The ancestral hall had never felt colder.
Feng Xinyue stood with her back straight, cheeks flushed with a storm of fury and fear. The silk of her robe clung damply to her, but she did not feel the chill. Her voice rang like a bell in the silent hall.
"You would cast out your own son?" she demanded, eyes burning. "Shen Xing—he is your blood. How can you even say such a thing?"
Shen Xing's face was unreadable, carved from iron. The patriarch's hands rested on the jade-carved table as if the very surface steadied him. He did not raise his voice; his words were cold enough to cut.
"My mind is not clouded by sentiment," he said. "This child is not an ordinary son. The moment he was born, the heavens crumbled, his existence is not even accepted by heaves. If the secret of his birth leaks, it will mean annihilation for the Shen Family. kill him, or our entire family will be destroyed."
Feng Xinyue staggered as if struck. Her mouth opened, closing on a scream that turned into a strangled sob.
"You would kill my child because your pride is afraid?" she whispered. "You would let our name become a grave rather than protect him? He is my son—how can you even utter death for him? Do you not remember the vows we made?"
Shen Xing's jaw tightened. "Vows do not feed the clan, Xinyue. Vows do not stop the king clans from tearing us to pieces. The balance of the continent hangs on decisions like this. You speak like a mother blinded by love; I speak like a patriarch who must preserve ten thousand lives."
She lunged forward, palms clammy on his sleeves. "Then let me take him away. I will leave with my son and never darken the Shen gates again. If you cannot look at him, let me bear him away."
Shen Xing's hand closed on her wrist with a pressure that did not bruise the skin but bruised the spirit. "You will not take him away." The words were final. "If I stop today, we will all fall. This is for the family. This is our only choice."
Feng Xinyue's eyes went hollow for a moment, then flared with a desperate hope. "My father he said this? My father told you to cast out his grandson?" The accusation hung like a blade. She knew only her father can push her husband to the point of killing their own son but she still has some hope for her father and hope it was not as she thought but reality was cruel.
Shen Xing nodded once. The name of her father patriarch of the Feng Clan hung between them like an accusing god. Feng Xinyue's face crumpled; disbelief and betrayal warred in her chest.
"How can you ask me to kill the child I have loved since his first breath?" she asked, voice breaking into a thread. "How can you ask me to watch my own son vanish into the dark?"
"This is not about you or me," he said quietly. "It is about our clan's future—about the other children you speak of. If this child becomes the spark that burns everything, what shall become of them? I am the one who must choose for the many."
Feng Xinyue slapped his chest in a wild, sudden motion; the sound echoed like thunder. "You would give up our child to keep political power? Do you call yourself a father?" Her words were a cry of a woman undone.
Shen Xing's face hardened. "He will be removed from the family tonight." He looked at the closest guards. "Do as I say. Take the child in the forest and kill him. Leave no trace. burn the body or make it look like a beast attack."
Feng Xinyue stumbled back. Her hands flew to her belly as if to hold the life she bore within—not for herself, but to count the years and faces she would lose. Tears fell, hot and raw.
"You cannot—" she choked. "You cannot take him from me. He is my boy. Shen Xing, do you not remember when he first opened his eyes…?"
He did remember. He remembered the way her face had lit when she swaddled that tiny life. He remembered promising her—years ago amidst banners and betrothals—that he would protect her. He did not lift his hand to touch her now.
"Perhaps I once thought that to be possible," he said, voice tired. "Now it is impossible."
That night, Shen Xuan stood by the outer gate.
He was five years old this year. Rain had plastered his hair to his forehead, and his little body shook under thin garments. In the windows above, servants and kin moved like shadow-figures; none came to rescue him. He had spent most of his life within a single locked room—the boy who had only ever seen his mother's face and the barred window of his confinement. To the world, he was a minor, useless heir—never spoken of, never brought to celebrations. To the Shen Family's strategists, he was a hazard.
All night he waited, pressing small palms to the gate, expecting his mother's footsteps to cross the courtyard and call him in. The rain grew heavier; the chill seeped into his bones. He shivered, but he could not bring himself to move. Hope is a stubborn animal in a child's chest.
There was an awful hush as the chosen men crept toward the gate. They were veterans, stoic and weathered, but when they reached the little boy they could not raise their hands. Shen Xuan's face was streaked with dirt and rain—his eyes wide and innocent. Something in those eyes made even hardened men's hearts ache.
One guard's jaw worked. He swallowed and looked up toward the hall. "My lord," he whispered into the darkness, "I cannot—"
Shen Xing's cold voice cut through like a wind. "Carry out your orders."
The guard's shoulders drooped. He looked at the trembling child, then at the shadowed figure of the patriarch. For all his sternness, Shen Xing felt the weight of his clan's fate heavier than steel. The guard came forward, reached for the child—then, with a muttered apology under his breath that even the night could not hear, he stepped back and turned away.
But orders had been given. The house would not allow a hesitation. Another guard, more desperate and less conscientious, had already moved. He snatched the small boy and hauled him toward the east beyond the ridge—toward a place where wolves and cold could finish what men feared to do by hand.
Shen Xuan tasted fear for the first time then—an acrid, unfamiliar taste. He screamed. A child's scream is a terrible thing: raw, small, and yet it cuts the night. He kicked and thrashed, but his hands were tiny and the men were strong. Rain plastered his shoes; the ground was a cold smear. He saw a pale silhouette above—his mother's face framed in the window. For one maddening second, a light flared in the dark as if she had risen to her feet. But the curtains fell. He could not be sure if the movement was real—he could only be sure that the cries in his throat were alone.
They dragged him to the eastern ridge. The wind roared as if urging them to stop; even the old trees seemed to lean away. The smaller guard who had carried him felt the boy's small body go limp with exhaustion and fear. He set him down for a moment, glancing up at the sky as if begging the heavens to be kinder. The child's breath came ragged; his lashes clung with wet.
"Leave him there," said the harsher guard. He fumbled with a dull knife.
And then—lightning tore across the sky, a scream of white fire that split the clouds. The earth trembled. For a second everything froze; men fell to their knees. The guard's hand quivered and the knife clattered to the ground.
Shen Xuan sat there in the mud and the rain, small and soaked through, watching the mist swallow the shape of the distant ancestral hall. He thought of the warmth of a single window light and of his mother's face—he had seen it for a brief instant and it had been the sun itself. He wrapped his arms around himself and waited until dawn.
No one came.
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