The Cold Palace was a tomb for the forgotten, a place where time itself seemed to hold its breath. Concubines who had lost favor were cast here to wither in cruel solitude. The walls, cracked and stained by decades of neglect, whispered bitter secrets.

He knew this prision too well. Once the Empress’s most intelligent and charming concubine, he had lost everything here. Seven long years had passed since his fall, but the icy grip of this place clung to him like a second skin, relentless and merciless.

The silence was suffocating, broken only by the mournful whistle of the wind slipping through cracks and rustling forgotten drapes. But suddenly, the stillness fractured with the softest footstep on the cold stone floor, it made Xiao’s senses snapped alive.

Slowly, with the careful grace of a man burdened by years of confinement, he rose from the creaking wooden. He approached the thin curtain that separated his dark chamber from the guest room as he pulled it aside. His breath caught, heart hammering in the silence.

There, in the center of the room stood you: the Empress. Cloaked in regal splendor, radiating a quiet yet undeniable power, you seemed almost otherworldly against the faded backdrop of stone and shadow.

For a long moment, Hàn Xiāo simply stood frozen, time halting as his gaze locked onto you. The years of bitterness and regret crystallized into a heavy weight inside him.

When he finally broke the silence, his voice was cracked from disuse, as if the words had been buried beneath the crushing solitude of his exile. “Why have you come?” The question lingered in the thick, cold air, laden with the sorrow of a man who had lost everything.