Chapter 16. A meeting and a collapse
FOUR YEARS LATER
EMPEROR LIANWEI POINT OF VIEW:
Four years. It had been four years since Mei Shen vanished from my world, and yet not a day passed where I didn’t see her in every shadow, every gust of spring wind, every sharp turn of moonlight through the palace corridors. I had burned bridges. Threatened ministers. Defied my mother, and my crown. I had refused every political match, exiled every name whispered near mine. I had waited, searched, and punished this land and myself in equal measure for letting her go. And then the message came.
A traveler. A scholar from the mountains. He spoke of a woman with storm gray eyes and a voice soft as mist. She healed the sick. She wore no royal clothes but moved like someone who had once commanded a court. They called her a ghost with kind hands. I knew. I knew it was her.
"Well, well, well." Zeyrith drawled in my mind, too lazy to pretend he hadn’t been watching me drown in obsession. "The ghost finally leaves footprints."
"She’s alive." I whispered, voice hoarse with something old and raw.
"And still hiding from you, emperor love struck." The god snorted. "You going to storm her village with a bridal procession or finally use your brain?"
I ignored him. My hands already moving, retrieving the ring from the lacquered box beside my desk. A relic of my ancestors. A gift from one of the empire’s ancient guardians. A single enchantment remained dormant within its band: ’One illusion. Onetruth concealed’.With a single breath, I slipped the ring onto my finger. Pain lanced through my chest like a dagger. My reflection shimmered in the mirror.
Gone was the black hair of my line. In its place, blonde. Bright as summer wheat, tousled like some wayward traveler. My eyes turned faintly greenish blue, the color of distant rain.
"Disguise mode activated." Zeyrith muttered. "You look like a lost foreign prince from a romance scroll."
"Good."I said "That’s exactly what do I need."
I fastened my cloak. Packed nothing but necessities. No crest. No seal. No mark of crown. Just me. Searching for her. And this time, I wouldn’t let her vanish. The path to the mountain village was steep, treacherous, and choked in mists that clung to your skin like breathless ghosts. I passed no guards. No gates. Only silence and the rare flicker of light through cabin windows. I traveled under a false name. A traveling healer in search of herbs and peace. But I had come for her.
The villagers were wary at first. Until I gave medicine to a coughing child. Until I fixed the splint on a hunter’s arm and refused coin. Word spreads fast in places like this They told me about her in hushed tones, as if afraid even saying her name might offend the wind.