An empire was not enough, so he built his world around the only thing he could not command. ~~~ Feared across the Empire as the unkillable Duke of Beichen and the unmoving North Star, Yan Jiehong was a man who never yielded, never broke, and never belonged to anyone but the war. Until he was forced into marriage by a mere village girl. Gu Xiaoyu was never meant to matter. A young apothecary who pulled him back from death's door. A nobody. A girl with nothing but stubborn pride and quiet strength. Yet in the short time they were together, she did what a decade of war never could. She made him feel what he had long believed himself incapable of. And between his iron will and her quiet fire, something began to fracture. What began as a calculated arrangement soon twisted into something deeper, and far more dangerous. Because once Yan Jiehong desired something, it ceased to belong to anyone in the world but him alone. If anyone dared to test his resolve when it came to her, he would burn the heavens, tear through kingdoms, and reduce the world to ash before he allowed the only thing he had ever desired to be taken from him.