Chapter 21
Winter had descended on Shangjing like a shroud. Snow fell in thick blankets across the imperial city, muffling sound and light in its cold embrace. The plum trees in the garden bent beneath the weight of ice, their dark branches stark against the relentless white.
For two months, Yun-yao had maintained her routine with meticulous precision.
Each morning, she would rise before dawn and ride furiously across the countryside with two guards before returning to oversee the household affairs.
Each evening, she would retreat to Gentle Breeze Retreat—now warmed by braziers and thick drapes—and read Zhen-ting’s letters, over and over again.
“... The northern winds carry victory to our banners. The tribes retreat further into the mountains with each passing day...”
“... Tell Yun-shan his suggestion of the flanking strategy proved most effective. He has a truly sharp mind...”
“... I miss the scent of osmanthus in your hair. When I close my eyes at night, I can almost believe I am home beside you...”
His words sustained her through the lengthening nights, as did the reports flowing into the capital of his military brilliance.
The court officials spoke of nothing else during state functions—how the Great General had outmaneuvered the Huoqu forces at Eagle Pass, how he had captured three strategic outposts with minimal casualties.
“Your husband’s name is on every tongue in the marketplace,” Yun-jia reported during a visit, eyes bright with excitement. “The tea houses have composed new ballads about the Battle of Crimson Ridge. They say he led the charge himself, cutting through enemy lines like a divine blade.”
Even Chancellor Shen had remarked, with quiet pride, that the Emperor himself had praised General Wei’s tactical genius during the morning assembly. “The Emperor himself said the Wei name would be remembered in the annals as one of Xi Dynasty’s greatest military minds.”
But then the dreams began.
Yun-yao found herself running through dense forest, branches whipping her face, breath coming in desperate gasps.
The cold burned her lungs. She was searching for something—someone—but shadows shifted constantly around her, disorienting and endless.
She woke clutching her chest, heart hammering against her ribs.
“Nothing but a dream,” she murmured to the empty room, pushing away the chill that had nothing to do with winter.
The next morning brought another letter. She breathed easier.
Night after night, the dreams haunted her. Dark waters. Wind. The shouts of men. Hopping through the grass. The jarring clangs of metal on metal. A rusty stench. The terrible thunder of hooves. Warmth. Darkness. Burrowing into the ground.
Each dawn found her jolting awake in the grey half-light, skin clammy with sweat. With unsteady fingers, she would clutch at the folded paper—his last letter, now five days old.
“The mountains grow treacherous with snow. We advance cautiously. Do not worry if my letters come less frequently in the weeks ahead. The messengers cannot always find safe passage...”
She traced the final characters: “I'm coming home. I promise.”
In the flickering light, her hands appeared bloodless, as though winter had somehow crept inside her very skin.
“Come back to me,” she whispered.
Ten days passed with no word. Then fifteen.
“The mountain passes are difficult this time of year,” Lady Shen said during their morning tea, her voice carefully neutral. “When your father served as envoy to the northern provinces, we often went a month without correspondence.”
Yun-yao nodded, her smile a perfect mask. “Of course, Mother. I understand.”
But that night, the dream changed. She was running... hopping... in snow coated with icy blood. Men with arrows in their chests lay dead around her. She was searching, desperately. Pain bloomed across her right side.
She woke gasping, her nightclothes soaked with perspiration despite the winter chill.
The next morning, Feng Kai requested an audience.
“Lady Wei.” The head guard’s weathered face was grave as he bowed. “An Imperial messenger has arrived. He requests to meet you in your receiving rooms.”
Something in his tone chilled her blood. Yun-yao straightened her spine, adjusted the fall of her sleeves, and nodded once.
“Show him in.”
The Imperial messenger bowed with crisp formality. “Lady Wei, I bear words from His Imperial Majesty.”
She inclined her head, jade hairpins trembling faintly. “This humble one receives the Emperor’s messenger.”
“The Son of Heaven commands me to inform you thus: at the northern borders, our forces achieved decisive victory at Fire Tiger Gorge.” A careful pause. A slight catch in his breath.
