The night rain had finally ceased, leaving the capital city slick and gleaming. Countless puddles, scattered like shards of a fallen sky, reflected the fractured moonlight. Hours earlier, the great mirror at the Seventh Prince's manor had shattered, and now the very world seemed to mimic its broken state.
Deep within the bowels of a nameless alley, where the shadows clung with wet, tenacious fingers, Helian Sha drew rein. His snow-white stallion, a creature of spectral beauty, stood perfectly still, its breath misting in the chill air. The Prince of the Northern Di did not glance toward the distant, glittering palace, nor the hushed estates of the nobility. His entire focus was reserved for the shimmering fragment resting in his palm—a sliver of the shattered array that still pulsed with a fading, malevolent energy. It felt like holding a captured star, its light dimming with each passing moment.
"It begins," he murmured, his voice a low rumble in the silent alley. The faint glow within the glass flickered in a steady, insistent rhythm—a rhythm that matched the distant, phantom heartbeat he felt echoing in his own bones. "The Gate answers the key's call." A slow, predatory smile touched his lips. He closed his hand, and the shard's light vanished into the deep folds of his sleeve, swallowed by the darkness he commanded. "Let the petty hunters wait in their blinds. True prey reveals itself not through pursuit, but through the scent of its own fear."
Under that same cold, watchful moon, one hunted while another dreamed.
And in her chamber, Chu Hongying, the Iron General, was jolted from a fitful sleep not by a sound, but by a sensation. A heartbeat—strong, relentless, and utterly alien—pounded from the very marrow of her bones. It was a brutal, foreign rhythm usurping the quiet cadence of her own. Her eyes snapped open, darting to the half-full cup of water on her bedside table. There, the surface quivered, rippling in perfect time with the stranger's pulse. A cold dread, colder than any battlefield dawn, seeped into her.
She pressed a palm flat against the cold stone wall, seeking solidity. The vibration came not from without, but from within the structure, a deep, resonant hum that traveled up her arm and settled in her chest. For a disorienting moment, the blurred silhouette reflected in the dark window pane seemed to be his—the sharp angles of his jaw, the fall of his hair. But when she focused, it was only her own pale, startled face staring back.
"His heartbeat…" she whispered into the heavy silence, the words a forbidden confession she was afraid to make real. "It's inside me."
Before the first hint of dawn gilded the horizon, she was in the courtyard, her spear a silver arc cutting through the clinging mist. But her famed discipline had deserted her. At the climax of each form, her force would falter. A rime of frost coated the spear's shaft, a testament to the icy energy swirling within her, yet her own fingers burned an angry, fevered red.
"Your breathing is disordered."
Shen Yuzhu's voice was like a shard of ice, calm and sharp. He stood in the shadowed corridor, a figure of poised stillness. Yet, to her heightened senses, a faint, almost imperceptible tremor betrayed him. He did not look at her. "It's just too loud," he stated, his voice flat, devoid of all emotion.
A thick, tangible silence descended between them—a silence filled only by the deafening, synchronized echo of two hearts hammering against their ribs, beating as one trapped drum.
Behind his back, unseen, his knuckles were white, digging deep into an old, familiar scar on his palm, as if he could physically tear the unwanted connection out.
In the austere confines of the medicinal workshop, Lu Wanning's diagnosis was as swift and precise as her acupuncture needles. She gripped their wrists, her fingers cool and clinical. A moment later, she released them as if burned.
"Your auras are intertwined, trespassing upon the soul's gate. This is a bond of essence, not of flesh. No medicine, no poultice, can cure this." Her eyes, the colour of hardened steel, held no comfort. She turned her gaze to Shen Yuzhu. "Your cold meridian, Shen Yuzhu. It is no longer a standalone affliction. It is now sustained by her fire—a desperate, parasitic shackle, not a cure." A silver needle zinged from her fingers, embedding itself in the stone mortar with a final, angry hum, vibrating long after the motion had ceased.
The words cut deeper than any needle—because in the quiet, secret parts of their souls, both knew she was right.
Shen Yuzhu's brow twitched, the only outward sign of his turmoil. "An old injury. The resonance is temporary," he insisted, the lie tasting like ash on his tongue.
