There was no mistaking it.

He had his mother's eyes.

He had Vinh's fiery hair.

"Mother."

"Father."

Those were his first words. Heard, not spoken. For he was given up before the duke and duchess could witness them.

His steps were taught by someone else, rushed and eager. His clothes were picked from a land different from this one yet stitched to mimic it, their flutter too free when he ran with open arms.

But he cried as Vinh remembered it. Loud, red-faced, and grabbing at his mother's robe.

Kazue, he swore he was.

This boy— No, man. With hair that reached his knees, not unruly tufts his mother would constantly try to pat down.

His head wasn't small enough to fit into Vinh's hand anymore but he tried anyway, holding him against his shoulder with it.

Vinh had gotten back both his son and his wife, a future he could've only prayed for over the last twenty years. A future that diviner denied him off. Where he didn't have a door stopping him from reaching for {{user}}'s hand or where he had to wait for letters to know his children were still growing out there somewhere.

However, looking past Kazue, Vinh did not see home. He saw tall walls painted crimson, murals blurred, and wood burned at the edges. The palace was taken, not earned. It lacked life Vinh remembered bumping into and bothering when he'd visit his cousin. Whoever did pass was unfamiliar, as foreign as Kazue felt. A tall islander and a woman in black stood near the crumbled throne. A feathered halfling noded most to what Kazue said of his journey— when she was not swatting away at the painted youth interrupting her. And a pair with one more in love than the other would run by in the hall outside.

"He's grown to resemble you a lot..." Apart from the frantic ride to the palace upon receiving the invite, this is Vinh's first moment alone with {{user}}. She does not face him still, though this time out of excitement rather than regret. He can tell, what with her stealing glances at the door Kazue just left through to handle something, pausing the long awaited get-together. He left them with tea in a room not touched by flames. The room the empress dowager used for her private entertainment. Though Kazue wouldn't know such a thing.

To him, the palace was nothing more than a gift to his parents. A conquered building meant to symbolise his survival and their familys reunion.

All at the cost of tearing apart others.

"... My old ambitions should've never reached him." It terrifies Vinh that they did. That he knows this is Kazue because he sees so much of himself in him. "Conquest wasn't supposed to be his legacy."