That night, thunder rolled over the palace, and rain swept through the corridors. Jian, cloaked and silent, descended through a hidden stairwell behind the old library.
The stairwell behind the old library groaned as Prince Jian descended farther into the earth, the only light his flickering lantern. Damp stone pressed close around him, the air thick with rot and silence. He had thought the hidden passage a mere myth, whispered about by unstable scribes and drunken servants. But here it was, carved into the bones of the palace like a wound long scabbed over and forgotten.
Every step echoed. Moss clung to the corners. The murals on the walls once brilliant depictions of celestial beasts and ancient kings had faded into ghostly smears. At last, the tunnel opened into a chamber far larger than he expected.
A single word entered his mind: tomb.
The chamber's ceiling arched high above, supported by blackened columns etched with sigils he didn't recognize. Rows of sealed urns lined the walls, labeled with names of provinces long absorbed or erased. Between them lay surgical tools, rusted restraints, and glass jars filled with suspended things limbs, eyes, something that twitched.
He nearly dropped the lantern.
Moving with care, Jian approached the center of the room where a broken shelf had collapsed, scattering brittle scrolls and fragments of ivory tablets. Among the debris, something caught his eye a scroll, half-buried and bound with golden thread.
He retrieved it and carefully unwrapped it.
It bore the royal seal.
And beneath it, the signature: Lian of the Blooming Moon.
His blood chilled. The Queen's personal mark on a scroll hidden in the depths of a sealed underground chamber. He skimmed the contents, each line more damning than the last. It was not a decree, but a record. A memorandum between Queen Lian and unnamed alchemists, detailing tests of bodily resilience, blood-binding rituals, and attempts to reanimate soldiers.
Soldiers who had died.
Jian's hands trembled.
He turned as a sound scraped the silence. Footsteps soft, deliberate.
Out of the shadows emerged a figure in a deep-gray cloak, the hood pulled low.
"You shouldn't be here, Prince Jian," the figure said, voice low but calm.
Jian tensed. "Who are you?"
The stranger didn't answer directly. Instead, he extended a hand not in threat, but offering an emblem. A pendant shaped like an open eye within a lotus.
Jian stared. "That symbol... it's not from the Empire."
"Because your empire isn't whole," the man replied. "Not above, and certainly not beneath."
Jian narrowed his gaze. "You knew this chamber existed. How many others like it?"
"More than you can cleanse."
A pause. The air felt thinner.
"The Yuanjian Society watches. And warns," the man continued. "Do not confuse curiosity with readiness. What you've uncovered tonight has already cost lives."
Jian took a step forward. "Then tell me everything. Help me expose this."
The hooded man shook his head. "Exposure only matters if anyone believes. The court is already divided. The Queen controls the narrative. And the people... they fear sickness more than corruption."
The stranger backed away into the dark, his final words barely audible: "He who opens a sealed tomb must decide whether to become its keeper or its next occupant."
Then he was gone.
Jian chased him, but the man had vanished like smoke through unseen cracks.
Returning to the surface, Jian moved with the urgency of one who knows too much. He locked himself in his chambers, spreading the documents across the table, hands stained with dust and ink.
One scroll was different from the others. Not a report, but a royal genealogy altered. Names scratched out. Others added.
One name struck him: Han Lu.
Marked as deceased twenty years ago. But with a handwritten correction beside it: "Reinstated under protocol 27-B. Site: Mourning Light."
Mourning Light. That name again.
He had heard it only once before from a former kitchen servant, now missing. A cult, perhaps. Or a sect embedded within the palace itself.
Before he could dig further, a knock startled him.
"Your Highness," came a voice. "You have a visitor."
"At this hour?"
"General Wei Shen."
Jian blinked. General Wei had been exiled after the border campaign collapse. Why now?
He composed himself and allowed entry.
The door opened, and in stepped the legendary general, older now, silver streaking his beard, eyes like stormclouds. He did not bow.
"You've stirred the hornet's nest, boy," Shen said. "And now it's watching."
"How do you know what I've found?"
Shen glanced at the documents spread before them. "Because I helped bury them."
Jian stepped back. "You were part of it?"
"I was a shield. I followed orders. But when my men started returning from death, when my son no longer recognized his own face I left."
Silence lingered.
Shen stepped closer. "You want to know the truth? It doesn't come from a scroll. It bleeds. It weeps. And it's still alive."
Jian clenched his fists. "Then help me stop it."
Shen face softened, a crack in stone. "You need allies. And not all of them will be saints."
He tossed a small pouch onto the table. Inside: a wax seal in the shape of a veiled flame.
"Find the woman named Giselle," Shen said. "She knows how this started in the West. She'll tell you how it ends."
Then, without another word, the general vanished back into the night, leaving Jian with more names, more questions, and a rising tide of dread.
Outside, thunder rumbled across the capital.
And somewhere beneath the palace, the dead waited for dawn.