The snow fell without sound.
It drifted through the palace courtyard like ash, settling on the vermilion tiles, softening the sharp edges of the imperial roofs until even the capital of the Great Liang looked as though it were mourning.
Princess Li Xianyin knelt at the center of the courtyard.
Her wedding robes were soaked through—first by melting snow, then by blood.
The blood was not hers.
Before her, sprawled across the jade steps of the Hall of Ancestral Light, lay the man who had once been hailed as the Empire's strongest blade. General Wei Zhen, the emperor's chosen successor. The man she had been ordered to marry. The man she had loved for half her life.
A black-feathered arrow jutted from his chest.
Each breath he took rattled, wet and shallow, as crimson spread across the golden dragon embroidered on his armor.
Around them, the palace burned.
Not with fire—no, that would have been merciful—but with screams, clashing steel, and the distant roar of rebellion tearing through the capital like a living beast.
"Your Highness…"
Wei Zhen's fingers twitched, grasping weakly at the sleeve of her robe.
Li Xianyin did not move.
Her face was pale, her back straight, her eyes calm to the point of cruelty. Snow gathered in her hair, clinging to the phoenix hairpin her maid had carefully fixed only that morning.
She looked nothing like a bride.
She looked like a judge.
"You should not kneel," Wei Zhen whispered. Blood bubbled at the corner of his lips. "The ground… is cold."
Xianyin's gaze finally lowered to him.
Cold.
That word almost made her laugh.
Cold was the way her father had looked at her mother's coffin all those years ago, eyes dry, voice steady, already discussing succession before the incense had finished burning.
Cold was the way the court had praised her obedience while quietly carving away her future piece by piece.
Cold was the way Wei Zhen had stood before her three months ago, armor gleaming, and said—
Marry me, and I will protect you.
She had believed him.
"How did this happen?" she asked quietly.
Wei Zhen's lashes trembled. His grip tightened, then loosened, strength bleeding out of him along with his life.
"I… misjudged them," he said. "I thought… once I took the throne… everything would settle."
Behind them, a woman laughed.
Soft. Delighted.
The sound cut through the chaos like a blade sliding between ribs.
Li Xianyin did not need to turn to know who it was.
Her younger sister—no, her stepsister—Li Yuechan, emerged from the shadows beneath the eaves, dressed not in mourning white or bridal red, but in imperial black.
Behind her stood rows of soldiers wearing unfamiliar insignia.
Foreign.
Victorious.
"Sister," Yuechan said sweetly. "You're still here."
Xianyin rose slowly to her feet.
Only then did she turn.
Yuechan looked radiant. Her face was flushed with excitement, eyes shining like someone standing at the threshold of a long-awaited dream.
"You shouldn't have come back to the palace," Yuechan continued. "Didn't you know? The crown has already chosen its owner."
Xianyin's gaze slid past her—to the banner unfurling above the hall.
A phoenix pierced through by a blade.
The symbol of a fallen dynasty.
"So it was you," Xianyin said.
Yuechan smiled wider. "Of course it was me."
She stepped closer, boots crunching over snow and shattered jade. "You always had everything. Father's favor. Mother's lineage. The scholars. The ministers."
Her eyes flicked to Wei Zhen, whose breathing had grown shallow, uneven.
"You even had him."
Wei Zhen struggled to lift his head. "Yuechan… the alliance—"
She kicked his chest.
The arrow shifted. He screamed, then choked on blood.
Xianyin did not react.
"You see?" Yuechan said lightly. "Even now, you're looking at him, not at me. Just like before."
Xianyin finally met her eyes.
"What do you want?"
Yuechan paused, surprised.
She had expected rage. Tears. Pleading.
Instead, she found nothing.
"I want what was stolen," Yuechan said after a moment. "What your mother's family took when they helped Father destroy my mother's homeland."
Xianyin's fingers curled slightly within her sleeves.
Ah.
So that was it.
Revenge, after all.
Behind Yuechan, the palace gates burst open. More soldiers poured in, their armor stained with blood. The capital had fallen. The emperor—her father—was already dead.
And Xianyin felt… nothing.
No grief.
No triumph.
Only a quiet, hollow clarity.
Wei Zhen coughed violently. "Xianyin…"
She knelt beside him at last.
He looked at her with desperation, regret, fear—so many emotions she had once longed to see.
"If… if there is another life," he whispered, voice breaking, "don't choose me again."
Snow melted on her lashes.
This time, she did laugh.
Softly.
"Don't worry," she said. "There won't be."
His hand fell limp.
Wei Zhen died with his eyes open, staring at the woman he had failed.
Yuechan inhaled sharply, displeased. "You don't look as devastated as I imagined."
Xianyin stood.
She smoothed her ruined wedding robes, straightened the phoenix pin in her hair, and bowed—slowly, impeccably—like the princess she had been trained to be since birth.
"Congratulations," she said.
Yuechan froze.
"The throne is yours," Xianyin continued calmly. "Rule it well."
Then she turned and walked away.
No guards stopped her.
No one dared.
Behind her, the fallen crown bled into the snow.
And as Li Xianyin stepped beyond the palace gates, her breath fogging the winter air, she did not know that this was not the end of her story—
Only the first time she had died.