The pass was narrow. Jagged. Starved of sunlight.
A graveyard for ambitions.
And today, it belonged to me.
The first envoy died before he saw the arrow.
The second envoy's horse fell on him, crushing his ribs beneath splintered bone.
The rest scattered — too late.
Oil lit the rocks behind them. Smoke choked the pass. The screams were brief.
Then came the silence.
The right kind.
The kind that marks a completed design.
We descended with care.
Siyan's men retrieved the remains. Qu An sealed the escape route with rockslides, just as planned.
Chancellor Miao, the leader of this pathetic delegation, was dragged from the wreckage half-alive — his robes charred, his right eye blinded by ash.
I knelt before him.
"You came here with shackles," I said.
He coughed blood. Spat. "You'll hang for this."
"No," I murmured. "You'll disappear."
I reached into his tunic and pulled free the official decree. I expected Wu Kang's seal.
But what I found was older.
A lotus in full bloom.
Barbed. Inked in a style I'd seen once before, in a forbidden archive beneath Cao Wen.
Not Wu Kang's mark.
Wu Ling's.
Before I could speak, the air shifted.
Wind pushed through the canyon. Not from above — from within the stone.
Even the fire bent toward it.
Then came the sound. Not footsteps. Not hooves.
A bell.
She arrived in white.
Robes untouched by dust. Face veiled with silk so sheer it made her beauty ghostly.
The men stopped. Even Xue Lang went still.
She walked like memory walks — inevitable, unhurried, ancient.
And behind her came monks in grey, bare-footed, with spiral tattoos coiled up their necks.
Their mouths were sewn shut.
And they hummed.
Softly. Wrongly.
I recognized none of the faces.
But I recognized her.
Wu Ling.
Empress of Great Liang.
Our sister.
Forgotten in portraits. Silent in council. A woman history had trained itself to look past.
Until now.
She did not acknowledge the soldiers.
She walked to the ruined envoy cart, lifted the decree in her pale hands, and turned to me.
"I sent them," she said.
I stared.
"Why?"
She looked at Chancellor Miao, still groaning, half-conscious.
"Because Wu Kang plays at thrones."
She raised her hand.
One of the monks stepped forward.
The chancellor began to scream before the monk even touched him.
There was no blood.
Just silence.
Total.
As if he had been erased.
When the monk stepped back, nothing remained in the dirt. Not bones. Not cloth. Not ash.
Just a spiral, slowly smoking.
I reached for my blade.
She laughed. Soft. Hollow.
"Don't insult me," she said. "You're not the first prince to draw steel in fear."
I lowered it. Slowly.
"You came to stop me?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I came to see you."
Her eyes burned gold through the veil.
"I've heard you've begun remembering. The manor. The mirror. The ink."
She stepped forward.
"I want to know what it chose in you."
The sky above the canyon bent.
Not cloud.
Structure.
As if the world had been paper this whole time — and something above had begun folding it.
My soldiers staggered. Shen Yue collapsed to her knees, clutching her head, whispering words in a language no one had taught her.
I took one step forward.
The cliff beneath me breathed.
It breathed.
And from the rock, thin trails of blood emerged — not dripping.
Writing.
My name, over and over, spiraling inward.
Wu Ling raised her bell.
It did not ring.
It shuddered.
Reality twisted.
I reached for Shen Yue.
We ran.
Not away — there was no away.
Just down.
Into the spiral.
Into the only escape it left me.
The canyon had no exit now.
Only descent.
Only the choice to drown faster than they could catch us.
Behind us, Wu Ling stood like a goddess half-born from myth, her robes untouched by the ruin she brought.
She made no move to chase.
Only watched.
And smiled.
I do not know if I escaped.
Only that I am still falling.
And that somewhere, far above, they still think they're winning.
Let them.
I have seen the script.
And I am already writing the next page.