“However,” his gaze dropped to the floor tiles, “in the final battle, General Wei became separated from the main force during an enemy ambush.” A beat of silence hung between them.
“His Imperial Majesty wishes the General’s household to know.
..” His throat worked. “...while casualties have been recovered and identified...”
He cannot say the words either, Yun-yao realized distantly.
“...the General remains among the missing.”
Her blood froze to ice in her veins. Not a muscle moved. “How long has the General been missing?”
“Seven days, Lady Wei.”
“And the search continues?”
“By imperial decree, search parties scour the gorge day and night. The entire northern command is mobilized. The Emperor himself has ordered daily reports on the search progress.” He paused. “The Great General is irreplaceable to the Empire.”
Yun-yao rose, aware she ought to deliver the flawless gratitude demanded of her, but her sight dissolved into a blinding haze, like a sudden squall of snow. Then the world tilted, and darkness swallowed her whole.
LADY SHEN ARRIVED AT the General’s Residence the next day, accompanied by Yun-si and Yun-jia. The icy formal sitting room felt suddenly warmer with their presence.
“The kitchen has prepared red bean soup,” Lady Shen announced, as servants brought in steaming bowls. “For strength during winter.”
It was the soup Lady Shen had made herself, once, when Yun-yao had fallen ill as a child. The memory caught her by surprise, lodging like a stone in her throat.
“Thank you, Mother.”
Lady Shen reached across the table, her fingers briefly brushing Yun-yao’s wrist—a gesture so uncharacteristic that Yun-yao nearly startled. “You will need your strength,” was all she said, but her eyes held softness.
Yun-jia was less restrained. “The General is too fierce to die,” she declared, spooning red beans with her characteristic vigor.
“Hell’s officers would be no match for him.
I imagine he’s fought his way through the entire underworld by now and is making his way back, thoroughly annoyed at the inconvenience. ”
“Yun-jia,” Lady Shen admonished, but without heat.
Yun-si said little, but her observant eyes missed nothing. When the others were distracted by Yun-jia’s dramatic retelling of the latest gossip, she leaned closer to Yun-yao and discreetly pressed a new huaben into Yun-yao’s palm. “The hero in Chapter Four... he walks out of an avalanche.”
Before Yun-yao could respond, Yun-jia reclaimed their attention with a clap of her hands.
“Oh! I nearly forgot. Eldest Brother said he’d visit tomorrow. He’s been absolutely insufferable since being appointed Assistant Minister of Rites.”
“‘Propriety, Yun-jia,’” she said, in an inimitable imitation of her brother’s tone.
This, at least, elicited a small laugh from Yun-yao. “I can just imagine.”
True to Yun-jia’s word, Yun-shan visited the next day. His formal greeting was impeccable, but as they sat in the study, surrounded by books and scrolls, an unusual awkwardness settled between them.
“I'd discussed military strategy books with the General before,” he finally said. “His insights on Sun Tzu are... remarkable.”
“He read extensively during his time at the border,” Yun-yao said softly. “He once told me it was his way to ensure more men came back alive.”
Yun-shan nodded, his gaze fixed on the careful characters. “His understanding of terrain advantage is particularly astute. It makes me believe—” He stopped, composed himself. “Anyone with such intelligence and experience would find a way to survive even the most challenging circumstances.”
It was exactly the way that Yun-shan would offer comfort, calmly, reasonably, like writing an exam treatise. Yun-yao felt a rush of affection for his effort.
“Thank you, Brother.”
He cleared his throat. “Mother mentioned you've been sleeping poorly.”
She tensed slightly. “Did she?”
“Dreams can be... troubling during times of stress.”
Something in his tone made her look at him more closely. “What do you know, Brother?”
His gaze shifted away. “Our family has certain... tendencies. As heir of the clan, I have access to the locked records...... It is not something to be ashamed of, Sister, no matter how much the clan would like to erase that history.”
