In Heaven's records, where mortal fates are written, this night would be marked in blood. Snow fell over Vermilion Palace like ash from a burned heaven, each crystalline flake settling upon the crimson roofs with the deliberate weight of destiny. The torches along the courtyard burned low, their flames strangled by winds that carried more than mere cold; they bore whispers of ancient prophecies and the promise of changes that would reshape the very foundations of the world.
The palace itself had transformed into a crimson-and-white sepulcher, heavy with secrets too monstrous to speak aloud. Below, the imperial city pulsed with its usual thousand lights, but here within these walls, even the stones sensed that endings had come calling.
In the eastern wing, where moonbeams fell through latticed windows like silver tears, Princess Xue sat by her window in lonely vigil. The moon cast its ethereal light upon her face, illuminating features that seemed to come from starlight itself. At seventeen, she possessed a beauty touched by the celestial, but it was her luminous eyes that truly marked her as something beyond mortal ken. They held depths that should not exist in one so young, clear, bright, almost glowing with an inner fire that made even the bravest courtiers look away in unease.
Those who remembered her mother spoke of inherited grace, but the wise servants who had scrubbed bloodstains from ancient stones whispered of something else entirely. Something that had slumbered in the imperial bloodline since the dynasty's founding, when the first emperor claimed descent from the celestial dragons themselves.
Her dreams were not dreams at all, but genetic echoes of a time when her ancestors ruled from storm-tossed heavens. Visions of wings vast enough to embrace mountain peaks scorched her sleeping soul. Fire that could boil oceans dry rolled from her throat in midnight fantasies. Her heart beat with the rhythm of creation's own forge, thunderous and primal. These sacred visitations remained locked within her breast, too dangerous to share with trembling attendants, too heretical to confess to white-faced priests who crossed themselves when she passed.
She feared what they might mean, never suspecting that in her veins flowed the last pure drops of dragon blood, the final inheritance of a lineage that had once made the gods themselves take notice.
Death announced itself with a genteel tap of knuckles against carved wood.
Xue rose quickly, drawing her silk robe around her like armor, and called softly for them to enter. The court lady, who slipped through the doorway, moved as though treading upon hallowed ground, prostrating herself until her forehead met the stone floor with the finality of a coffin lid closing.
Her voice trembled like falling leaves: 'Princess, the Son of Heaven commands your presence.'
Through corridors that echoed with the ghosts of queens and concubines, Xue followed her executioner's herald. Carved dragons watched from every pillar and beam, their jade eyes seeming to track her passage with ancient recognition, as though greeting a long-lost queen returning to claim her rightful throne. The very air thrummed with accumulated history, and she felt something stirring in the deepest chambers of her heart, something ancient and powerful that had slumbered since her birth.
When the massive bronze doors of the throne room groaned open, they revealed a scene that the gods could have painted to illustrate the price of empire. The great chamber opened before her like a theater waiting for the last scene of a tragedy century in the making.
The emperor sat collapsed against his dragon throne like a broken marionette, dwarfed by the golden monument to departed glory. His hair, once black as lacquer, now showed streaks of silver that had appeared overnight. Scrolls and reports lay scattered at his feet like the bones of his empire's dying dreams. His eyes, once bright with the fire of conquest, now held only the ashes of too many necessary sacrifices.
Around him, ministers stood like mourners at a funeral, their faces masks of practiced neutrality that concealed hearts heavy with foreknowledge. No one dared meet her eyes, for they knew she was the corpse they came to mourn.
Xue approached with steps measured like a ritual dance, her silk robes whispering secrets to stones that had witnessed a thousand such sacrifices. She bowed with imperial grace, her forehead nearly touching the floor, worn smooth by the tears of countless supplicants.
.
Father.
A word lingered in the air like the last note of a funeral song. His gaze met hers across the gulf between ruler and ruled, and she saw the instant his paternal heart died. The mask of imperial authority wavered, revealing beneath it only a broken man who had already buried too much of his soul to save what remained of his empire.
