The memory of the dragons lived under my skin, a secret talisman against the ordinary struggles of our small, wooden life. For two years, the story Mama told wove itself into my childhood. Jingming and I would play "Pact Knights" in the bamboo grove behind our house. He, of course, was the mighty knight commander. I was the clever royal scribe, keeper of the sacred dragon lore.
"You have to protect the egg, Yu Hui!" he'd bellow, pointing a bamboo sword at a mossy stone that was our imaginary dragon egg. "The Emperor's men are coming!"
I would clutch the "egg" fiercely. "They'll have to get through the Pact! Silanis will flood their path!"
Reality was less grand, but no less filled with love. Mama's cooking—sweet red bean buns, savory scallion pancakes—was the anchor of our days. Her hands, always moving, were either stitching patches on Jingming's perpetually torn trousers or smoothing my unruly brown hair. Papa came home late, smelling of sawdust and river clay, his smile weary but genuine as he lifted me onto his shoulders, making me a giant who could almost touch the roof beams.
Then, the first thread of our world snapped.
It started with a cough. A dry, thin sound that seemed wrong coming from Mama's strong chest. At first, it was just in the mornings. Then it lingered through the day, a raspy shadow to her voice. The herbs from the village healer, which usually cured everything, just sat in their broth, powerless. The light in her brown eyes, the one that painted pictures of dragons, began to dim, clouded by a fatigue no sleep could touch.
I was six. Old enough to feel terror, too young to understand it.
Jingming, now ten, stopped playing knights. He took on more chores, his small shoulders squaring with a responsibility that stole his laughter. Papa worked longer hours, coming home with mysterious packets of medicine that cost a fortune and did nothing.
The day the world ended was a bright one. Sunlight streamed through the open door, cruelly cheerful. Mama was in her bed, a shell of the woman who told stories. Her breath was a shallow, rattling pull against a silence we all knew was coming. She called me close. Her hand, so thin it was almost translucent, cupped my cheek.
"Yu Hui," she whispered, each word a mountain to climb. "Remember the dragons. Their peace. Protect... the quiet things."
I didn't understand. I just nodded, hot tears tracking through the dust on my face. She looked at Jingming, her brave boy, her eyes saying everything her voice no longer could. Then she looked at Papa, and a single tear escaped her own eye, a final, glistening farewell.
The silence that followed was not peaceful. It was a void. It swallowed Papa whole. The kind, tired man retreated into a shell of grief. He stopped going to work. He would sit for hours by the cold hearth, staring at the ashes of last night's fire, as if hoping to see Ignis's warmth there.
Jingming stood at the edge of that silence, a small soldier facing an invincible enemy. One morning, I watched him take Papa's old tool bag, far too big for him. He met my eyes, my own still swollen from crying.
"I'm going to the city," he said, his voice trying so hard to be deep and steady. "I'll get work. You look after Papa."
He was ten. He was my big brother, who brought me sweets and played at being a hero. Now, he became one. He left before dawn and returned after dusk, his small hands scratched and dirty, coins clutched tightly in his palm. He bought our food, our medicine, our survival. The bamboo sword lay forgotten in the corner.
Our house, once filled with ginger-scented stories, was now filled with a different kind of silence: the oppressive quiet of struggle, punctuated by Papa's sighs and the clink of Jingming's hard-earned coins.
Years passed in this muted palette. I grew, helping where I could—foraging for edible greens, mending clothes, trying to cook the way Mama did, though it never tasted right. My hands grew strong from drawing water and chopping wood. My mind grew sharp from budgeting Jingming's coins and reading the few tattered books he scavenged for me. The dragons became a dream from another lifetime, a story whispered by a ghost.
When I was twenty-two, the second thread snapped. The war that had been a distant rumble on the horizon, a thing discussed in hushed tones at the market, roared to our doorstep. The Emperor's men came, not for dragons this time, but for sons. The conscription notice was nailed to our village well. Jingming's name was on it.
He was twenty-six, strong from years of labor, the perfect soldier material. That night, he sharpened the old kitchen knife, his face a grim mask. "It's good money," he lied, his voice rough. "Hazard pay. It'll set you and Papa up. I'll be back before the first snow."
He hugged me, a bone-crushing grip. He knelt before Papa, who barely registered his presence. "Take care of him, little sis," Jingming murmured into my hair.
Then he was gone, swallowed by the Emperor's machine, marching off to fight a war born of the same greed that threatened the dragons. The silence in the house deepened, became a living thing. It was just me and the ghost of my father, waiting for a brother who had promised to return.
Six months. Six months of terrifying official bulletins, of rumors about losses, of me reading every scrap of news aloud to Papa, who stared through the words. Then, on a day when the rain fell like needles, they came.
Two knights on horseback, their imperial armor dull under the grey sky. They did not dismount. One, his face obscured by his helm, held out a rolled parchment sealed with black wax. The other guided a small wagon; in it were sacks of rice and flour, and a simple wooden box.
My heart became a frozen stone in my chest. I stood in the doorway, the rain soaking my shoulders.
"For the household of Ling Jingming," the knight intoned, his voice impersonal as falling stone.
The parchment was thrust into my numb hands. The wagon was untied, left in the mud. They turned their horses and rode away, leaving only the sound of the rain and the hollow knocking of my own terror.
I didn't open the letter there. I dragged the wagon under the eaves, hiding the box under a sack. I went inside, to where Papa slept fitfully. I stood by his bed, the unopened letter burning my palm. His breath was labored, his face pale. Telling him would be like pouring poison into an open wound.
So, I swallowed the truth. I buried it deep inside the new, cold hollow the knights had carved in me. I became the keeper of a second, terrible secret. The first was a story of magical peace. The second was the brutal reality of its end.
That night, alone by a single candle, my hands steady from a lifetime of hiding fear, I broke the black seal. I unfolded the paper. The handwriting was achingly familiar—Jingming's clumsy, earnest script, learned in scraps of time after work.
"Little Sis,
If you're reading this, I'm already dead. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for abandoning you and Papa. Don't blame yourself. It was just bad luck, a stray arrow. It was quick. The box has all my things and the back pay. It's enough for a while. Use it. Be smart. Take care of Papa.
I love you both. Remember me as I was, not as I am now.
Your foolish big brother,
Jingming."
The candlelight blurred and swam. A sound escaped me, a wounded, silent gasp that echoed in the tomb of our house. I did not wail. I did not crumble. I folded the letter with precise, mechanical motions and hid it under a loose floorboard, next to the memory of my mother's voice.
The dragons were gone, chained by a greedy emperor. My brother was gone, killed by that same emperor's war. All that was left was the quiet, the struggle, and a grief too vast for a six-year-old, or even a twenty-two-year-old, to hold.
But in that quiet, something new was born. Cold. Hard. Purposeful. It whispered not of protecting peace, but of avenging its loss. It had my brother's face and my mother's final words. And it waited, coiled tight around my heart, for its moment to strike.
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