The palace was silent.
Not the silence of peace.
The silence of a tomb.
After the battle, the empire celebrated victory with drums and banners. Yet in the emperor's hall, no music stirred. No servants dared to speak. Even the incense smoke seemed to coil more slowly, weighed down by grief that filled every corner.
Li Yuan sat on the throne, but he was no longer a ruler—just a man hollowed out by loss. His armor was still cracked from battle, blood not entirely his own dried along the plates. In his hand, clenched so tightly that his knuckles bled, was Rui's jade fragment.
His ministers stood in uneasy silence, exchanging glances. Some wanted to speak, to remind him that the empire still needed him. Others feared the wild fire in his eyes, a grief too sharp to approach.
At last, General Xie stepped forward, kneeling with head bowed. "Your Majesty… the gods have been repelled. The array holds. The people live. This is your victory."
Li Yuan lifted his gaze slowly. His eyes, once fierce and unyielding, were rimmed with red. "Victory?" His voice was raw, hoarse. He rose suddenly, descending the steps of the throne, the jade fragment cutting deeper into his palm. "Tell me, Xie—what kind of victory takes the only thing that mattered?"
The general bowed lower, silent.
Li Yuan's chest heaved. For a moment it seemed as though he might strike him down, but instead he stumbled back, hand covering his face. His voice broke.
"He should be here. He should—he should be here, beside me."
The ministers averted their eyes, some in pity, others in contempt. They had whispered already in their private chambers: that love had made their emperor weak, reckless. That Rui had been a curse from the beginning. Now, with the empire bloodied and its ruler broken, their whispers would only grow louder.
But none of that reached Li Yuan. His world had narrowed to a single absence.
That night, he wandered the palace corridors barefoot, ignoring the calls of his attendants. The moonlight spilled across the stone floors, silver and cold. Rui's chambers stood untouched, the door still half-open from when he had last left it.
Li Yuan entered.
The scent lingered—faint, like smoke and cedar. Rui's robe still hung by the screen, his brush still resting by the inkstone, a half-written scroll abandoned mid-stroke.
Li Yuan picked it up. His throat closed when he saw the words:
"If the heavens will not bend, then I will."
The line ended there.
His hand shook. He pressed the parchment to his chest and fell to his knees, the sound that escaped him closer to a wounded animal than a king.
"Why didn't you let me take your place?" His voice cracked, rising into a shout. "Why did you choose alone?! You said you hated what you became beside me—then why sacrifice yourself for me?"
The room gave no answer. Only the night wind slipped through the windows, stirring the scrolls and extinguishing the candles one by one.
Days bled into one another. The court pressed forward—funeral rites for the fallen, repairs for the walls, petitions from the provinces. But their emperor did not rule.
Li Yuan did not eat. He did not sleep. When he did close his eyes, he saw Rui walking into the storm, saw his body burn with phoenix fire, saw the moment he vanished into ash.
More than once, his generals found him standing at the altar where Rui had fallen, motionless, whispering under his breath as if speaking to a ghost.
"I'll find a way. I'll bring you back. I don't care what law of heaven I break, what blood I spill. Rui… wait for me."
Even General Xie, hardened by decades of war, could not bear to look too long. Lady Qin, veiled and pale, warned the ministers that grief could destroy a ruler faster than any blade.
But Li Yuan did not hear them. He carried Rui's jade fragment everywhere, never letting it leave his hand. He spoke to it as if it were alive, pressing it against his lips as though by sheer will he could summon Rui back.
On the seventh night, the heavens answered.
Li Yuan stood alone in the courtyard, rain falling cold and heavy. He tilted his face to the storm, chest bare, arms spread.
"Show me a sign!" he roared. "If the gods could steal him, then they can return him. I will not stop! Do you hear me? I will tear open your realm with my bare hands if I must!"
The thunder cracked.
Lightning struck the palace wall, sending shards of stone flying. And in the glow of the storm, Li Yuan thought he saw it—just for a heartbeat.
Rui's figure, standing in the rain, silver hair plastered to his cheeks, eyes calm as they had been that last night.
"Rui…" Li Yuan staggered forward, but the image vanished with the next bolt of lightning, leaving only the rain.
He fell to his knees, soaked and trembling, forehead pressed to the stone. "Please… come back."
No one came.
In the shadows, Zhang's allies whispered.
"The emperor is breaking. Soon, he will be nothing but a shell."
"The time to move is near."
For while Li Yuan drowned in grief, the empire's enemies sharpened their knives.
And somewhere beyond mortal reach, in the realm of the gods, Rui's flame flickered—hidden, distant, perhaps already gone.
But Li Yuan could not, would not, accept it.
Even if the world moved on, he remained frozen at that moment of loss.
A man who had conquered kingdoms, now conquered by a single absence.