The unspoken hung between them—the Wu blood that ran thin but present in their veins, more strongly in some than others. The spiritual blood that their family had spent generations burying beneath scholarly propriety.
“What do you dream of?” he asked suddenly, his voice barely audible.
“Forests. Rivers. Cold that burns. Pain.” She hesitated. “A rabbit...”
His eyes widened slightly. After a long moment, he simply said, “Be careful with such dreams, Sister. They can lead to places from which one cannot easily return.”
The dreams intensified. Each night, Yun-yao found herself deeper in the frozen wilderness, the pain in her side growing more acute, the cold more biting. Sometimes she glimpsed a figure ahead—always just beyond reach, always moving away from her.
“Wait,” she would call, her voice swallowed by wind and distance. “Please, wait.”
By day, she maintained her duties with mechanical precision. At night, she lay in their cold bed, surrounded by his things—the brush he used to write his letters, the books he'd left half-read, the robes he'd worn.
Three weeks after the news arrived, an imperial decree was issued. While the search would continue, the Great General Wei Zhen-ting was officially presumed dead in service to the Emperor. A memorial ceremony would be held once winter passed.
Yun-yao received this news with the same perfect composure she had shown throughout. She thanked the messenger, made the appropriate arrangements, accepted the imperial gifts of mourning with graceful bows.
That night, she walked alone once more to Gentle Breeze Retreat.
Another snowstorm of this harsh winter raged outside, wind shrieking and snow lashing against the delicate windows of the garden house.
Inside, preserved flowers he had collected for her lined the shelves, huabens stood stacked where they had left them, and his favorite teacup remained exactly as it was the day he left.
The carefully constructed mask of composure shattered at last in the cold solitude.
Yun-yao’s legs gave way beneath her, silk skirts pooling around her as she collapsed to her knees before his teacup.
Her hands trembled—not from the winter chill, but from the weight of suppressed sorrow.
A sound tore from her throat, raw and broken, as the first sob wracked her body. Then another. And another.
The grief and fear she had held at bay for weeks, for months, now surged forth, uncontrollable as the storm outside.
The wailing howls of the wind outside obscured her own cries as she sobbed uncontrollably.
The perfect daughter, the flawless wife, the model of grace and propriety—none of that mattered now.
Here, in this quiet garden house where no one could see, she was just a woman whose heart had been torn in two.
“I'm coming home. I promise.”
“You promised,” she whispered, pressing the jade rabbit to her heart. “You promised to come back for this. Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?”
As she knelt there, a strange awareness crept over her. From the lacquered box locked in her desk drawer, the ancient casting stones of her lineage seemed to hum, enveloping her in a tangle of whispers—men and women, young and old, murmuring over one another.
Yun-yao’s breath came in ragged gasps as the whispers coiled around her consciousness like smoke—ancestral voices murmuring secrets just beyond comprehension.
Trembling, she turned and slowly crawled toward the casting stones, dragging her leaden limbs across the floor.
She stumbled against the tea table, sending the teapot crashing down, but merely pressed on, oblivious to the sharp shards slicing her skin.
With numb fingers, she fumbled the drawer open and seized the lacquered box inside.
The box slipped from her blood-slicked hands and its contents scattered across the floor.
Gasping, she seized the fallen stones.
Wind screamed through the pavilion’s rafters. Blood trickled down her wrists, seeping into the stones’ grooved symbols. Warmth flared through the stones like live coals pressed to her skin.
The world fractured.
Snow. So much snow. A ravine choked with ice-rimed corpses. Steaming thermal pools, wolf tracks circling blood-stained snow. A cave. A shadow. Him.
Yun-yao gasped as the vision seared itself behind her eyelids. The casting stones scorched her palms, whispering in voices like wind through winter-bare trees. Follow the thread.
Yun-yao felt it then, a faint but steady heartbeat drifting along a long and sinuous thread, winding from her heart to his heart. It was faint, almost imperceptible, and could easily have been a trick of her own longing. Yet it was there—a flicker, a whisper, something real.
He was alive.