chapter : Six
The Ritual Chamber of the Inner Palace did not smell of incense; it smelled of ozone and old, cold copper.
Long Feng walked beside me, his pace leaden. He did not look at the guards or the ancient tapestries. He looked only at the spiritual shackles bound to his wrists—cuffs of white jade that pressed against his meridians, crushing his golden Qi into silence. He was the Emperor of Yan, yet he was being led like a dog to watch his own heart be flayed.
The attendants were silent. They stripped me to the waist with practiced, clinical efficiency. I stood exposed in the center of the chamber, the silver-black ink on my skin pulsing rhythmically, as if sensing the predator in the room.
The Empress Dowager circled me. She looked at me as a master weaver looks at raw silk—assessing the quality, calculating exactly how much tension the thread could bear before snapping.
"The ink has spread faster than the records predicted," she murmured. She traced a cold, dry finger along my collarbone, right where the Void's hand had left its mark. "You drink deeply, girl. That is good. The Loom requires a voracious appetite."
"What is... the Loom?" I asked. My voice was a thin, trembling thing.
The Empress smiled. It was the weary smile of a gardener explaining the necessity of pruning. "The Loom is the foundation of the world, child. And you are about to become its most precious thread."
I looked to Long Feng. He stood at the edge of the circle, his knuckles white, his hands shaking so violently that blood dripped from his palms—he had clenched his fists so hard his nails had pierced the skin. His aura was a wild, jagged fire, but it was directionless, lashing at nothing. For the first time, I saw the true depth of his impotence.
"Begin," the Empress commanded.
The first needle did not look like metal. It was a shard of crystallized Imperial Qi, long and humming with a predatory light. The Empress did not hesitate. She drove it into my wrist.
The pain was not sharp. It was an invasion. It felt as though molten glass were being poured directly into my bone marrow, burning through the silver-black veins, caging them. I felt my skeleton vibrate. My teeth ground together until I tasted blood, but I did not scream. I would not give her that.
As the second needle pierced my shoulder, the world fractured.
I heard a sound like glass cracking from the inside out. The chamber did not fade; it dissolved, and I was falling—not through space, but through layers, sinking beneath the marble and the foundation, down into the black glass roots of the world.
In the center of a vast cavern stood a figure—tall, skeletal, wrapped in a thousand vibrating strands of light and shadow. It was not a corpse. It was not alive. It was woven. Gold threads were stitched through its eyes; silver threads were pulled through its throat.
It was the First Ancestor. The Living Loom. It was screaming, a soundless vibration that shook the very atoms of the cavern. It had been screaming for ten thousand years, and that scream had become the mortar that held the Empire together.
Do you see now, little ghost? the True Voice whispered. Every Emperor. Every vessel. They are not buried. They are added to the weave. And when the Empress calls you the Golden Thread, she means you are the one who will replace the First Ancestor at the center of the pain.
The third needle struck my throat, driven directly through the black handprint of the Void.
The scream finally broke from me—not from my throat, but from somewhere deeper, where the hundred dead girls lived. It was a discordant screech that tore through the chamber, shattering the ceremonial mirrors lining the walls.
Long Feng lunged. The jade shackles on his wrists exploded into white dust as his killing intent finally burst its dam. The attendants were thrown back like autumn leaves. But as he reached the edge of the ritual circle, the Empress did not move.
"Feng," she said softly. "If you break the needles now, the ink will consume her heart. Do you wish to save her, or do you wish to kill her faster?"
Long Feng froze. He looked at me, and I saw it in his eyes—the absolute, crushing horror of a man who realized that his love was the very thing that made my torture necessary.
The Empress did not wait for his permission. She drove the final needles into my spine.
The gold filigree spread across my skin like wings of fire, caging the Void, binding it to my flesh. When it was over, I collapsed. My body felt heavy, alien—as if I were no longer made of meat and bone, but of metal and shadow.
I was dressed in the robes of the Consort of Shadows—heavy silks of black and gold that felt like a shroud. Long Feng lifted me. He did not speak. He carried me to the throne room where the "reunion" had been staged.
The doors opened.
Xiao stood there. His hair was pinned so tightly that thin rivulets of blood had dried at his temples, dark against his too-pale skin. He was drowning in embroidered robes so heavy he swayed when he walked. When he saw me, he did not run. He did not cry.
He bowed.
"Honored Sister," he whispered, his voice a flat, rehearsed thing. "This humble servant greets the Consort of Shadows."
I reached for him, my fingers trembling as I brushed his cheek. My heart broke. I could see him. I could hear his shallow breath. But the tactile memory—the specific, soft warmth of my brother's skin—was gone. He felt like stone. Like cold wax. Like something that had been alive once but was now just a shape.
I had lost the feel of him.
"Your sister has made you a Prince, young Xiao," a voice said.
Prince Hou stepped from the shadows behind the boy, his hand resting gently on Xiao's shoulder. He looked at me, his eyes full of a terrible, feigned compassion.
"You must protect her now," Hou whispered to the boy. He reached into his robe and pulled out a smooth, opalescent pearl, pressing it into Xiao's small palm. "When your sister is in pain, give her this. It will stop the Void from taking her memories."
Xiao's eyes lit up—the first spark of the boy I knew. He clutched the pearl like a lifeline.
"I will protect you, Sister," Xiao said, his voice full of a desperate, childish need to be a hero.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to warn him. But Hou's gaze met mine over the boy's head, and I saw the truth. He had weaponized Xiao's love.
That night, in the Phoenix Chamber, the gold filigree burned beneath my skin, a constant, humming reminder of my cage. The True Voice returned, a cold wind in the back of my mind.
The pearl is a leash, little ghost. But it is also a key. If you want to see the Loom with your own eyes, you must drink from it. And when you do, you will hear the First Ancestor's true name.
I looked at Long Feng, who lay beside me, his eyes open and fixed on the jade ceiling—as if he could see through it, down into the black glass cavern where his future waited.
What is their name? I thought.
The Voice laughed.
Ask your Emperor. He knows. His mother made him memorize it when he was five. It was the first lesson of his reign: the name of the child he would one day replace.