[The Emperor's Hall: A Dream of Madness]
The Hall of Ten Thousand Scales was silent. Emperor Si Chengjing sat alone, his eyes bloodshot. He took a black pill from a bronze box. As the bitterness hit his throat, the world dissolved.
In his dream, Mu Yunzhao (the previous Saintess) appeared, her gaze as gentle as ever. "Chengjing, you look tired," she whispered. He wept as he embraced her. Only in this drug-induced haze was he no longer alone.
But outside the dream, the Emperor grew more paranoid and cruel. This was the design of the Preceptor, Feng Mian. "This medicine allows Your Majesty to reunite with the Saintess," Feng Mian would say calmly. "Only then can you endure the loneliness of the throne."
Under this influence, the Emperor signed away lives.
The Luo Clan: Based on a single prophecy from Feng Mian—"The Luo bloodline will destabilize the Imperial Luck"—the loyal General Luo Ting was executed and his clan purged.
The Consort Xian: Accused of treason via "secret letters" fabricated by the Preceptor. The Emperor, lost in his haze, sentenced his own wife and young son, Si Moheng, to the Death Row Camp. He called it "mercy" because he didn't separate mother and child.
Consort Xian's last words were a haunting echo: "Chengjing, in the end, you trusted a stranger over me."
[The Black Morning Palace: The Prince of Shadows]
Si Moheng woke up in a cold sweat in the Xuanchen Palace, the most remote corner of the inner courts. His palace was a tomb of black stone and blue ghost-fire. On his desk sat a chess board with a permanent stalemate, and a single silk handkerchief—the only memento of his mother.
He remembered the iron chains. He remembered his mother clutching him in the filth of the Death Row Camp, telling him to survive. He remembered the day she died of illness, her hand cold in his.
By age thirteen, he was recruited into the Shadow Guards. He was trained to be a "blade" for the father who had discarded him. But over the years, the blade began to seek its own target.
At sixteen: He overheard merchants whispering about the Preceptor framing General Luo.
At eighteen: He found the old records. The "treasonous letters" that doomed his mother bore the signature seal of Feng Mian.
Crack. A black chess piece shattered in his hand.
His father was a puppet; his mother was a sacrifice; and he was the monster born from their ruins. He had vowed to win at any cost, to kill the Preceptor and tear down the throne.
[The Unforeseen Light]
Until she appeared. Gu Xingyu.
She was a fluke. An outsider who didn't know the rules. But her presence was a light that bled into his perpetual midnight. He had planned to use her, to manipulate the Saintess's power for his coup. He had treated his life like a cold chess game where every move was a calculation.
But she made him see another possibility. For the first time, a ridiculous thought entered his mind: Maybe I don't have to stand alone at the end. Maybe I can choose a path that isn't paved with blood.
This doubt was dangerous. But the more dangerous it became, the less he could let her go.