Three days had passed since the bloodletting beneath the lanterns—since steel had whispered through silk, and death had danced, unseen, in the shadows of celebration.
Though the crimson had long since been scrubbed from the stone, its memory lingered—subtle, indelible, like the scent of smoke in a house long extinguished.
The Gu estate had resumed its rhythms, but the heart of it no longer beat as it once had.
Servants walked softly, as though the very walls had grown ears.
Lanterns still swayed in the courtyards, their light delicate and tremulous, like the breath of an old man nearing his end.
And though music drifted faintly through the evening air, it rang hollow, like laughter at a funeral.
In such silences, the true shape of danger took form. Not with the clangor of swords or the roar of fire, but with whispers—soft as the fall of snow, sharp as a knife hidden in robes.
Gu Yan Chen, second son of the House of Gu, knew this all too well.
He sat alone in the war chamber—a room once locked away like a relic of bloodier times. Now it had been summoned back to relevance, as though the past had drawn breath once more.
The lacquered table before him was strewn with maps and intelligence reports, but it was the room itself that bore the heaviest weight: faded banners of forgotten campaigns, cracks in the wood where tempers had once flared, and the faint scent of old oil and rust.
Gu Yan Chen sat motionless, his posture sculpted with the precision of a soldier, but his gaze wandered not over the terrain marked in ink, but toward a single sigil: a black feather.
A vulture's plume, drawn with brutal simplicity, freshly inked on the bodies of the assassins who had slipped into his house like wraiths in silk.
"The Golden Vulture Guild," Captain Hou had murmured two nights past, his voice low and tight, like a bowstring drawn too far. "They've worked this region before. These days… their methods have grown quiet. Professional. Almost polite."
Gu Yan Chen had given no reply at the time. He had not needed to. The guild's name was known to him. Their work was ruthless—surgical. They did not kill out of passion or vendetta, but for coin, always coin.
"Fresh ink," Hou had added, nearly in awe of the detail. "Whoever bought their loyalty did so no more than ten days ago. And they paid handsomely."
Greed was the price of treason. And someone had paid it.
Now, in the flickering half-light of the chamber, Gu Yan Chen leaned back slightly, jaw taut. Shadows danced across his features—noble and cold, like a statue that remembered how to bleed.
"I know who sent them," he said softly, the words almost lost to the rustle of paper and the hush of the wind outside.
He did not look at Hou, nor at the reports.
His eyes were on the open window, where the peach trees stirred faintly in the dusk, scattering petals like falling stars.
In the courtyard beyond, Mu Lian moved like water in a vessel—graceful, contained, and unyielding.
Her staff split the air with measured violence, each strike imbued with quiet fury. There was no wasted movement. No fear. Only silence, sharpened into purpose.
Captain Hou followed his gaze, then turned away politely. "You believe it came from within?"
The question hovered like incense smoke, curling upward without vanishing. Gu Yan Chen did not answer. He had considered the possibility—and more than considered. But there are truths that, when spoken, become too real.
The House of Gu had long been two beasts yoked to the same name.
The first branch—his own—was the hand that held the sword. The stewards of war, of land, of legacy. The second branch, under his uncle Gu Jian Heng, wore silk instead of armor, smiled where others glared, and grew fat on silver.
It was an old arrangement—blade and coin, power and profit. In times of peace, the blade dulled, and the coin sharpened.
Gu Jian Heng was no fool.
He had built his web slowly, strand by strand, each thread made of trade deals, merchant guilds, and favors whispered in the ears of ministers.
He smiled like a man without enemies—but there were knives behind every compliment, poison beneath every gift.
Even as a boy, Gu Yan Chen had felt it—that low simmer of resentment, that hunger that hides in the eyes of those who watch from the shadows too long. His uncle had grown powerful in the silence between wars, and now, the silence had become dangerous.
But none of that was proof.
Not yet.
Gu Yan Chen stood at last, his shadow long across the war table. The maps fluttered slightly as if recoiling from the movement.
"We must not move too soon," he said, voice low. "A blade drawn in haste cuts the wrong neck."
Hou bowed. "Then what do we do, my lord?"
Outside, Mu Lian's staff came to a sudden halt, her eyes lifting—meeting his through the window as though she'd heard the whole exchange.
Gu Yan Chen's gaze did not waver. "We wait. We listen. And when the time comes—we strike where it bleeds."
From the trees above, a peach petal drifted through the open window and landed on the black feather sigil.
It curled inward, as if the paper itself knew fear.