade and crystal cast fractured rainbows onto the marble floor. Dust motes drifted like tiny galaxies, each orbiting the palace's hidden gravity.
Vivianna's mother knelt near a low basin carved from jade, water perfectly still, dotted with white chrysanthemum petals. Her hands hovered over the basin, tracing invisible sigils.
"The script…" Miss Mary murmured, almost to herself. "It can only be read in daylight refracted through jade. No one else must see this."
I stepped closer. "It's been a while," I said awkwardly, aware that a year had passed since our last meeting.
"Huuh… well, isn't that interesting? How are you, Victoria?" Miss Mary asked, finally stopping to regard me fully.
"Fine…" I replied, uncertain.
Sunlight passed through the crystal panes, and faint words shimmered on the floor—circles, triangles, spirals—a language older than my own, older than reality itself.
I bent closer. The words tugged at my mind like currents, irresistible and patient. Miss Mary's focus remained absolute, her gestures delicate yet precise. Vivianna had disappeared somewhere beyond my awareness.
"When Justice sees Death, she does not judge — she remembers."
I noted the relationship: Justice and Death, entwined yet separate, a careful balance.
"For Justice was born of measure, and Death is its proof."
"Yet there lies a Monarch beyond endings, whose scythe does not take but balances."
"Beware those who summon what has no want — for what does not hunger cannot bargain."
My pulse leapt. The words, even refracted through jade, carried weight—a hum vibrating through my bones. This was no casual history, no bedtime story. It was a map, a warning, and a tool all at once. The path to affecting Death lay not in worship or fear, but in mastery: careful language, ritual, and intent—a geometry of symbols, gestures, and materials.
Miss Mary approached, holding a small, bound scroll.
"Seems you have found some much-needed answers," she said, handing me the scroll with a smile that seemed to stretch across time. "Empress Dǒu left this for whoever would understand. The Monarch cannot be bargained with — only recognised… and balanced."
I took the scroll and then the mirror, feeling the impossible coldness of the latter, the weight of the Monarch pressing through it. My gaze drifted to the basin, where a single chrysanthemum floated, petals trembling in sunlight.
"Life is no mercy," I whispered. "Death is no punishment. All is the turning of the wheel."
The chrysanthemum fell into the water, pristine for a heartbeat, then darkened at the edges, collapsing into black ash that danced briefly before dissolving.
"The first seed has been planted," Miss Mary said softly. "The Empress's journal contains the rituals, the materials, the gestures, the careful handling of intent. The chrysanthemum, the silver blade, the mirror… each is not just symbolic, but a translator for what cannot otherwise be comprehended. Now… you must learn to listen."
I understood instantly: the Pale Monarch's rituals required recognition, not obedience. Mortals could replicate gestures, follow instructions, offer symbolic materials—but comprehension summoned resonance.
I knelt beside the jade basin. Sunlight sliced through the crystal windows, catching on the silver blade at my side. I unrolled the scroll, faintly warm as if remembering hands long past, and focused on a key distinction:
The Empress had differentiated between the Pale Monarch—impartial, balancing all life and death—and Underworld Death—the personified embodiment drawing power from mortal comprehension of mortality.
Two deaths.
"The first was inevitable; the second fed on belief, fear, and ritual," I read like a starving man feeding on grain.
Every ritual, every material, every gesture I had begun to collect now made sense.
The mirror's reflection remained absent, leaving only the ghost of bone-white petals at its edges. Holding it made my fingers numb, but I did not flinch.
I pressed the withered chrysanthemum above my heart. It pulsed faintly in my veins, brightening white, then red, then black. Life and death entwined, dancing in rhythm with my own heartbeat.
The silver blade followed. Its weight was not in steel but in intent. A tilt, a line traced through the air, a gesture of permission, of cessation, of balance—the blade hummed faintly, a resonance I felt more than heard.
I experimented with the sigils, drawing spirals in the air with my fingertip. Light bent, shadows pooled and dispersed, responding to the geometry, the language of intent I had never spoken aloud. Reality itself listened.
Finally, exhaling, I let the basin catch my reflection. The chrysanthemum trembled atop the water before collapsing into black ash. The mirror pulsed in reply. I understood: these tools were vocabulary. Speak incorrectly, and you were unheard—or misheard.
For the first time, I held a fragment of the Monarch's comprehension: terrifying, magnificent, inevitable. This was no casual magic. This was a language older than kings, laws, grief itself.
Miss Mary watched me with a stillness and calm that felt effortless — not out of caution, but expectation. Her smile didn't fade. It simply waited.
I glanced once more at the mirror. The bone-white petals at its edge had begun to shift, curling inward like listening ears. The glass pulsed faintly, not with light, but with attention.
I felt it then — not a voice, not a thought, but a presence. The Pale Monarch was not gone. It had never left. It was simply watching, through the tools, through the language, through me.
And somewhere beyond the basin, beyond the scroll, beyond the sigils and the blade, I felt another presence stir.
Not the Monarch.
The other one.
The one that feeds.
The one that hungers.
The one that waits for mortals to mistake ritual for control.
I closed my eyes, and the mirror pulsed again. It was no longer just a translator. It was a mouth. And I had begun to speak.
Even as I lowered the mirror and let the scroll rest against my knees, a thought scraped along the edges of my mind: Empress Dǒu had not simply written these words for guidance. She had touched something deeper, something no mortal ought to hold. Perhaps she had glimpsed the hunger and leaned close enough to whisper back. Perhaps, in some fragment of the world beyond time, a shadow of her still waits, folded into the one she sought to become.
The wind outside stirred the jade leaves. For a heartbeat, it seemed to sigh in recognition. And then the palace exhaled its silence once more, patient, eternal, and impossibly watchful.