YUN RONG XIAN (雲榮羡)

  Day 5, 5th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Taishan Province, Tian’an Sect

  She is smart. She will understand.

  Or not.

  Had I misjudged her? I expected defiance. Some resistance even, however small. If she had, her life would have ended then and there. That’s why I sedated her with a needle.

  But she didn’t move. Not even once.

  I thought she would lash out. That she would scream, bite, curse. I had no reason to believe she would behave rationally.

  And yet…

  She didn’t fight back.

  In fact, she had closed off from me entirely.

  It was that moment the Empress called me. I saw her expression.

  The way her eyes went cold.

  She would never trust me again.

  And that—that was fair.

  “What is your request, Your Highness?” Jiang Feng’s voice was quiet, almost deferential. It had only been an hour since the Emperor sentenced me to house confinement for insubordination. Yet, the guards stationed outside my study wore crimson. The Empress’ colours, not the Emperor’s. A quiet confirmation of who had really ordered my confinement.

  We sat in silence, the study stifled and dim. Though the guards had the decency to observe from outside of my room, their predatory gaze was most unnerving. I drew the blinds tighter. Jiang Feng noticed and cracked his knuckles out of habit.

  BOOM.

  A peal of thunder. Faint but audible even across the palace grounds. Heavenly Lightning had begun.

  “Are you sure, Your Highness, that you have no request?” Jiang Feng tried again, his voice tighter this time.

  I did. But I couldn’t act on impulse. Barging into the execution grounds would be suicide. Pleading with the Empress would be laughed out of the room. No plan would work unless it was perfect.

  “What about An Lingqi?” he continued. “She’s a friend to Su Tang. Perhaps she—”

  “She’s still in Zhouwei. Quarantined by decree.” I turned to the shelves and pulled down a random scroll. It was a meaningless gesture. “You’re rather talkative today.”

  “I apologise for chattering.”

  “But you’re not sorry.”

  Silence. A long one. He clenched his jaw.

  “Speak now or never.”

  He rose to his feet. “With all due respect—how could you?” His voice cracked. “You abandoned her.”

  He began to pace, his hand tightening over the hilt of his blade. “When I swore loyalty to you, I knew it would come at a price. I knew it would cost me my father’s approval. But I did it gladly, because I believed in you. You were principled. You had integrity. You would never let an innocent suffer—never, even if it meant displeasing the Emperor.”

  He was at the edge of the room now. Face-to-face with me. That action only made him remember who he was—his position.

  He dropped to his knees. “Your Highness, your servant did not mean to offend.”

  “I know.” I leaned forward slightly.

  I struck him with the needle, quickly, and precisely. Just enough to draw blood. Just enough for the compound to take effect.

  Su Tang’s alchemical needles. I had kept one from that day she jabbed me. I had thought it foolish then, but now I saw its value.

  He reached for me, already growing sluggish.

  “Your Highness…why?”

  Because I needed him unconscious. Because ears were everywhere. Because the next steps of my plan could not afford witnesses, even loyal ones.

  “I am willing to do anything for Your Highness,” he whispered.

  Exactly. That was the problem.

  I looked him squarely in the eye. “Do you trust me?”

  His breath shuddered. “Always, Your Highness.”

  I laid a firm hand on his shoulder. “Then when you wake, do not look for me.”

  He slumped forward.

  I caught him before he hit the floor, then slipped a folded parchment into his hand. If I failed, he would know what to do. If I succeeded, he would never need to read it.

  “Why do you always do things alone?” he murmured now, his lucidity escaping him like smoke.

  Because I owe her. And because no one else should suffer for my miscalculations.

  I adjusted him gently onto the ground, removed his sword belt, and began to unfasten his armour. Then, I took his uniform and dressed myself in his place. I bound my hair the way he wore his—tight, unassuming, practical—and practiced his gait. Shorter strides, grounded steps. A guard’s posture.

  In the mirror, I caught my side profile. Our builds had been near identical, due to years of training together. I could pass for him. But before I could use his image, I needed to escape this prison.

  Swirling my fingers, I invoked the silent spell. I was not trying to dazzle. I was trying to disappear.

  The air thinned and the bones in my chest folded inward first, ribs compressing like dry reeds under frost. A dull cracking followed as my shoulders dislocated themselves from human restraint, shifting into the narrow joint structure of something far older. My flesh warped and pulled, muscles coiling into taut cords as if remembering an ancestral blueprint etched into marrow. Veins shuddered beneath the skin, then vanished, replaced by pale, glimmering scales that shimmered with a subdued opalescence.

  Shifting used to be a painful exercise, but now, it only sapped strength. Magic this ancient exacted its toll in blood and soul alike, even if I did not bleed. Pain or weakness.

