The night before she died, it rained fire. Red embers stitched the sky like dying stars, and beneath their glow, Zhao Wei knelt, her hands bound, spine straight, a general stripped of armor, yet not of pride.

  There were no mourners. Only the silent hiss of ash on silk robes, and the cold smiles of the court that once praised her.

  "A strategist must see every move," they had said. But even a thousand eyes could not see the dagger hidden in a lover’s hand or the betrayal written in a king’s decree.

  “I gave you victory,” she whispered, her voice a blade dulled by sorrow. “And for that, you gift me death?”

  The emperor did not answer. Cowards rarely speak to ghosts while they still breathe.

  Her hair was undone, raven strands soaked in rain and blood. Her eyes, sharp as the blade they would use on her, refused to plead.

  A priest chanted rites, but the wind stole his words.

  She spoke her own.

  “In life, I wove fate with a brush and a blade. In death, I shall become the ink they cannot erase.”

  The sword fell. There was no scream. Only silence, and the soft sound of a soul breaking free.

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  Then — warmth.

  Not the fire of battle, nor the heat of vengeance. But the breath of spring and the faint scent of plum blossoms.

  She opened her eyes and found a paper lantern swaying above her, its light soft, its patterns foreign.

  Her body was small. Her hands, very frail and calloused by neither sword nor scroll.

  A voice called out from beyond a curtain.“Zhao Wei! Are you still sulking again?”

  A girl. Twelve, perhaps. Or rather, this body was.

  Her name… was the same. But the weight behind it was gone.

  Memories poured in like a flood of years not lived, of a family that barely spoke her name, of a clan that pitied her for being spiritless.

  Spiritless.

  Ah.

  So this was fate’s little joke.

  To return her to the world as a child mocked by her own blood, the cursed one, the girl without a bond, the one left behind during the Awakening.

  But they had made one fatal mistake.

  They gave her a second chance.

  And they let her remember.

  Outside the paper screen, two cousins laughed.

  “She’s probably crying again. Useless girl.”

  Zhao Wei looked down at her pale hands. No scars. No callouses. But beneath them?

  Fire.

  Not the kind that burns villages. The kind that waits. Smoldering in silence.

  They killed me once. Let’s see how many fall before they try again.

  She rose, every movement deliberate, every breath measured. The world had forgotten her name’s weight. They would remember soon enough.

  And in this life, she wouldn’t need a blade to draw blood.

  She would bleed them dry with a thousand silent schemes.