Burning Rivers and Mountains: Grievance at the Long Gate

In the nineteenth year of Jian Yuan, the golden bell at the eaves of the Zhaoming Hall in Southern Liang shattered to dust in a torrential downpour.

Regent Princess Xiao Mingwan held the young emperor's hand as she watched the Northern Yan cavalry smash through Jiankang's gates from the Vermilion Bird Terrace. The boy who had once shared half a date-paste cake with her had ultimately used the strategies she taught him to crush her realm.

Everyone said the regent princess kept thirty male favorites, yet no one knew that a faded painting of cranes hung in a secret chamber of Changming Palace.

The white-clad man playing the zither in the painting was Xie Jue, the legitimate heir of the Xie family who had fallen into the icy river ten years ago. He was the young military genius she had personally broken, and also half the face hidden beneath the Northern Yan regent's bronze mask.

As the flames from the Vermilion Bird Terrace dyed Jiankang's twilight red, Xie Jue approached step by step, gripping a bloodstained sword sheath. "Wanwan, back then you said you wanted to wager on a game of empire with me. Did you ever imagine that today you would lose everything?"

Xiao Mingwan pinned on the jade swallow hairpin he had given her and smiled as she fell into the endless sea of war smoke. "A Jue, the last lesson you taught me was this: better to shatter than bend."

Where the setting sun bled red, someone picked up half a bloodstained jade pendant. On its reverse were tiny words engraved in the third year of Yongchu: May we become a pair of cranes, their clear cries ringing through the nine heavens.

[Additional setting notes]

1. Told through two interwoven timelines: the present and flashbacks to the third year of Yongchu.

Theme: One wrong move, and the whole game is lost.