  I couldn’t decide which was more inconvenient.

  At last, the spell completed. I stood not as a man, but in my primordial form; the one passed down from my father, and his father, and his father before him.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  The White Dragon. A silver-scaled, sharp-winged beast, the size of a small melon. I clung to the air, wings fluttering in precise rhythm, moving with less weight than a feather. The world had grown tenfold in scale. Floor tiles were now the size of rooftops; door cracks, gaping chasms.

  But I chose this form not for its power, but for its speed and discretion.

  I slipped through the slats of the shutters and bypassed the two guards outside.

  I flew low and fast.

  I had only to make it past the guards. Once I was near the judgement grounds, I would resume Jiang Feng’s face.

  Then, I’ll make amends. Su Tang.

  ***

  She looks so pale.

  Is she still alive?

  It’s difficult to tell. Lightning doesn’t merely punish the flesh—it scours it. That kind of divine strike isn’t for instilling fear.

  It’s built to erase.

  I move through the crowds slowly. Bodies press in around me, murmuring, whispering, tallying.

  Twenty-three strikes.

  Someone had been counting. They always did, these bored commoners. A public execution was just another diversion between war reports and rationing lines. A festival of sanctioned brutality. A window into power, handed out like a show.

  A voice cuts through the static.

  Familiar. Too familiar.

  Li Jing.

  If the princess’ maid was nearby, then so was she. My sister never sent others in her place. Not when it mattered.

  I glanced up.

  Tea green robes. Her expression was plain. But her eyes were too alert for someone pretending to be a passive observer.

  For someone who’d once been crushed under our mother’s hand, it was unusual to see her witnessing this torture scene.

  And earlier, too…why did she come to hear the Empress speak?

  She was planning something.

  The way she always did.

  Perhaps this was some form of retaliation. Retaliation for the murder of Governess Pan. Or perhaps, she was moved by pity. Pity for the girl who had saved her from death row after she was falsely accused of killing Chun Li. There were many reasons, and too little time to analyse them all.

  Either way, it was unlike her to act without cause.

  I looked to the sky. The clouds were too low, heavy with judgment. The kind of sky that remembered every insult.

  Some fools believed the Heavenly Lightning would stop at a set number. They thought divine wrath could be reasoned with, that there was mercy in procedure.

  They didn’t understand.

  The lightning would fall until the heavens were emptied. Until every drop of fury was spent. Until there was nothing left to burn.

  And someone had to bear it.

  Su Tang stood at the centre, tethered to the pole. Her hair snapped in the wind like a war flag. Her head tipped forward, chin low, the blood blending into her soaked sleeves. Her clothes were red now.

  Always red.

  She looked like someone who had died days ago.

  But that was how the Empress works.

  She begins with the soul. She doesn’t merely destroy a person.

  She dismantles the illusion of personhood itself.

  She did it with Ze Lujin. Now with Su Tang.

  Her Majesty finds the core of a person, the knot that holds everything together—their memories, their beliefs, their dignity—and she unravels it. Not with fire. With fear. Until the mirror reflects nothing, and even the idea of death feels too grand for what remains.

  Su Tang raised her head.

  Our eyes met.

  No, they couldn’t have. Not really. I was dressed in the outer court’s grey customary of guards, half-hidden in the tiers of spectators, my features obscured. And yet, she looked. Directly.

  Lightning struck again. The execution pole groaned. A column of smoke rose from the charred base.

  I turned and ascended the stone stands, ignoring the gasps behind me. Each level narrowed. Each step removed me further from the crowd, and closer to the sky.

  Hold on.

  My fingers formed the first Seal. I sat in the lotus position.

  Then I willed my spirit, soul, and body to combine.

  A single finger to my brow.

  A twist of the wrist.

  The sensation of spiralling awakened within as energy collected in my lower core, condensed into weight, and then into pressure.

  I let it go. The being emerged.

  Not with light. Not with thunder. But with force. A quiet rupture.

  My body rose, merging with the form I had called.

  A dragon, silvery-and-white-scaled, compacted with centuries of lineage and discipline. The primordial inheritance from my father’s line. Wings serrated like cut glass, coiled tail gliding through the currents of qi, and eyes like distilled mercury.

  It took everything to maintain.

  The first time I had performed this rite was on coronation day. A symbol. A test. Proof of my bloodline.

  Now I used it a second time.

  Not for my kingdom.

  Not for my family.

  For a girl who had exchanged her health to protect me. For someone who had no reason to protect me but did.

  The White Dragon moved with purpose.

  It shot upward, piercing through the smoke-choked sky. A streak of moonlight caught its scales, casting gleam across the execution ground. The winds bent around it.

