Page 162 of The Immortal’s Mark

“I am not asking about your ritual.” I keep my voice steady. “I am asking about the curse itself. You have studied it for eight centuries. You know what it does. You know how it works.” I pause. “You know its weaknesses.”

He is silent.

“Unless there are parts you do not know.”

The silence stretches. I watch him carefully—the way his jaw tightens, the way his eyes slide away from mine for just a moment before returning.

“The curse was created by her mother,” he says finally. “Built on older foundations. Magic passed down through the bloodline for generations—protections laid by Mei-Ling’s mother herself.”

“Mei-Ling’s mother.” Not Lián’s mother. A different woman entirely. “She knew what you would become.”

“Before I even met her daughter. Before I even knew Mei-Ling’s name.” Something cracks in his voice. “She looked at me across a crowded hall—a young prince, a man who studied philosophy and loved poetry, a man who had never harmed anyone—and she knew. And she spent the rest of her life preparing for what I would do after her daughter was gone.”

“She wrote protections into her bloodline.” I say.

“Warnings. Safeguards. Instructions for her descendants, passed down through generations.” He is not looking at me anymore. He is looking at something I cannot see—something centuries past. “The curse Lián’s mother cast was built on foundations her ancestor laid. Magic designed specifically to defeat me.”

“And you have studied it for over a thousand years.”

“Every fragment I could find. Every echo. Every variation.” His hands clench at his sides. “But there are passages in Mei-Ling’s mother’s hand. Written in the old tongue. About what I was. What I would become. What I would do to her bloodline.”

“You have not read them.”

“I could not.” The admission comes hard, dragged from somewhere deep. “To read her words would be to accept what she saw. To acknowledge that the woman I loved came from someone who looked at me and saw a monster. Not a man who might become a monster—a monster already, waiting to emerge.”

I file this away carefully.

Over a thousand years of studying the curse. Every fragment, every echo—except the parts that might defeat him. Because reading them would mean accepting what Mei-Ling’s mother saw when she looked at him. Would mean acknowledging that his beloved’s family knew exactly what he would become, and built protections against him before he even understood himself.

Grief made him skip the parts that predict his defeat.

I do not know yet how this helps me. I do not know what those unread passages contain. But I know they exist. I know he cannot bring himself to face them.

And I know that somewhere in those words, there may be a way to save her.

“The ritual,” I say. “If she comes for me—”

“When she comes for you.” He sounds certain. Patient. “She will. I know her bloodline. They love fiercely, the daughters of Mei-Ling’s line. They love until it destroys them.”

“And when she offers herself—”

“Willingly. For you. Fueled by love.” His voice softens into something almost tender. “She will make the choice her ancestor made. She will die for someone she loves. And I will finally have what I have been waiting for.”

The chamber feels smaller. The shadows press closer.

“You could let her go,” I say. “Let us both go. Whatever Mei-Ling was, whatever you had with her—she would not want this.”

“You did not know her.”

“I know her descendant. I know the woman who carries her blood, who laughs like—” I stop. The comparison feels too intimate, too precious, to share with him. “She would not want someone to die for her resurrection. She would not want you to become this.”

For a moment—just a moment—something flickers across his face. Recognition. Grief. The ghost of the man he used to be.

Then it passes.

“Perhaps,” he says. “But I have come too far to stop now, little emperor. Centuries of sacrifice, of hunger, of becoming this.” He gestures at himself, at the shadows, at the ancient terrible place where we stand. “If I stop now, it was all for nothing. All of it.”

He moves toward the darkness at the edge of the chamber.