The cold palace smelled of ashes and silence.
Snow piled at the threshold. No one came to sweep it away.
Shen Lian sat on the ground in her blood-red robes, hair undone, holding a cup of poisoned wine.
The imperial decree lay beside her—gold-inked words of dismissal, signed by the Emperor she once helped crown.
"I bled for your throne," she whispered. "I burned bridges for your crown."
She raised the cup.
"Drink it," the eunuch had said. "Make it easy."
She did.
No tears. No struggle. Just a smile that cut deeper than any blade.
Then she stood.
And drew a hairpin from her robes.
With one stroke, she severed a long strand of her hair and flung it onto the snow.
"This is the last thing you'll take from me," she said, voice low and cold.
"I die today, but I will return."
She fell forward.
The snow caught her.
And the world went white.
When she opened her eyes, the air smelled of plum blossoms.
She was thirteen again.
A child. Weak, soft, forgotten.
But not this time.
She sat up in the familiar stone courtyard, heart pounding like war drums.
Then she heard it—a cough.
A boy, ragged and bleeding, collapsed nearby. Thin limbs. Empty eyes.
"Save me," he whispered.
She remembered him—mad with devotion in her past life, kneeling for her outside the palace gates.
She rose slowly, hair falling around her face.
This time, she would not wait to be cast aside.
This time, she would choose.
She lifted his chin.
"You'll live," she said.
"But you'll belong to me."
She turned toward the gates.
And smiled.
The cold palace had killed her once.
Now, it would regret not burying her deeper.
To be continued in Chapter 2: The Request for Exile