Lin Rui watched her retreat down the hallway from the threshold of the Khan's quarters, and a sharp realization hit him. Princess Lian Zhi, a variable in his story, was behaving strangely. Unpredictable and out of character.
He had noticed small deviations before, but brushed them aside without much thought. A flash of boldness where there should have been hesitation. Or a spark of audacity that did not quite belong to the obedient arc he had written for her.
At the time, he had dismissed them as little glitches in the system, anomalies the narrative would eventually correct on its own. Perhaps that very unpredictability was part of what had drawn him to her in the first place.
But now, the pattern was impossible to ignore.
Her bravery had sharpened. Her choices were no longer reactive but deliberate. Almost dangerous. She moved as if she knew where the story was meant to go, and had decided she did not like the ending.
A thought slipped into his mind.
What if she was not supposed to be here?
What if she were like him?
The idea made his breath hitch for the briefest moment. Another consciousness. Another outsider trapped inside the framework of a story. Someone who remembered another life, another world, who could see the cracks in the narrative and push against them.
But no. That's impossible.
Lin Rui exhaled slowly and dismissed the thought just as quickly as it had appeared. He was the author. He was the only one who had crossed over. This world existed because he had written it, and he was here because he had collapsed into it.
Besides, he hadn't published the novel yet. No one should even know it existed, let alone fall into it.
Lian Zhi was a character. A beloved one, yes, but still a character. And as strange and defiant as she was, she was still bound to the story he had written.
But still, she had planned something. A rebellion. Not against the Khan or the country, but against him. Against the story. Against the wall of control he had carefully built as the Author.
She intended to escape... with Ruhan.
He could not allow it. She had to be guided back onto the track he had constructed. The story had to unfold as it should, or everything would unravel before he could ever find a way home.
He had to sever the connection. Ruhan could not remain a variable.
He had created Ruhan for a reason. To navigate the palace where the Khan could not, to hear what ears were not meant to catch, to see where eyes were forbidden. But his eyes had captured something unexpected. Something warm.
Princess Lian Zhi.
Every time she reached for Ruhan, the boundaries of the plot blurred. Every time Ruhan stayed to protect her, the story bent until it nearly snapped. It was not the wound on his back that terrified Lin Rui. It was the fact that Ruhan was starting to feel things that were never written into his character description.
Proximity had corrupted the purpose. Love had sabotaged the manuscript.
Ruhan could not remain.
The thought was cold, final, and clinical. It wasn't cruelty, it was editing. To save the story, he had to delete the variable.
And with that, he began planning. The removal would be clean, efficient, invisible to those who should not see, undeniable to those who must.
He walked back to his desk. His fingers lingered on the ink-stained parchment, on the brush he had wielded like a weapon to preserve the larger design.
"It has to be done."
He put on the Khan's robe, letting the heavy fabric settle over his shoulders once more. He fitted the mask over his face, hiding the Author behind the Sovereign. He rolled the parchment carefully and paused for a moment, took a steadying breath, then stepped toward the door. He moved with the perfect composure of the Khan, ready to face whatever came next.
But in the quiet of the hallway, Lin Rui allowed a single thought to linger,
If Ruhan is gone, what would remain of me?
***
Meanwhile, back in her chamber, Xiao Zhi let out a heavy breath.
The knot in her heart had loosened, but it hadn't disappeared. She had proposed the impossible, and Ruhan had agreed.
Well, he hadn't said the words explicitly, but he hadn't refused either. So she had decided.
She would escape.
The thought made her pulse quicken, a mixture of terror and hope. This wasn't the ending written in the novel. But she'd be damned to follow it.
Now came the part that required more than just courage: the planning.
Xiao Zhi paced around her room, her mind racing through the chapters of the novel like a search engine. She needed a window of time. The Tughril palace was a fortress, heavily guarded and impossible to break.
She needed a distraction. Something grand enough to pull every guard to one side of the palace while she slipped out the other. Then, a memory from the novel's ending sparked in her mind.
That was exactly what the Chancellor had in mind. In the original timeline, he was planning to use the chaos of the Khan's wedding as a smokescreen for a bloody coup. The guards would be focused on the ceremony, and the Chancellor's men would be moving through the shadows.
Xiao Zhi's eyes lit up. She wouldn't just use the wedding. She would use the coup itself.
It was perfect. While the Chancellor was busy trying to steal a throne, and the Khan was busy trying not to lose his head, she and Ruhan would simply… vanish. She would be the third variable, the one no one was looking for because they were too busy killing each other.
She leaned back in her chair, a small, triumphant smile tugging at her lips. She really had to hand it to herself. Her brain was working at a very efficient level.
She was turning a massacre into her personal exit strategy.