That night, a green-burning star fell.
It was autumn.
After the emperor, known as “the Chaos,” was captured, Princess Fei Ling and the Empress were spared imprisonment. This was because both had been injured by the emperor’s violence. Moreover, the Empress showed no inclination to resist the rebellion or to assist the emperor.
Even when she was informed of the former emperor’s execution to be carried out that evening, the Empress calmly nodded, as though it were the inevitable conclusion.
Shortly after, before the execution could take place, the Empress took her own life by drinking poison.
Before she died, she confessed a certain truth to Fei Ling.
A truth as poisonous as it was beautiful, destined to remain hidden until the afterlife. Overwhelmed by despair upon learning it, Fei Ling also drank the poison. Yet, whether by fate or misfortune, she did not die.
Perhaps it was due to a childhood of surviving assassination attempts and repeated detoxification—her body was eerily resistant to the poison’s effects.
Was it sorrow or resentment she felt?
Amid her hazy consciousness, she couldn’t tell.
But one thought remained clear: she had to see the Emperor.
Fei Ling began walking toward the palace execution grounds, passing through the twilight bamboo forest. The darkened clouds hung low, heavy with a bluish tint. It was an evening cloaked in darkness.
Soon, out-of-season snow began to fall. Fei Ling pressed onward, stepping on frost-covered bamboo leaves with her bare feet, occasionally stumbling.
In the closing shroud of silver-white, she encountered something almost unreal.
A creature with antlered, dragon-like features and a body scaled like a deer.
A kirin.
The kirin lay quietly on the ground, its six hooved legs stretched out. Its maned neck drooped lifelessly, and its breathing was faint. The glowing, bronze-like scales were brutally torn away, and pure, mercury-like blood flowed freely.
It was unbearably beautiful and yet tragic to behold.
She knew it would not survive much longer.
The kirin is the divine protector of the nation. When a ruler worthy of the throne governs, the kirin assists in maintaining harmony between yin and yang.
“…Father.”
From somewhere distant, the sound of the executioner’s axe echoed.
The execution grounds were far away—too far for human ears to hear. Fei Ling instinctively looked up to see stars burning as they tore through the heavens, falling to the earth.
The kirin let out one final sorrowful cry before succumbing to death.
At the same moment, Fei Ling understood that her father, the Emperor, was gone. She collapsed, realizing she was too late. A single frozen tear slid down her cheek.
Compelled, she reached out to touch the kirin’s lifeless body. In that instant, something began to seep into her, invading her being, as if roots were spreading through her ribs and taking hold of her heart.
Looking back, that moment marked the end of Fei Ling, the young girl.
And the beginning of everything.