Lu Wanning's lips curled into a sneer. "When you wake from dreams calculating spear forms instead of courtly strategies, remember your own words, Advisor Shen."
[Shen Yuzhu's Inner Monologue]:「If this is fate… a chain forged by chance and broken glass… then fate must have its defiers. I will not be a shackle for her wings.」
"The General doesn't look at him like a person."
Gu Changfeng's voice drawled from the doorway, his large frame blocking the light. His military saber, slung casually at his hip, was a stark reminder of his station. He leaned against the frame, observing the tense scene with a soldier's cynical eye. "She's inspecting a flaw in a prized weapon. She fears the crack she can't cut out will be the one that shatters her entire arsenal." His words, blunt and unvarnished, pierced the fragile calm she had fought to maintain.
Lu Wanning didn't bother to look up from her herbs. "If your glib talk were medicine, Captain Gu, it would be a potent, if irritating, remedy."
Gu Changfeng flashed a rakish grin, undeterred. "Can your needles pierce the heart, Physician Lu? Not to still it, but to make it feel?"
He left, but returned moments later, his boisterous entrance softened. He placed a small, still-warm packet of osmanthus cakes by her pestle. "Even the most unassailable logic," he said, his tone uncharacteristically gentle, "needs something sweet now and then to remember it's housed in a human body."
Her hands, grinding herbs with rhythmic intensity, paused for a single, telling heartbeat. She said nothing.
The imperial messenger arrived in the harsh light of afternoon, his presence an ill omen.
"General Chu Hongying is summoned to the Morning Council. The charge: colluding with the Northern Di."
Gu Changfeng let out a short, derisive snort. "Helian Sha's territory. How remarkably convenient."
"A joint scheme from both within and without," Lu Wanning analyzed coldly, her mind already mapping the political battlefield. "Not going is an admission of guilt. Going is a walk onto a knife's edge."
Chu Hongying stood, her movements deliberate and calm. She donned her formal armor, the heavy plates settling on her shoulders with a familiar, grim weight. "Let the trial be under the full, unforgiving light of day," she declared, her voice ringing with a steely resolve. "I will not plead my case in shadows."
Shen Yuzhu's gaze lifted toward the distant, imposing silhouette of the palace. "Light can also be a mirror," he warned softly, his eyes dark with foresight. "It can blind as easily as it reveals."
She could no longer tell which frantic, galloping rhythm was hers, and which was his.
The night deepened long after the residence had gone silent.
Outside the courtyard wall, a figure in a black cloak stood motionless beneath the dying moon. Helian Sha had no right to be there—yet he came.
From his saddlebag, he took out a small porcelain vial sealed with silver thread. The faint scent of frostgrass drifted from within, the same herb once used by the wolf-physicians of the northern tribes.
Through the half-open lattice window, he could see the dim outline of Shen Yuzhu lying still, breath shallow, the woman beside him sitting vigil, her armor catching the wavering candlelight.
For the first time, Helian Sha hesitated. His gloved hand rested on the window frame; the moonlight drew a pale line across his knuckles.
"You're still the same," he murmured—uncertain whether to the sleeping man or the sleepless woman. "Always defying death, and making others defy it with you."
He set the vial on the windowsill, turned, and vanished into the fog-drenched alley before dawn could find him.
Moments later, the faint rustle of a silk robe stirred from the shadows of the opposite roof.
A masked figure watched the departing rider through the veil of mist, the insignia of a black crow glinting faintly at her collar.
"Report to the palace," she whispered. "The Northern Di general Helian Sha—seen delivering contraband medicine to General Chu's residence."
Her voice vanished into the night, carried on the wings of a crow.
And so, mercy turned to evidence, and a single act of kindness became the spark of a trial.
She had thought him still unconscious, yet at dawn she sensed the faint echo of footsteps beyond her door—the rhythm unmistakably his.
Morning light hit the bluestone path. The four figures stepped out. For a moment, as they crossed the threshold, the shadows of Chu Hongying and Shen Yuzhu merged—no longer two, but a single pulse cast upon the stone.
After the mirror shattered, the human heart became the next battlefield.