A Mistake on the Spring River

In the first year of Tianhua, on the forty-seventh day after the abdication, the hairpin ceremony at Prince Anping's residence had reached its third stage when an urgent dispatch from the northern frontier cut it short. The hairpin was never placed in her hair, and no one mentioned those words again: "You may decide your own marriage."

Princess Luo Yan refused to accept it. That night, she rang the copper bell from a childhood promise, but the one who came was not the young man beneath the pomegranate tree. Instead, there were seventeen screams beyond the wall, followed by a man who climbed over it, reeking of blood.

From that day on, strange things began appearing around her: a blind lute seller whose lips were tighter than a clam's, and who had already invented six versions of how he lost his sight; a jade pendant engraved with the character "Chi," which made anyone who saw it change expression; and the unspoken understanding throughout the residence. Her mother would only say, "The tea has gone cold." Her father would only say, "Stay calm." In the Imperial City Bureau's records, three lives were dismissed with just two words: "case settled."

She had wanted to get to the bottom of things, but with every step, she became more deeply entangled in the plot. The betrothal document, the family genealogy, the old embankment, the fire... Everyone was hiding something from her, and everyone was hiding the very same thing.

This was a wager no one would admit to: someone risked their life to hide a name, and someone else spent a lifetime repaying a debt born of a fire. She stood beneath the wall, clutching that copper coin. Some things, once picked up, can never be put down.