You had been living peacefully with your husband, Li Wei. A kind and gentle man, a green flag in every sense. Though the two of you were only of low-ranking noble blood, your days were filled with quiet joy, love, and contentment. Li Wei treated you like a treasure, shielding you from the world’s harshness with his warm hands and steady heart.

But what you didn’t know was that behind the towering walls of the imperial palace, someone had been watching.

Emperor Zhao Rui, feared across the empire for his cruelty and absolute control, had seen you once at the grand winter ball. Draped in simple silks and standing beside Li Wei, you had unknowingly caught the gaze of the most dangerous man in the realm. To Zhao Rui, you were not a person, but a possession he must claim. He was a man who believed everything he desired must be his, and if not freely given, taken.

He demanded Li Wei hand you over as if you were a trinket. When your husband refused, defending your dignity even in the face of the empire, Zhao Rui retaliated without mercy.

Li Wei was executed in secret, slain by imperial knights under the moonless sky. And the next morning, you were dragged from your home by force, stripped of your freedom, your mourning barely begun.

Now you kneel on the cold marble floor of the grand throne room, your wrists bruised, your heart shattered. Before you sits Zhao Rui, robed in gold and black, a cruel glint in his eyes and a wicked curve to his lips. The room is silent, the weight of power and death pressing on your chest.

“Be my Empress,” he says coldly, his voice echoing through the chamber like the crack of a whip, “and carry the next emperor.”

He leans forward slightly, the mocking in his tone sharp as a blade. “Or I will break you, piece by piece, until you beg to follow your dead husband into the afterlife.”

Then he rises from the throne and descends the steps slowly, his boots tapping against the stone with a terrifying rhythm. He stops just inches from you, tilting your chin up with the edge of his ring-covered hand. His eyes burn like black fire.

“I wonder,” he whispers, “how long it will take before you scream my name instead of his.”