The banquet was not held in the imperial hall, but in the Pavilion of Whispering Stones — a quieter chamber, smaller, yet somehow more oppressive. The air smelled of sandalwood, plum wine, and blood hidden beneath silk.
They called it a feast to honor Wu Kang's triumph.
But the knives on the table were not just for meat.
Beneath banners of victory and red-gold tapestries, the ministers gathered like crows around a fresh corpse. Musicians played strings too softly to matter. Eunuchs poured wine with trembling hands. The emperor sat glazed in honeyed wine, half-listening.
And in the shadows, the watchers gathered.
Wu Kang sat in the seat of honor, clad in red and iron. His smile was tight. Practiced. Next to him, Wu Jin said little — but his eyes never stopped moving. He watched the crowd like a man counting knives.
I took my place at the lower table. Not ignored. Not exalted.
Exactly where I wanted to be.
Princess Lianyu entered last.
Draped in Southern silk, pale green and river-threaded, she walked with the weight of someone who did not fear poison in her wine. When she bowed, she bowed to no one in particular — a general gesture of courtesy that honored no throne.
The court called it "diplomatic decorum."
I called it defiance.
Her gaze flicked to mine across the room.
No smile. Only acknowledgment.
Wu Ling was already seated when I arrived. Veiled. Still. As unreadable as the Buddha whose statue once smiled before it crumbled.
No words passed between us.
But I felt the pressure. Like something coiled beneath our skin, shared and unspoken.
Halfway through the feast, Shen Yue arrived beside me, whispering in low tones as wine flowed around us.
"Wu Kang's generals have started offering land grants to neutral nobles," she murmured. "He's buying favor. Quietly."
"And the Lord Protector?"
"Silent," she said. "But the eastern governors are watching. If Wu Kang wins them, the balance tips."
I nodded slightly. "Then he must be reminded that shadows also pay in blood."
She blinked. "You're planning something?"
"No. But something is planning for me."
Across the room, Han Qing stood at his post — not dressed in ceremonial armor, but in reinforced light gear, black and navy. A branch of the Golden Dragon Army not meant for parades. City watch and corridor control — the kind of post given to men who see too much and speak too little.
I placed him there.
He noticed a courier near the kitchen—a young man with a servant's badge, too clean, too calm. Han Qing moved without a word. A hand at the shoulder. A whisper. A dagger found in the sleeve. A note sewn into the lining of his robe.
The servant never made it past the wall.
Later, he would report the message to me directly.
"There is more beneath your city than stone."
"We remember who drank first."
Signed: The Cult of the River Eyes."
When I turned back to my cup, Lianyu was beside me.
No one had seen her move.
She poured her own wine. Not the palace kind — a dull blue spirit from the southern marshes.
"You drink too little, Brother."
"I drink with caution."
"Always so careful."
Her voice was soft. Clean as glass. Her eyes reflected the candlelight like deep water — not black, but full of something deeper.
"You were not sent here to negotiate peace," I said.
"No," she said calmly. "I was sent here to watch."
"Watch what?"
She smiled faintly.
"Which brother drowns first."
She lifted her cup.
"The Southern Kingdom is not united. Not really. The King sleeps while his nephews sharpen knives. Our priests chant to gods whose names change by the season."
She leaned closer.
"But they all feel it now. The pull. The stirring. Even in the shrine of Coral Roots, where our grandmothers were buried, the waters run black in the morning."
My blood turned cold.
"Do you know what they say about Cao Wen in the south?" she asked.
I did not answer.
"That a ghost walks its halls. That a prince stared into the dark... and it stared back."
She sipped her wine.
"Tell me, Wu An. What did you see beneath the earth?"
I did not reply.
But that night, the dreams returned.
Not dreams.
Visions.
The feast was gone. The palace burned. Blood poured from the mouths of the marble dragons, staining the white stones like ink.
Lianyu stood at the center, wearing a blindfold stitched with human hair. Behind her — a shadow shaped like a monk with too many hands, its mouth filled with spirals.
And the sky above us — not sky. Not stars.
Only an endless lotus. Inverted. Open. And watching.
I awoke to screams.
A servant was found dead in the inner garden, throat slashed open. But not randomly — surgically. Tongue laid across his chest. Spiral carved behind his right ear.
The Lord Protector ordered silence. No public alarm.
But I saw the seal pressed into the wax of the message clutched in the dead man's sleeve:
The Inverted Lotus.