Shattered Golden Bowl

(This novel has been abandoned.) Perhaps it was fate. Fated to leave behind a peaceful and prosperous age, I was born into this chaotic world of war and smoke. I sang the ballads of the desert and crossed its endless sands. When the northern frontier’s iron cavalry ravaged the realm without mercy, in the far west, a mad storm roared and shook the heavens; when the dream of an eternal empire became an unattainable hope, I danced a song of the world’s final sorrow in my phoenix crown and bridal robes, inside a crumbling hall. White blossoms were drenched in crimson, and a beautiful face met an untimely end, leaving no trace in the history books; once a dazzling pearl, precious and radiant, illuminating every corner, I ended with a sorrowful sigh, trapped in the mire. If I refuse to be blinded by the whirlpool of political schemes, if I refuse to be a pawn in the hands of the one beside my pillow, if I refuse to become a wanderer in a kingdom shattered and broken, if I refuse to be discarded, unrecorded by the historian, then why should I fear this so-called fate?