He learned the shape of this world through touch before he learned it through sight.
Warmth first, always warmth.
Arms that were not arms the way humans understood them, but that held him with the same certainty. A nest of living material that adjusted to his body as if the palace itself was listening. The air was thick with unfamiliar scent—minerals and something sweet, a faint iron bite beneath it—and when he breathed, his lungs took it in without protest, as if they had been waiting for this from the beginning.
Chu Yan spent his earliest days pretending.
Not because he wanted to deceive them, but because he had no choice. His mind was an adult's mind trapped in a body that could not lift its own head for long. He could think in full sentences and theories and vows, and yet the only language he could offer the world was a cry, a grasping hand, the helpless rhythm of hunger and sleep.
It was humiliating in a quiet way.
It was also, unexpectedly, safe.
The Emperor visited often.
Not like a distant ruler checking a cradle out of duty, but like a storm that had decided to orbit the nursery because something inside it pleased him. When the Emperor arrived, the palace changed. The attendants drew back. The air tightened. Even the organic walls seemed to still, as if the entire hive was holding its breath.
Chu Yan could not see him clearly at first. His vision was still soft around the edges, all shapes and shadow. But he could feel the Emperor's gaze.
It landed on him and did not move.
A pressure, heavy and protective, like a claw placed over the heart of the world.
When the Emperor's presence wrapped around him, Chu Yan's instincts—these new instincts, built into this infant body—quieted. Hunger softened. The urge to cry dulled. It was as if some ancient part of his cells recognized the ruler of this species and decided, with immediate obedience, that nothing could harm him while that presence remained.
The Empress came differently.
Where the Emperor was a storm, the Empress was the sea. She did not arrive with the same sharp silence, but the palace bent toward her all the same, not out of fear but out of belonging. When she leaned over him, the scent in the air changed—less iron, more sweetness—and Chu Yan found himself blinking slowly, drawn into a calm he could not explain.
Once, when he was only a few months old, he woke from a dream of headlights and rain.
For a moment he could not breathe.
His tiny chest hitched, panicked and shallow, as if his body remembered the car before his mind could stop it. His hands flailed, blind, searching for something that did not exist in this life.
The Empress was already there.
She did not speak. He did not think she needed to. Her presence pressed around him, soft but absolute, and her touch—warm, careful—settled over his back.
The panic ebbed.
In the quiet that followed, Chu Yan understood something that made his throat tighten even though an infant's throat could not properly hold such emotion.
They loved him.
Not because he had done anything. Not because he was useful. Not because he was clever. They loved him because he was theirs.
It should have been comforting.
It was terrifying too.
Because love was leverage. Love was a weakness in every world. Love was the thing that made people do terrible things to protect what they cherished.
And he was cherished.
He grew fast, the way ZERG bodies grew—quick, efficient, relentless. There was no gentle human stretch of years where a baby stayed soft and small for long. Each week his limbs gained strength. His muscles learned. His teeth came in with a faint ache that his body treated as routine.
His mind kept pace, watching, recording, fitting this empire into a framework he could understand.
The palace was alive.
Not metaphorically. The corridors breathed in a slow rhythm. The floors held warmth like skin. Doors did not open; they parted, membranes responding to scent and authority. Light was not from bulbs but from bioluminescent veins embedded in the walls, pulsing faintly like a sleeping creature's heartbeat.
Attendants moved like extensions of the hive. Some were high-class, their forms stable and dignified. Others were lower, their bodies more utilitarian, their eyes rarely lifting from the tasks given to them. They spoke in vibrations and gestures, in shared chemical cues.
And always, when the Emperor or Empress approached, every being in the palace made room.
Chu Yan watched the low-class ZERG most.
Not because he feared them, but because he recognized the look in them: function without choice. Existence without name. Life measured in usefulness.
It reminded him too much of what war did to humans.
He tried not to think of humans.
The memory of Earth was a thin, bright thread inside him. It burned when he touched it. Some days it felt like a promise. Some days it felt like grief.
He could not afford grief yet. Not in a world that might eat it as weakness.
His siblings appeared as he grew old enough to focus his eyes.
The First Prince visited the nursery sometimes, a presence too large for the room, curiosity and possessiveness braided together. He did not speak to Chu Yan in words. His attention was more animal than courtly, like an older predator inspecting a cub the hive had decided to treasure.
Once, when Chu Yan was barely able to sit, the First Prince leaned in too close and exhaled.
The scent hit Chu Yan like a wave: sharp, bright, commanding. His infant body reacted instantly—instinctive submission, a trembling stillness—and his mind snapped cold with anger.
He clenched his little fists until his nails dug into his palms.
The First Prince paused.
For a breath, his attention sharpened. He stared, and Chu Yan stared back with what little control he had.
Then, to Chu Yan's surprise, the First Prince withdrew.
Not offended. Almost… amused.
A vibration passed through the air, a sound that might have been laughter in another species.
After that, the First Prince came less often. But when he did, his presence held a fraction more restraint.
There were other royal presences too, farther away, like distant thunder. Chu Yan sensed them more than he saw them at first: the Second Prince, the Third Princess. Numbers, not names. Positions in a lineage.
In court, they were addressed only by rank.
In the palace, even tenderness was filtered through hierarchy.
"Beloved," the Empress would pulse against his cheek as she held him.
The Emperor would simply look at him and the meaning would fill the room: mine.
And the palace—this living hive—echoed it back in a thousand subtle ways.
Chu Yan began to understand why the empire adored him.
It wasn't just that he was born imperial.
It was that the Emperor and Empress made it clear, without ever needing to announce it, that their youngest was not negotiable.
On the day he learned to walk, he did not toddle uncertainly the way human babies did.
He stood.
He swayed once.
Then he moved forward with a careful, deliberate step, as if his body had been waiting for permission to obey him.
Attendants cried out softly in surprise, delighted and afraid to be delighted too loudly.
The Empress's presence brushed over him, a wave of pride so fierce it almost knocked him back.
The Emperor appeared at the doorway, watching.
Chu Yan took another step. Then another.
His legs wobbled, but he did not fall.
Because in his mind, falling belonged to another life. Falling belonged to rain and metal and the moment the world broke.
Here, he told himself, he would not fall so easily.
The Emperor approached.
He crouched—an enormous thing lowering itself to the level of a child—and extended a hand.
Chu Yan stared at it.
It was not a human hand. It was stronger, stranger, the shape of power carved into flesh. Yet the gesture was familiar.
Chu Yan placed his small palm against it.
The Emperor's fingers closed, careful in a way that should not have existed in a creature built for war. The grip was warm.
In that contact, a pulse of meaning traveled, heavy and quiet.
Grow.
Chu Yan's throat tightened again. His eyes stung, and he hated it. He hated that this body could cry so easily, that emotion could leak without permission.
So he swallowed it down.
He lifted his chin—an infant's chin, soft and ridiculous—and held the Emperor's gaze as if he were already someone worth being taken seriously.
The Emperor's attention held for a beat.
Then, to the shock of everyone in the room, the Emperor's presence softened.
Not much.
Just enough that the palace felt, for one instant, less like a hive and more like a home.
Chu Yan leaned into that softness and made himself a vow he did not speak aloud.
If they loved him like this, then he would make sure it was not wasted.
He would not let this empire remain only a weapon.
He would turn it into a place where love did not have to be a weakness.
Outside the nursery, the ZERG empire stretched vast and hungry across the stars.
Inside, a child took steady steps across a living floor, holding the Emperor's hand, carrying the memory of rain and headlights like a hidden knife.
And the whole palace, from the highest chamber to the lowest corridor, seemed to breathe the same word as he passed.
Beloved.