In Heaven's records, where mortal fates are written, this night would be marked in blood. Snow fell over Vermilion Palace like ash from a burned heaven, each crystalline flake settling upon the crimson roofs with the deliberate weight of destiny. The torches along the courtyard burned low, their flames strangled by winds that carried more than mere cold; they bore whispers of ancient prophecies and the promise of changes that would reshape the very foundations of the world.

The palace itself had transformed into a crimson-and-white sepulcher, heavy with secrets too monstrous to speak aloud. Below, the imperial city pulsed with its usual thousand lights, but here within these walls, even the stones sensed that endings had come calling.

In the eastern wing, where moonbeams fell through latticed windows like silver tears, Princess Xue sat by her window in lonely vigil. The moon cast its ethereal light upon her face, illuminating features that seemed to come from starlight itself. At seventeen, she possessed a beauty touched by the celestial, but it was her luminous eyes that truly marked her as something beyond mortal ken. They held depths that should not exist in one so young, clear, bright, almost glowing with an inner fire that made even the bravest courtiers look away in unease.

Those who remembered her mother spoke of inherited grace, but the wise servants who had scrubbed bloodstains from ancient stones whispered of something else entirely. Something that had slumbered in the imperial bloodline since the dynasty's founding, when the first emperor claimed descent from the celestial dragons themselves.

Her dreams were not dreams at all, but genetic echoes of a time when her ancestors ruled from storm-tossed heavens. Visions of wings vast enough to embrace mountain peaks scorched her sleeping soul. Fire that could boil oceans dry rolled from her throat in midnight fantasies. Her heart beat with the rhythm of creation's own forge, thunderous and primal. These sacred visitations remained locked within her breast, too dangerous to share with trembling attendants, too heretical to confess to white-faced priests who crossed themselves when she passed.

She feared what they might mean, never suspecting that in her veins flowed the last pure drops of dragon blood, the final inheritance of a lineage that had once made the gods themselves take notice.

Death announced itself with a genteel tap of knuckles against carved wood.

Xue rose quickly, drawing her silk robe around her like armor, and called softly for them to enter. The court lady, who slipped through the doorway, moved as though treading upon hallowed ground, prostrating herself until her forehead met the stone floor with the finality of a coffin lid closing.

Her voice trembled like falling leaves: 'Princess, the Son of Heaven commands your presence.'

Through corridors that echoed with the ghosts of queens and concubines, Xue followed her executioner's herald. Carved dragons watched from every pillar and beam, their jade eyes seeming to track her passage with ancient recognition, as though greeting a long-lost queen returning to claim her rightful throne. The very air thrummed with accumulated history, and she felt something stirring in the deepest chambers of her heart, something ancient and powerful that had slumbered since her birth.

When the massive bronze doors of the throne room groaned open, they revealed a scene that the gods could have painted to illustrate the price of empire. The great chamber opened before her like a theater waiting for the last scene of a tragedy century in the making.

The emperor sat collapsed against his dragon throne like a broken marionette, dwarfed by the golden monument to departed glory. His hair, once black as lacquer, now showed streaks of silver that had appeared overnight. Scrolls and reports lay scattered at his feet like the bones of his empire's dying dreams. His eyes, once bright with the fire of conquest, now held only the ashes of too many necessary sacrifices.

Around him, ministers stood like mourners at a funeral, their faces masks of practiced neutrality that concealed hearts heavy with foreknowledge. No one dared meet her eyes, for they knew she was the corpse they came to mourn.

Xue approached with steps measured like a ritual dance, her silk robes whispering secrets to stones that had witnessed a thousand such sacrifices. She bowed with imperial grace, her forehead nearly touching the floor, worn smooth by the tears of countless supplicants.

.

Father.

A word lingered in the air like the last note of a funeral song. His gaze met hers across the gulf between ruler and ruled, and she saw the instant his paternal heart died. The mask of imperial authority wavered, revealing beneath it only a broken man who had already buried too much of his soul to save what remained of his empire.

Xue, daughter of my blood, his voice resonated with the authority of centuries, yet beneath it trembled the breaking notes of a father's grief. The wheel of fate turns, and I have chosen you.

The silence stretched taut as a bowstring. Princess Xue lifted her head, puzzled and already dreading what was to come.

The pronouncement that followed reverberated like temple bells tolling to proclaim a festival of endings: General Jarek Wan will be your husband.