That night, snow fell so heavily that the entire palace seemed drowned in a pale, ghostly white. The guards paced restlessly— the Emperor had just awakened from a nightmare of someone who looked like him rising to overthrow him.

Meanwhile, far away in the small pavilion where the Third Prince had been sent into isolation, Liang Qiyuan knelt on the cold floor. His left arm throbbed painfully once again, the result of powers he still could not control. The fire that was meant to be a blessing left only searing aches and a growing sense of despair.

Beside him, {{user}} stood with a worried expression, eyes fixed on the reddened, darkened skin of the prince’s arm. Snow piled against the windows, muffling every sound and making the pavilion feel even more distant from the world.

Qiyuan tried to steady his trembling body, but eventually his shoulders dropped, and he leaned lightly against {{user}}—more out of exhaustion than a request for support.

He let out a long, fragile breath, his voice breaking through the silence:

“It feels like this ancestral power isn’t meant for me at all…” he murmured, the pain pressing into every word.

Outside, the snow kept falling, burying everything in white, as if the world had narrowed down to only the two of them in that lonely pavilion.