Chapter : Seven
The humming would not stop. It was not a sound I heard with my ears, but a vibration that lived in the marrow of my teeth and the curves of my ribs. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the gold filigree stitched into my skin—a cage of light vibrating against a sea of ink. It made the very air of the Phoenix Chamber feel heavy, as if the room itself were a lung, breathing in sync with the horror beneath the floor.
Long Feng lay beside me, as still as a statue in a garden of ghosts. He had not touched me since we returned. The silence between us was not peace; it was the tension of a wire about to snap.
"Tell me," I whispered into the dark. My voice sounded strange to my ears—resonant and metallic, as if a hundred throats were speaking through mine. I realized with a jolt of terror that I could no longer remember the sound of my own voice, the one I had used to sing Xiao to sleep in the Wastes.
He did not move, but his breathing hitched. "Sleep, Mei. The needles have taken much from you."
"The needles took nothing compared to what your mother intends to take," I said, sitting up. The gold on my back pulled tight against my skin, burning with a cold, hollow heat. "The Voice told me. It said you know the name. The name of the First Ancestor. The child who was woven."
Long Feng turned toward me then. In the moonlight, the gray shadow on his jaw looked like a bruise that refused to heal. His face crumpled—jaw clenching, eyes closing as if against physical pain—the slow, agonizing collapse of a mountain trying to hold itself together.
"Hao-Ran," he rasped. The name sounded like a funerary prayer. "He was seven years old. He was the only son of the First Empress. She did not seal the Void to save him; she wove him into the foundations to save her throne. The histories say she did it herself—held the needles, sang him lullabies while she stitched him into the world. The Empire was not built on a miracle, Mei. It was built on a mother's betrayal."
He sat up, his hands trembling as he reached toward me, then pulled back, as if afraid his touch would accelerate my end.
"I was five when she took me to the cavern," he continued, his voice a broken whisper. "She made me memorize the name. She told me that one day, Hao-Ran's thread would snap, and I would have to take his place. I have spent my entire life walking toward a grave that is already occupied."
"And now she wants me to replace you both," I said.
"I will not let her."
"You could not even stop the needles, Feng."
The truth hung between us, bitter and cold. A soft scratch came at the door—too light for a guard, too hesitant for a servant.
The door creaked open, and Xiao stepped in. He was barefoot, his small feet soundless on the marble. He had shed the heavy ceremonial robes, but he still wore the silk tunic of a Prince—too large for his frame, the sleeves rolled up to expose his thin wrists. In his hand, he clutched the opalescent pearl Hou had given him.
"Sister?" he whispered. He looked at Long Feng and flinched, bowing low. "Your Majesty... I only wanted... she was in pain."
I reached out my hand. "Xiao, come here."
He hurried to the bedside, his eyes wide. He did not look at the gold filigree on my neck. He looked only at the pearl in his palm.
"The Prince said this would help," Xiao said, his voice cracking. "He said if you take this, you won't forget me. He said the Emperor's light isn't strong enough anymore, and the Void is eating your heart because he is too weak to hold you."
Long Feng stood, his shadow looming over the boy. "Give it to me, child. That stone was not carved by any friend of yours."
Xiao pulled the pearl back, clutching it to his chest. He looked at me, desperate. "He's lying, isn't he, Mei? The Prince was kind. He said you were dying because he's the only one who cares."
I looked at the pearl. It shimmered with a milky, unnatural radiance. I knew it was a trap. I knew Hou's eyes were likely waiting on the other side of that glass. But the True Voice hissed in the back of my mind.
Drink, little ghost. If you want to see the Loom without the Empress's filters, you must take the key. If you want to save the boy, you must know the enemy's secrets.
"It is alright, Xiao," I whispered. I took the pearl from his hand. It slid down my throat like ice, leaving a cold trail that burned.
For a heartbeat, there was silence. Then, the world tilted.
The humming of the gold needles rose to a deafening roar. My vision white-washed, and then turned to ink. I saw the layers of the world peel back like skin—marble dissolving into stone, stone into earth, earth into black glass. I was no longer in the Phoenix Chamber. I was there, standing in the cavern beneath the world.
The skeletal figure of Hao-Ran turned its head. The threads stitched through its eyes shifted, pulling taut, and for the first time in ten thousand years, the First Ancestor looked back. Its mouth opened—not to scream, but to smile. A child's smile, relieved and terrible.
You came, it seemed to say. Finally, someone came to replace me.
Welcome home, Golden Thread, the True Voice laughed.
Across the palace, in his dark study, Prince Hou smiled. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
"There you are," he whispered to the empty air. "Show me everything."