In the twenty-seventh year of the Guangxu reign, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing.
Aisin Gioro Yuming, the Qing dynasty's final Shadow Lord, opened a three-hundred-year-old secret archive as the Forbidden City fell.
This organization had existed since Nurhaci's thirteen suits of armor. Each generation of Shadow Lords came from a collateral branch of the imperial family. In public, they were idle princes; in secret, they did the emperor's dirty work. They spied on brothers, gathered military intelligence, framed the innocent, and even poisoned their own relatives with their own hands. For three hundred years, no one knew their names.
Now, the last Shadow Lord has decided to write it all down.
Not to clear his name, and not to claim credit.
But because some truths will truly be lost if even the shadows forget them.
