As the imperial court session drew to a close, the officials filed out like shadows stretching at dusk. The heavy bronze doors groaned shut behind us, sealing the throne room in silence once more. We descended the marbled steps of the Inner Pavilion, the air thick with unsaid thoughts and unspoken threats.
"Fourth Brother," came Wu Taian's voice—silken, sly—cutting through the tension. "I hadn't expected such a... bold suggestion from you today. It seems you've grown teeth."
I nodded without smiling. "Thank you, Third Brother."
He smirked, falling into step beside me. "Care to dine with me tonight? A few ministers from my faction are eager to speak with you."
"I must decline," I replied coolly. "I'm not feeling well."
Before he could respond, a louder voice cut in from above.
"Or perhaps he simply doesn't have time to entertain meaningless chatter."
Wu Kang descended from the higher platform, his golden robe shimmering in the afternoon light. "Your little dinner games bore him, Brother."
I turned to greet him, but as I opened my mouth, something else entered.
Do you hunger for power, Wu An? Real power—beyond blood, beyond the throne? Seek me.
A voice—not heard with the ears but felt—slithered into my skull, cold and vast like the breath of a thing buried beneath the sea of time.
I froze.
"What is it?" Wu Kang asked, stepping closer. "You look pale. Like you've seen a ghost."
I forced a smile. "I'm fine, Eldest Brother. Just a lingering headache. If you'll excuse me..."
Before I could retreat, Wu Jin, the quiet second brother, appeared from the shadows of the corridor. His expression unreadable as always, but his eyes were sharp—calculating.
"Strange," he said softly. "You were quite composed in court, but now... so shaken. You should rest, Fourth Brother. A clouded mind is easy to manipulate."
They watched me—each with their masks of concern, yet beneath them, I felt the weight of scrutiny. The crackle of unspoken ambition. I was no longer just the overlooked fourth son. Something had shifted today.
As I turned from them, their gazes lingered on my back like knives.
The voice slithered into my skull as I shut the chamber door behind me.
I froze. The air had turned thick, cloying with the stench of rotting lotus blossoms and wet earth. The candle flames guttered low, their light shrinking back as if afraid. Shadows pooled in the corners—not the passive darkness of night, but something hungry, something that watched.
Then, the shadows moved.
They peeled from the walls like strips of burned parchment, curling into the center of the room, coagulating into a shape that made my bones ache. Tall. Emaciated. Limbs too long, joints bending where flesh should not bend. Gold leaf clung to its paper-thin skin, flaking away to reveal the void beneath. Its face was a mockery of serenity—a Bodhisattva's smile carved into a corpse's lips, stretched too wide, too many teeth glinting like broken glass.
Its eyes were pits.
And yet, they saw me.
It whispered a hideous rasp, like a noose tightening around the throat of silence.
I didn't step back. My fingers found the dagger at my belt. "What are you?"
The thing tilted its head. Its neck cracked like dry kindling and smiled at me.
A chill crawled down my spine. My reflection in the bronze mirror twisted—eyes hollowed out, lips sewn shut with black thread.
It laughed, a sound like bones rattling in a hollow gourd.
I exhaled slowly. My pulse was steady. "What do you want?"
It extended a hand—skeletal fingers glistening with something dark and viscous.
The price hung between us, unspoken.
Its slime-coated fingers closed around mine, warm and wrong, and still—I took it, as if I had always known it would come for me.
Fire erupted behind my eyes.
Visions tore through me:
My eldest brother, Wu Kang, kneeling before an altar slick with blood, whispering to a shadow that was not this one. My father's hands, dripping red, placing a crown of severed heads upon his own brow. My youngest brother gasping his last breath in the dark, his throat slit by a blade with my own crest.
I gasped as the visions released me. Stumbled back, sweat dripping down my temples. It was gone.
But the weight of its presence lingered.
And in the mirror, my eyes flickered—just for a moment—with something darker than pupil, something that watched back.