Winter passed without ceremony.
In Exile Prison, seasons were not marked by festivals or incense, but by the way the cold crept deeper into the bones, by how many bodies were carried out at dawn.
Prisoner 307 learned quickly.
She learned when to keep her head lowered and when to meet a gaze without fear. She learned which guards accepted bribes of silence and which enjoyed cruelty too much to be reasoned with. She learned that kindness was rarer than food—and more dangerous.
Most of all, she learned the price of breathing.
Every prisoner paid it differently.
Some with their dignity.Some with their sanity.Some with their lives.
Xianyin paid with obedience.
She worked where they told her to work—hauling stones, scrubbing corridors slick with mildew, sorting rotted grain until her fingers split and bled. She spoke little, listened much, and never cried out when struck.
That, more than anything, unsettled the guards.
"Doesn't she feel pain?" one muttered once, watching her rise after being kicked to the ground.
"Oh, she does," another replied. "She just remembers worse."
At night, when the prison quieted into uneasy sleep, Xianyin pressed the cracked jade token to her palm beneath the straw.
She never kissed it. Never whispered to it.
She memorized it.
The fracture that split the jade was shaped like a branching vein. Her mother had once told her that jade remembered blood—that it absorbed the will of those who carried it.
If you ever lose your way, her mother had said gently, follow the cracks. They show where the stone survived being broken.
Xianyin followed them now.
The warden noticed her during the second month.
"You," he said one morning, pointing his whip at her. "Come here."
She stepped forward without hesitation.
"You can read," he stated, not asking.
"Yes."
He tossed a stack of bamboo slips at her feet. "Sort these. Tax records. The rats got to them."
The slips were soaked with mold, many cracked or warped. A meaningless task, meant to frustrate.
Xianyin knelt.
By nightfall, the slips were sorted—not by year, but by region, grain type, and levy discrepancies.
The warden stared.
"These figures," she said quietly, "were falsified before they were damaged."
He stiffened. "You accusing the treasury?"
"I'm stating a pattern."
He laughed sharply. "You're a prisoner."
"Yes," she agreed. "But numbers don't know that."
From that day on, her labor changed.
She was still a prisoner—but she was no longer wasted.
On the ninety-third night of her imprisonment, the blue-robed man returned.
This time, he did not smile.
"You don't have much time," he said softly, standing beyond the bars. "Her Majesty grows impatient."
Xianyin's fingers tightened around the jade token. "She's afraid."
"Yes," he said. "Of you."
That almost surprised her.
"She believes you will try to reclaim the throne," he continued. "She doesn't understand that you've already let it go."
Xianyin looked at him steadily. "Then she doesn't know me at all."
"Perhaps not." He hesitated. "But others do."
He slid a folded map through the bars.
It showed the western border.
Beyond it—jagged lines, scorched markings, empty names.
The Wastelands.
"You are to be married," he said.
Xianyin blinked once.
"An alliance," he continued. "A forgotten prince. A land no one wants. A political grave."
She studied the map.
The western region was infamous—poor soil, fractured tribes, endless war. A place where generals rose and fell like dust storms.
"A death sentence," she said calmly.
"Yes."
She nodded. "Then Yuechan is being merciful."
The man exhaled sharply, something like admiration flickering across his face. "You will leave at dawn. Officially, you'll die on the road. Bandits. Disease. An accident."
"And unofficially?"
"If you survive," he said, "you will belong to the wastelands."
Xianyin folded the map carefully.
A land no one wanted.
A crown already fallen.
She felt no fear.
Only a strange, steady resolve.
"Tell Her Majesty," she said, lifting her gaze, "that I accept."
The man paused at the door.
"And if this prince fails you?" he asked.
Xianyin's lips curved—not into a smile, but something sharper.
"Then," she said, "I will not fail myself."
At dawn, the gates of Exile Prison opened.
Prisoner 307 walked out.
A princess followed.
And somewhere far to the west, a wasteland waited—dry, unforgiving, and ready to be transformed.