People say children don't remember much when they're young.
They say memories blur at the edges, soften with time, lose their color like old fabric left too long under the sun.
But I remember.
I remember the night everything inside me shattered as clearly as the shape of my own hands. Some memories carve themselves into the bone, into the heartbeat, into the quiet moments when you least expect them. They wait, patient and sharp, until you breathe the wrong way... then they cut you open from the inside.
Before that night, my world was small.
A tiny village beside a slow river.
A tiny house shared with Grandpa.
A tiny bed that creaked every time I shifted or coughed.
And a tiny fishing rod carved from simple wood, my most treasured thing in the world.
Grandpa said fishing would help my weak heart.
"Quiet, gentle things suit you, Jin,"
he always said, tapping my forehead with a calloused finger.
He meant it as comfort, but I took it as truth.
My body was fragile, too easily winded, too easily hurt.
So I gravitated toward things that did not demand strength from me.
I liked quiet things.
I liked sitting at the riverbank with my feet in the cool mud.
I liked watching insects skim across water like tiny dancers.
I liked the soft tug of the fishing line, the patient waiting, the feeling that time didn't matter if the river didn't rush.
The river never judged me.
It didn't care if my heart fluttered wrong or if I tired too quickly or if I could never run as fast as other children. It accepted me, always. It waited for me on the mornings when Grandpa carried me there on his back because my legs refused to move.
It was the only place I belonged.
The only place where my breaths didn't feel like borrowed time.
But rivers change.
Villages change.
Even memories erode.
The river of my childhood is long gone... burned, drowned, swallowed by the years. What happened to it no longer matters. Whether it still flows or has dried into cracked earth, it exists now only as something my heart remembers when the nights are too quiet.
The boy who hid behind Grandpa's robes is gone too.
He had no idea what waited beyond the edges of that small village.
He didn't know that the world could be cruel, that people killed for silver, that storms could erase homes, that oceans could swallow screams, that blood could stain even gentle hands.
That boy walked through storms.
Crossed oceans.
Bled under foreign suns.
And learned how to survive in places where quiet things were devoured first.
Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I wonder if that small boy ever truly existed... or if he drowned in the river along with the memories I pretend not to miss.
And now…
Now that same quiet boy... grown taller, colder, sharper... stands before the most guarded gates in the Empire.
The Imperial Palace.
Its shadow covers the entire district like a slumbering beast.
The air itself feels heavier here, as if laden with centuries of authority.
The sky seems lower, almost within reach, yet impossibly distant.
These walls are nothing like the soft wooden walls of my childhood home.
They are carved from stone that has witnessed wars, coronations, assassinations, and triumphs. Spiritual formations hum faintly beneath the surface, the kind of pressure that presses against your lungs until every breath reminds you: You do not belong here.
Guards stand like statues, armor polished to a blinding shine, eyes sharp enough to slice through lies. Their hands rest casually on their weapons, but nothing about them is relaxed. Every one of them is ready... waiting, measuring every step that approaches the gate.
I keep my hood low.
Not out of fear.
But out of habit.
A heart learns to hide long before a body does.
The palace towers rise like mountains forged from jade and gold.
Red pillars gleam in the sunlight.
Dragons coil across rooftops.
Even the wind seems disciplined here.
And in the heart of all this magnificence lies the place I have dreamed of since the night I realized knowledge could be power, escape, salvation... or all three at once.
The Imperial Heavenly Library.
A sanctuary said to hold every scroll, every forgotten text, every secret the Empire has ever buried or tried to erase. A place where histories twist into prophecy, where answers hide beneath dust, where the truth of one's existence might lie quietly between two unassuming pages.
For half my life, I imagined what it would look like.
Rows of shelves reaching the heavens.
Ink that never fades.
Records of cultivation paths long lost to time.
Techniques forbidden to commoners.
Maps to places wiped clean from charts.
And perhaps…
an explanation for the strange Pulse inside me.
A hint of what I am.
Who I was supposed to become.
Why I was taken.
Why I survived.
Dreams are fragile things, but this dream survived storms and pirate chains and hunger and nights where cold pressed so deep into my bones I thought I would never stand again.
Now it stands before me... real, close enough to touch.
The Heavenly Library…
the one thing I desired more than rest, more than recognition, more than belonging.
More than safety.
I step forward.
The palace gate looms overhead, gilded and impossibly tall.
Guards shift, watching.
The world holds its breath.
My fingers curl around the fishing rod at my back... the same motion they have repeated for years, an unconscious reassurance. The rod feels light, familiar, a remnant of the life I lost and the life I built after.
Grandpa's voice echoes faintly in my memory.
"Quiet, gentle things suit you, Jin."
Maybe that boy still exists somewhere under the scars.
Maybe the river never truly left me.
Maybe the path that led me through blood and moonlight was always meant to bring me here.
Right to the doorstep of the empire's greatest secret.
Right to the place where everything might finally make sense.