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The woman stood alone in the great hall of jade and gold. A dark blood-soaked veil protected her long dark hair and loose black robe. She held a sword of unblemished steel and gazed at the ceiling as if peering at the stars.
Her free hand retrieved a seal from inside her robe. Though shaped similarly, it wasn’t the jade Imperial Seal, but a seal made of black stone.
Above the palace, the stars shone brighter. The black sky shimmered as if a layer of pure water reflected the moonlight inward, trapping everything within.
The light forced a man to step down from the ceiling onto the opposite side of the hall. Wrapped in a brown coat, he appeared to be an amiable middle-aged laborer. However, his skin was gray, and four small antlers protruded from his sparse white hair. “So, the keystone of the Taiping Formation wasn’t lost after all.” The man sighed tiredly. “I was perfectly concealed.”
The woman shook her head. “No one needs to sense you. I can calculate you were nearby,”
“You waited to use the formation against me. I wonder if you let this all occur just to catch me again?” His eyes drifted to the halved human bodies littering the floor.
“This is the same as that year when Taizong campaigned east, but now you’re on the other end of the scheme.”
“Would you believe me if I say I had nothing to do with this rebellion?”
“I believe you. It is because this wasn’t your plan that you thought no one could predict you would come. But, you still came looking for advantages. You can’t resist, can you? Therefore, I’ve won.”
The woman’s form blurred. A shadow swept across the candlelit ground towards the man.
The man raised his frail hand. Light warped. The shape of the world distorted.
Two strands of nothingness wrapped the air around the man, already partially erasing him from sight. Then everything reverted back, returned to normal with the exception of the woman who now stood before him.
The woman’s sword drew closer. No longer able to escape through space, the man took a step backward, fracturing the ground as he did. Yet, the sword was arriving faster than he could fall back.
His eyes glimpsed at the fire of the chandeliers above him. The candle flames burned with unnatural flares flickering in quick succession. The woman wasn’t fast, he was trapped within slowness. The man could think of a thousand methods to escape, yet none were instantaneous.
So, the man attacked.
Without stopping his backward momentum, his entire being exerted to raise his hand forward. He did not need the time to strike, after all, the woman already headed straight towards him.
The frail hand pointed its taloned nails towards the woman. The flesh of his entire arm twisted and extended to a length that matched the woman’s sword reach.
The distance closed to none.
The man’s claw contacted first. It stopped. Unable to move forward. The woman’s blood-covered veil ripped to reveal an undamaged stone seal held by the woman’s hand, the keystone, blocking his like an insurmountable wall.
The sword contacted. It plunged into his chest.
Behind the man, the palace buildings split into two and a ravine divided the earth across the palace grounds. The windstorm, which parted the nearby clouds in two, swept away the fires on the charred buildings.
The man thought that the sword shouldn’t have been enough to break his flesh, yet the extreme coldness of the sword agonized him. The inside of the sword was fixed in place, frozen in time. A sword without cause and effect was unbreakable.
“You were not this strong the last time,” the man said.
“I did not feel well then.” The woman answered as she would in a common conversation.
“How did you prevent my distortion?”
“Idiot. Time and space are relative.”
The man couldn’t answer back. Yet, at the thought of his death, his teeth clenched. “I am not the strongest of my kind.”
“Neither am I- not yet anyway- but you are the strongest of your kind in our world, and you are your kind’s lord.”
“You never cared about such things before. All worlds exist together in reality, just as all states, kingdoms, and tribes, exist together on this continent. A world belongs to no one, not even it’s first inhabitants.”
“Something changed.”
The man knew what changed the woman and why she was weaker during their meeting at that mountain peak in the Great Expanse. It was family. Yet, his teeth remained clenched. “Just like the bloodshed this night, it won’t be my kind to kill you, it will be your own. They will avenge me, and my children will avenge you.”
The coldness which seeped throughout the man’s entire being erupted into heat. If stillness brought upon the cold, then the opposite was also true.
At first, the woman did not know what to think when she looked down at the burning corpse. It felt like experiencing the end of a story and the start of the epilogue.
Few people knew about the existence of the man, yet everyone who should know will know that he died here tonight. It was a single name on a long list of notable figures that were now dead, and she wondered who among them was the most important.
The woman relaxed and walked to the end of the hall before the only chair in the room. She rested her palm on it before she sat down, letting out a small laugh as she did.
As the night passed, hagrid faces and shivering bodies appeared from the side halls. Maids, eunuchs, consorts, concubines, imperial guards, and officials. All unlucky enough to have been within the Inner Palace, but lucky enough to have survived. The gathering, all of whom stumbled their way through corpse-filled halls, had varying degrees of shook and fear when they saw the scene of the woman.
“I always did want to try sitting on this thing at least once.” The woman turned to the various groups around the hall that watched her. “Are any of you Zhangsun Guanzi?”
A grey-bearded official slowly walked forward with trembling legs yet a steady step. “I am,” he solemnly said before he caught an object thrown towards him. It was the stone seal.
“The next emperor will be Taizong’s ninth son.”
The official held the seal as if it was the most valuable thing in the world before his eyes in shock once he registered what he just heard.
The woman rose from her seat. A smile as bright as the moon on this night blossomed. “If anyone else sits on this chair, they will die like all the other fools.”
She exited the hall and no one was insane enough to stop her.
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