The Forbidden Court was quiet.
Too quiet.
Yena stood beneath the old pagoda behind the Prince's quarters, staring at the burnt pattern on the stones beneath her feet.....the remnants of a ward circle. A very old one.
"This wasn't drawn by me," she murmured.
"No," Joon replied, arms folded. "It was drawn by someone long dead. Or someone who wants us to think so."
He handed her a scroll. The ink was fresh. The seal wasn't.
It bore the sigil of the Phoenix Consort...the woman erased from every official record after her mysterious death.
"Why now?" Yena asked, more to herself than to Joon. "Why appear now, after all these years?"
Joon hesitated. Then: "Because the succession talks are back. And not everyone wants me on the throne."
Yena looked up at him. "You think they'll use the Phoenix's legacy to unseat you?"
He gave her a tired, bitter smile. "I think they'll use anything with wings if it means cutting mine."
Meanwhile, in the Inner Court, the Royal Dowager sipped rose tea as her chief maid whispered news into her ear.
"The girl has been digging. She found the ward."
The Dowager didn't look up. "And did it burn her?"
"No, Your Grace."
"Hm. Pity."
She set her cup down, eyes cold.
"Then let the shadows do what fire did not."
Back in her chambers, Yena found a scroll tied to her mirror. It hadn't been there when she left.
She unrolled it slowly. It contained only a single line:
When the Phoenix rises, the serpent dies. But what burns with it?
The ink smelled faintly of lotus root and ash.
She was still staring at it when the candle beside her sputtered and went out.
No wind.
No open window.
Just darkness.
And the sound of footsteps where there should be none.
She whirled around...empty. Silence.
But her breath had already quickened.
And somewhere, deep within the palace walls, something laughed.
But it wasn't just any laugh.
It was the kind that didn't echo....it lingered, curling around her spine like invisible fingers. Yena lit the candle again with trembling hands, chanting a soft protection mantra under her breath.
Nothing responded.
That, somehow, made it worse.
The next morning, she barely slept.....too much warding, too much thinking. And worse, too much remembering.
Because in the dream before she awoke, a woman in crimson robes had whispered in her ear:
"You were born under my sign, little one. You carry my fire."
Yena jolted upright in a cold sweat.
She didn't even remember falling asleep.
Later, in the herbal pavilion, she confronted the one person who might still know something the royal apothecary, Master Baek.
The old man looked like he hadn't slept in a decade, smelled vaguely of mushrooms, and claimed to have once poisoned a demon.
"You want to know about the Phoenix Consort?" he rasped. "I thought we were pretending she didn't exist."
"I'd rather not," Yena said. "Pretending gets people cursed."
Baek gave a hoarse chuckle. "Wise girl. Dangerous wisdom."
He shuffled to a wooden drawer, opened it, and pulled out an old jar...inside was a blackened feather, preserved in wax.
"From the last fire ritual she performed," he said. "They said she called down the stars that night."
Yena stared. "Was she a shaman?"
"No," he said. "She was something stranger. She was believed."
Back in the Prince's chamber, Joon examined the ward remnants Yena had drawn out. The shapes weren't standard...they curved like talons, looped like wings.
"You know what this means?" he asked quietly.
Yena nodded. "Someone is trying to awaken the Phoenix's power."
"And if they do?"
She met his eyes. "Then whatever cursed you… might look like a joke."
Outside, as dusk painted the sky in blood-orange streaks, a falcon flew overhead and dropped a sealed letter at the palace gates.
It bore no sender's mark. Only one phrase burned into the parchment:
"She remembers her name now."
The guard who picked it up was later found unconscious.
No wound. No blood. Just a feather on his chest.