The palace moved as if walking on broken glass. Ministers spoke in whispers that never reached my ears, eunuchs bowed but did not meet my gaze, guards stood at their posts with faces carved from stone. The judgment had fallen, yet no blade had yet struck. That was worse.
Wu Ling was confined to her chambers, the crimson veil still upon her, though now it was more shroud than ornament. The court waited for the word of her end. In the silence, speculation thrived. Some said she would be executed by decree, others that her father would demand the right himself. No one dared say aloud that perhaps she had already died, and the veils hid only a ghost.
I went to her.
Her chamber smelled of lotus, but beneath it lingered something bitter, like ash scattered over damp stone. The braziers guttered when I entered, though no wind touched them. She was seated on the floor before a lacquered screen, her veil lowered, her hands folded. Guards withdrew as though relieved to let me pass.
"You came," she said. Her voice was steady, too steady.
"You are still my sister," I answered.
The words were true, but they carried no warmth. She searched me through the thin veil, as if trying to pierce the shadow that coiled within me. For a heartbeat, her mask slipped; I saw something like relief that I had not abandoned her entirely. Then it hardened again.
"You were always the favored one," she said. "Even silence bends toward you. Even our father—" Her breath caught. "I bled for his name, but he never looked at me as he looked at you."
Her tone cut, but the blade had dulled. I did not flinch.
"We were both his tools," I told her. "The difference is that I stopped asking to be sharpened."
Her fingers trembled. For the first time, I saw her afraid — not of death, not of judgment, but of me. The thing beneath my ribs stirred then, cool and vast, and the brazier's flame bent sideways, as though drawn toward me. She saw it too.
"What have you become?" she whispered.
I did not answer. Silence answered for me.
Her eyes widened, not with accusation, but with recognition. She leaned closer, the veil brushing her lips against the floor. "The monk promised me," she murmured. "Promised that the Emperor would love me, that our father would see me, if I only followed. I prayed. I obeyed. I heard… something." Her breath shivered. "And now I hear it in you."
The air thickened. Shadows curled along the screen, spirals faint as water stains, vanishing when I blinked.
"You welcomed it," I said.
Her veil quivered. "Because it was the only thing that spoke to me."
For a long time, we sat in that silence. Brother and sister, bound not by love but by a darkness that had chosen us both in different ways. I felt almost pity. Almost.
When I left, the braziers died without smoke.
In the days that followed, rumors spread. Wu Ling prayed each night, louder, more frantic, her voice carrying beyond the screens. Then she stopped. Eunuchs whispered she refused food. Ministers claimed she laughed to herself, muttering of voices no one else heard. Some said she tore her veils to shreds, others that she wove spirals with the ashes of her incense. Wu Kang begged to see her, but the Lord Protector forbade it.
On the fourth morning, the bells tolled once.
Wu Ling was found in her chambers, her body still, her veil soaked in her own blood. The court said suicide. No one questioned it. Better a quiet shame than a public execution.
But the guards who stood outside her chamber swore that in the night they heard her speaking, not in one voice but in two — her own and another, deeper, vast, echoing as though the stones themselves had answered her.
I did not go to see her body. I did not need to.
When the bells stilled, the silence beneath my ribs spread outward, vast as a tide retreating, leaving the world hollow for what would return.