The lotus garden was a place of secrets.
By day, it bloomed with delicate flowers of pink and white, their petals floating like ghosts across the ponds.
By night, it transformed a labyrinth of shadows, where whispers slithered among the reeds and unseen things moved beneath the surface.
It was here, beneath a silvered moon, that Jian crept through the mist.
His cloak clung damply to his body, heavy with night's chill. His every step on the flagstones was measured, cautious. In the distance, the palace hummed with the last notes of revelry, the laughter of nobles rising and falling like the tide.
But in the garden, all was silence except for the low, almost imperceptible humming of insects, drawn to the rot hidden among the blooms.
Jian moved past rows of withering lotuses, their heads bowed as if mourning. He was not here by accident; rumors had led him.
A chamberlain half-drunk and loose-tongued had whispered of strange midnight meetings, of masked figures slipping into the Queen's private gardens where no servants dared linger.
He would see for himself.
At the heart of the garden stood a pavilion, once built for poets and scholars to compose odes to the empire's beauty. Now, it lay in disrepair its paint peeling, its pillars leaning with age.
Jian approached, heart hammering in his chest.
A faint glow pulsed from within the pavilion the sickly light of lanterns shaded in red silk. He crouched behind a column of crumbling stone, peering inside.
Three figures stood within.
They wore robes of deep crimson, their faces obscured by lacquered masks painted with snarling beasts. In the center, laid upon a low table, was something that made Jian's blood run cold.
A body.
No not dead.
Alive, but barely.
It was a servant girl, her limbs restrained with silk cords. Her breathing was ragged, shallow. A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
One of the masked figures leaned closer, whispering words Jian could not catch. Another figure raised a small knife, its blade catching the lantern light with a sinister gleam.
The girl's eyes fluttered open wide, pleading, terrified.
And then, without ceremony, the blade slid into her chest.
Jian bit down on the gasp rising in his throat.
The masked figures moved with ritualistic precision, smearing the girl's blood onto scrolls laid out across the floor, chanting low in a language Jian did not recognize.
It was not a murder of passion.
It was an offering.
A sacrifice.
Jian's hands trembled with fury and horror. His mind raced. What were they doing? What dark rites unfolded beneath the very feet of the court? And why?
He shifted his weight, trying to retreat, when his foot brushed against a loose stone.
It clattered down the steps.
Instantly, the chanting ceased.
The masked figures turned as one, their hidden faces swiveling toward the sound.
Jian held his breath, willing himself into the shadows.
Moments stretched long and taut.
Then — a soft chuckle from the pavilion.
A woman's voice, smooth and chilling, broke the silence.
"Curiosity," she said, "is a dangerous hunger."
Jian fled.
He darted through the garden, reeds and lotus leaves tearing at his cloak. He heard footsteps pursuing him soft, relentless, inhumanly swift.
But he knew these paths better than most.
As a boy, he had hidden here during endless court functions, had mapped the forgotten ways with childish glee.
He veered sharply left, plunging into a thicket of bamboo, then slid down a hidden embankment into a drainage tunnel.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
He lay there, panting, listening.
Footsteps skidded past above him, curses muttered in the old tongue.
He waited long after the sounds faded before daring to move.
Safe for now, Jian navigated the old service tunnels until he emerged into a storeroom deep within the servants' quarters.
He wiped mud from his face and forced himself to breathe evenly.
He had seen enough to know the truth:
The sickness that ravaged the countryside was no accident.
It was the product of dark rituals, performed within the very heart of Yanliao itself.
And though he had not seen her face among the masked figures, Jian could not silence the voice within him that whispered treasonous thoughts.
The Queen knows.
The Queen commands.
He must be cautious.
If the wrong ears heard even a fraction of what he had witnessed tonight, he would not live to see another dawn.
Jian retreated to his chambers, slipping past the guards with the ease of long practice.
He bolted the door behind him, then sank onto the cold stone floor, burying his face in his hands.
He was alone.
Completely, utterly alone.
If he trusted the wrong person, he would die.
If he said the wrong word, he would vanish, his name erased from the empire's memory.
And if he did nothing...
The darkness would spread until there was nothing left but rot and ruin.
The moon hung heavy and yellow beyond his window, casting pale light across his scattered belongings.
On impulse, Jian drew a piece of parchment from his desk and began to write a letter encoded in old military cipher, a desperate call for aid to an old friend now serving far beyond the capital.
He had no illusions.
Help might never come.
He might be dead before it even arrived.
But he would not die quietly.
Not while the garden bloomed with blood.
Not while the empire danced upon a rotting foundation.
Not while whispers in the fog grew into screams.
As Jian sealed the letter, he swore silently to the gods whether they listened or not that he would uncover the full truth.
No matter what it cost.
And deep within the palace, beneath layers of silk and gold, a Queen smiled in her sleep, dreaming of a future written in crimson ink.