Xue, daughter of my blood, his voice resonated with the authority of centuries, yet beneath it trembled the breaking notes of a father's grief. The wheel of fate turns, and I have chosen you.
The silence stretched taut as a bowstring. Princess Xue lifted her head, puzzled and already dreading what was to come.
The pronouncement that followed reverberated like temple bells tolling to proclaim a festival of endings: General Jarek Wan will be your husband.
The throne room transformed into a tomb. At that moment, the threads of fate that had been spinning for generations suddenly pulled taut. Every soul present felt the cosmic significance without understanding it, as though they stood at the epicenter of an earthquake that would reshape not just kingdoms, but the very nature of what was possible in the world.
Xue's lips parted, but the words struggled against the noose of destiny tightening around her throat. Every person in the empire knew the whispered legends of the Demon General, beautiful as Lucifer before the fall, terrible as the wrath of heaven, cursed with a doom that had claimed three brides before their feet could cross his threshold. Some claimed he devoured them like a beast. Others swore the heavens themselves struck them down, determined to keep his accursed bloodline from propagating.
Why does it have to be me? The cry carried the pain of every daughter ever forced to bear more than any mortal should, bleeding out like an open wound. The emperor's composure shattered like crystal beneath a hammer blow. For the first time in decades, he broke his voice and said, Empires build upon the bones of the beloved, and people must purchase peace with the most precious coin. You, my daughter, are the last jewel in the crown I must trade for our people's tomorrow.
Terror crawled up her spine like frost claiming a dying flower. She searched his face desperately, the father who had once sung her lullabies, seeking mercy, seeking love, seeking anything remotely human. Instead, she found only the hollow stare of a ruler who had bartered away his humanity one compromise at a time.
Father, I am afraid.
He closed his eyes as though her words were physical blows raining upon his heart. His hands gripped the armrests of his throne until his knuckles went white. When he spoke again, his voice carried the weight of all the emperors who had ruled before him: Fear is the shadow cast by duty's light, my daughter. It proves that what we sacrifice has value.
Princess Xue kneeled on merciless stones, her tears falling like the first drops of an approaching deluge. Her sorrow joined an ocean of grief that had flowed through these halls for a thousand years, but in her chest, something stirred that had not moved for centuries. The fire in her heart pulsed stronger now, that inexplicable warmth that made her eyes glow like captive stars and her dreams burn with otherworldly flame.
Around her, ministers shifted like uncomfortable ghosts, guardians of a moment that would echo through the ages. The silence stretched like the shadow of a gallows, but not one voice rose in her defense.
High above in the gallery, where darkness pooled like spilled ink, Mira Li observed with the satisfaction of a spider whose web had finally snared its intended prey. The elder princess possessed beauty sharp enough to draw blood and cunning like a crown, her midnight pendant capturing torchlight as she concealed her smile behind silk sleeves.
Her thoughts coiled and struck like serpents: Let the dragon-touched child take the path meant for imperial blood. Let her bear the curse I was clever enough to avoid. The old witch spoke truly. Xue carries the fire of the ancients. Let the Demon General awaken what lies sleeping in her bones. Let him achieve what I never had the strength to try.
But Mira's calculations, clever as they seemed, failed to account for the true nature of what was awakening. This was not merely ancient magics grinding against each other; this was the return of something the world had forgotten it needed.
Far beyond frozen peaks and valleys where no bird sang, General Jarek Wan sat in solitude beneath a canvas that had sheltered him through a hundred campaigns. He knew neither her name nor the power that flowed in her veins like liquid starfire, but the shadow-wraith that served him had already whispered its prophecy: mortal steel alone would not win the war to come.
For in the deepest chambers of Princess Xue's heart, where neither priest nor physician could reach, something primordial was stirring. After ages of sleep, the dragon's soul stirs, recalling the freedom of flight, the blaze of fire, and the power to shape the heavens by its will.
The wheel was turning, an age was ending, and from the ashes of the past, something unimaginable was about to be born.