~ 𝑪𝑶𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑮 𝑺𝑶𝑶𝑵 - In the heart of an ancient Chinese dynasty, a young emperor reigns with wisdom beyond his years but carries a heart heavy with unresolved grief. Years ago, he lost his beloved under mysterious circumstances, a loss that has...
The palace lay shrouded in profound silence, enveloped by the night's opaque embrace that swathed me in a heavy, suffocating quilt. I could vividly recall her visage—an embodiment of elegance, her laughter as delicate as blossom petals wafting gently through the air. Her luxuriant hair cascaded like a silken waterfall down her back, a cascade of dark waves shimmering in the dim light. Her beauty was without parallel, capturing the hearts of all who beheld her, as graceful and revered as a piece of exquisite jade, cherished and adored with a passion reserved solely for her.
She was destined to be empress, the one who had vowed to traverse the pathways of life by my side.
My heart was laden with an excruciating weight, brimming with emotions so complex they were indescribable. I yearned to rend my flesh, to extract my own heart, if only to escape the agony of feeling, to silence her voice that haunted my dreams and reverberated in every shadowed corner of the palace. Mei Lin was the tender melody, the soft patter of footsteps across the palace grounds where she once danced with radiant joy and blissful contentment. Her eyes had sparkled with an intensity of love so profound; no one had ever cherished me as she did.
Now, the corridors that once echoed with the melody of her laughter lay draped in a mournful stillness. Every corner whispered echoes of our past, of whispered secrets and shared dreams beneath the starlit sky. The gardens where we once strolled, entwined in discourse and love, now seemed overgrown with the wild thorns of neglect, each bloom a stark reminder of the blossoms she adored. Night after night, I wandered these once-lively halls, a ghost among shadows, tormented by memories and the cruel passage of time that had stolen her from my side.
The moon cast a pale glow through the windows, painting her portrait in the dust motes that danced in the air—so tangible, yet so agonizingly out of reach. I clung to these fragments of her, these spectral visions that flickered like candlelight against the dark tapestry of my grief. In the quiet solitude, I whispered her name, a prayer, a plea, for a sign that somewhere, somehow, she still danced, still loved, still existed beyond the veil of this crushing, tangible absence. Her name, Mei Lin, a mantra against the suffocating darkness, a beacon of lost love and eternal longing.