  The heavens, slow to anger but slower still to forget, responded.

  Lightning fell again.

  This time, it struck the dragon.

  And the sky, for a moment, held its breath.

  “Yun Hui.”

  “Yes, Royal Father?”

  We stood alone in the vast grassland. The air was still, and the scent of summer clay and trampled grass clung to my nose. A single circular target had been placed roughly one hundred and fifty yards away. The centre had been bright red, but was slightly faded now, worn down by repeated strikes. It gave the illusion of nearness, though the distance was calibrated to deceive.

  Too many arrows had already landed. They clustered at the core in a neat constellation, their feathered ends gently vibrating from the impact. The kind of precision born not from talent, but from a thousand repetitions.

  Sweat dripped down the ridge of my brow. My fingers were raw, and my palms calloused. The bow was warm in my hand.

  Still, I liked the feeling. The weight of the weapon, the tautness of the string. It offered clarity.

  He knelt beside me and patted my head. The gesture was meant to be gentle. Calculated softness. That was always his way.

  “My son. You did well.”

  I lowered my gaze, formal. “Your son thanks his Royal Father for his compliments.”

  He withdrew another feathered arrow from the bundle at his side, tapped the side of my bow. Not enough force to startle but just enough to command attention.

  “Do you know why I insist you continue with these drills?” he asked. “Why bother, when you carry such a powerful primordial spirit?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. Because I knew he didn’t ask questions he didn’t intend to answer himself.

  My form spasmed mid-air and a tremor passed through the length of my spine. I tasted metal before the blood came. It spilled from my mouth in slow arcs as my body twisted against the sky.

  The pain was not a flash but a sustained pressure, as though hot wire had been threaded beneath my scales and dragged slowly through flesh. Each bolt peeled something from me.

  I could feel nerves unravelling.

  But I did not scream.

  Pain is information. Nothing more. It teaches; it reminds. It confirms that the body is still intact, capable of obeying the mind, however barely.

  Somewhere in the haze, a memory had surfaced.

  A sunlit training field. The scent of dust and oiled bowstrings. My father’s voice.

  I never asked why we were forbidden from calling upon our spirit forms. Not once. Obedience was easier than curiosity. Questions implied hesitation. And hesitation had no place in our lineage.

  I had only wanted to please him. To earn the smallest sign of regard. A nod. A word. Something more than silence.

  Another strike. Then another.

  “Because,” he swished his hand.

  Five dragon scales appeared above his palm, each one the size of a child’s hand. They floated in a slow orbit, turning gently in the sunlight. Their surfaces glimmered with quiet energy, pearlescent white and silver, with faint undercurrents of blue that pulsed like a steady breath. All except one.

  One scale was dull. Its edges chipped, its surface veiled in an ashen film that clung like soot. Where the others shimmered, it absorbed light.

  He did not look at me. His gaze remained fixed on the circle of scales, as if seeing something I could not.

  “Each of these holds a fragment of your soul,” he said. “They are anchors. They allow your spirit to return after death. Without them, there is no reincarnation.”

  I studied the broken one.

  “Royal Father,” I asked, “why is that one dull?”

  His jaw tightened.

  “It is damaged,” he said. “It is dead.”

  Then the Emperor turned, gripping both of my shoulders with a force that surprised me. The scales vanished from his hand.

  “Yun Hui,” he said. “Never reveal the true form of your primordial spirit. Never.”

  He held his bow up between us, wood worn smooth by years of practice.

  “This,” he said. “Use this.”

  He pressed a finger to the centre of my chest.

  “But never this.”

  Silvery scales peeled away, dislodged one by one, drifting like dimming stars. Each one that fell shimmered for an instant, then extinguished in the open air. I felt them leave me.

  The lightning carved through my spirit-body, replacing blood with raw current. My veins did not carry vitality anymore. They coursed with electricity.

  My wings faltered. The joints buckled and the thin membranes crackled. Smoke coiled from where tendon met scale, rising in steady threads. The burns didn’t linger in one place. They travelled, tracing the paths where energy used to flow.

  I could not control anything. Not the pain. Not the descent.

  The sky receded. And the clouds were snatched from me as gravity yanked me downward. The wind should have roared.

  Instead, there was silence.

  No whistling. No resistance. Only stillness as I plummeted, limbs limp, wings useless, scales trailing behind like ash from a fire already gone.

  She stood below.

  Su Tang.

  Her head tilted upward, her gaze unmoving, as if she already knew where I would fall. As if she had waited.

  But the lightning was done.

  No more retribution.

  No more judgment.

  I watched her shrink from above; a final image burned into my faltering sight.

  Su Tang. I have repaid you.