That year on the blood-red grasslands, she held her mother's cold body and listened as her tribe wept and cried, "We must survive." Six-year-old Zhelan Anduo knew nothing of a peaceful, prosperous world. She only knew she had to keep the glint of blades from the children's eyes.
The Grand Tutor tapped the board with a chess piece. "You are the pawn in this game."
She pressed her fingertip against the general's position. "A pawn today, the player tomorrow."
The new emperor took her hand and placed a piece. "The seven tribes of the northern frontier are all your chessboard."
Poisoned wine in the imperial chambers, secret letters from the border, mountains of corpses from the seven tribes: she learned to forge alliances along a blood-soaked road, weakened the vassal lords through factional strife, and bought herself a moment's respite with slaughter.
"This is how you stop war with war," she told her bloodstained reflection.
When the new emperor offered her the imperial seal to rule alongside him, her eyes reddened. "You know perfectly well that a throne was never what I wanted!"
Now snow falls on the monument to peace in the northern frontier. The aristocratic clans who once scorned her as a remnant of the north finally kneel before her steps.
And she stands atop the city wall, gazing across the boundless realm. Snow falls in silence, just like the wish she buried in her heart all those years ago.
No romance. The main storyline follows the heroine as she becomes an empress, with a relatively gradual character-growth arc.
