Thunder cracked over the capital.
Rain fell like needles — sharp, relentless, and cold. The palace lanterns burned low, casting gold halos through the downpour. Most of the court slept, tucked safely behind silken walls and imperial guards.
But in the Hall of Crimson Scrolls, the Emperor did not sleep.
He stood before an ancestral altar, hands behind his back, gazing at the line of names engraved into the stone.
Each one a former emperor.
Each one a man who held absolute power.
And now, a question burned in his mind.
"Who is this servant?"
He didn't trust rumors. He didn't believe in coincidence.
A palace servant who caught the Crown Prince's spear with his bare hands?
A nameless boy who walked like a soldier and moved like a ghost?
And tonight, the Empress — cold and distant for years — had requested privacy. Her guards dismissed. Her pavilion sealed.
Something was stirring.
He summoned his most trusted agent.
A man few knew by name. Fewer still by face.
A figure wrapped in black, bowing low beneath the storm's howl.
"You will find out who he is," the Emperor said."The boy called Shen. Everything. Past. Master. Blood. I want it all."
The figure nodded once and disappeared like smoke.
Elsewhere, Shen moved through the shadowed halls of the servant quarters, his breath calm, his steps silent.
He knew someone was watching him.
"So… the game begins."
He stepped into the laundry chamber — an unused room in this rain.
Empty… except for the faintest shuffle of movement in the rafters.
Without a word, Shen bent, picked up a wet robe from a basket, and tossed it straight upward.
Thud.
A cloaked man fell from the rafters, landing in a crouch.
But before he could rise, Shen's fingers were already at his throat — not strangling, but gripping a pressure point just beside the collarbone.
"Don't move," Shen said.
The man froze.
"You're not the first to follow me," Shen continued, voice low. "But you're the first dumb enough to get caught inside palace walls."
"…You saw me?"
"I smelled the oil on your blade. Foreign."
The man cursed under his breath.
"Who sent you?"
Silence.
Then — a faint shift of breath.
Poison capsule.
Shen moved instantly, slamming two fingers under the man's jaw.
Crack.The assassin spasmed — but remained alive.
Just unconscious.
By morning, the man would be found bound and gagged in the palace herb garden, with a coded message carved onto his boot.
The Emperor would recognize it instantly.
"I see you, too."
Shen stood atop the palace walls as the storm faded.
He looked over the sprawling capital.
"He's suspicious now.""Good."
He pulled something from his sleeve.
A coin. Black and smooth, with a twin-headed dragon engraved into its face.
Not imperial.
Something older.
He flipped it once. It landed in his palm.
One head.One tail.
And somewhere in the mountains beyond the city, a power long buried stirred faintly — as if the ancient blood in his veins had whispered its name in sleep.