Shall we begin again?
Not with crowns, not with conquests, but with something humbler—a prison.
The place where my story—if one could dignify it with such a word—was born.
Not in splendor, but in the damp confines of a dungeon.
Small, crude, intimate—a fitting cradle for an emperor.
Or merely a womb where ambition first learned to breathe?
I see him still—that boy toddling around his mother on what should have been an ordinary afternoon. He was me, yet he wasn't—an untempered shard of who I would become, ignorant of ambition's weight and betrayal's sting. That boy, so small, so untouched—how laughable he seems to me now. How naïve he was, to believe the world could remain as warm and golden as that evening—the sun dipping low, casting its tender light on the only life we knew.
My mother, Lady Zhao, prepared dinner as she always did, her soft humming threading the air, blending with the rustle of her sleeves. She moved with such grace, unaware of the storm already brewing beyond her walls.
She waited for Yiren. He was late. Not unusual, perhaps. But the lateness stretched, and with it, her humming faltered, replaced by silence. The sun dipped lower still, pulling shadows into corners. And yet, he did not come home.
Did she wonder, in those moments of quiet unease, if something had shifted irreparably? Did I?
Of course not. A child cannot comprehend the magnitude of such absence. But now I see it clearly—oh, how vividly I see it. Yiren, my father, was not delayed. He was gone. Escaped. And Lü Buwei, ever the tactician, had gone with him, leaving us behind to face the wolves at the door.
Betrayal is a curious thing, isn't it? At the time, it was invisible, unspoken—yet it was there, coiled tightly around that evening like a serpent waiting to strike. Perhaps my mother knew. Perhaps she didn't. I didn't. Not then. But they did. They knew. They chose.
And so, I wonder—is this where it all began? That first betrayal—a seed, small and seemingly inconsequential, yet destined to root itself deep in my soul.
Did Yiren hesitate, even for a moment, when he made his choice? Did Lü Buwei? Or was I, and the woman who bore me, simply a sacrifice weighed and discarded on the scales of their ambition?
I toddled around her, tugging at her robe, pulling at hanging cloths, laughing as only a child can—blissfully unaware of the storm about to break.
And then, it shattered.
The rhythmic pounding of boots thundered through the earth, growing louder, fiercer—until the door burst open, and they were upon us.
Troops, their armor gleaming with malice, flooded into the small space, overturning our table, smashing bowls, tearing down the cloths that swayed on the line. The air filled with the acrid smell of fear and dust. Their movements were ruthless, mechanical, as though executing a preordained script. And then they saw us.
My mother, her face pale but composed, held my hand tightly. Too tightly. Her pulse thrummed through her palm—erratic, frantic, alive with terror.
We were dragged from the house like broken puppets, their iron-clad hands gripping too hard, too unkind. I stumbled, but my mother held me upright. We were shoved into a wooden cage just outside our home—a crude, splintered thing meant for beasts, not people.
The sky turned from gold to ash. My mother knelt beside me, her hand still clutching mine. Her grip was firmer now. Desperate.
"Ma… Ma…?" I whispered—not a question, really. Just a need to hear her speak, to know we were safe.
She turned to me, her face illuminated by the last of the sun. Her smile was thin, brittle. Her eyes clouded with something I couldn't name then, but now know to be fear wrapped in a fragile attempt at comfort.
"Zheng'er," she murmured, voice steady but stretched too thin, "don't worry. We are good."
It was her first lie.
Perhaps, like that first betrayal, it seemed a small thing—insignificant, almost innocent.
But lies and betrayals, like seeds scattered on fertile ground, always take root.
I often wonder if, even then, she knew there would be others, each one flourishing in the shadow of the last.
Not long after, they returned—swift and merciless.
We were hauled from the cage and dragged down the stone steps into the depths of the dungeon.
That first descent into the dark—that was just the beginning.
We would remain there for years.
The cell was a cavernous pit of damp stone, its walls slick with moisture. The floor, scattered with straw, could not soften the bite of the cold beneath. A barred window high above let in a sliver of light by day. At night, the corridor flickered with lanterns, casting shadows like ghostly sentinels across the stone.
The dungeon was alive in its way.
It breathed.
It pulsed.
The air was dense, weighted with mildew and rot. Each step down had felt like crossing into another world, where sound warped and breath thickened.
There was always water—trickling, echoing, a rhythm that became its own kind of madness. The silence stretched and collapsed around it, pierced only by sudden sounds: a creak, a scrape, a distant cry.
And yes—there were the screams.
The first time we heard them, my mother pulled me close, her body a shield.
When the cries stopped, replaced by the drag of something heavy, she stiffened, turned me away, and covered my ears.
"Don't look," she whispered.
I obeyed.
That was the beginning.
The silence that followed her whisper would become the shape of everything I built after.
—————————
But soon, I no longer needed her warning. Something within me shifted.
I no longer found the screams or cries disturbing—nor the jarring silences that always followed, like a breath held just before the cut. The sounds of struggle before death became, instead, part of the fabric of my existence, woven into the unending symphony of the dungeon.
My mother adapted too. Each time the echoes began their ghastly refrain, she would gather me into the corner of our little cell, her arms folding around me like a shield. She would hum softly, her voice a balm against the sharp edges of the noise. One of my ears pressed against her chest, muffled by her heartbeat; the other captured her lullabies—gentle, melodic, steady.
Her songs became a world of their own—soothing, protective, filled with a love so absolute it almost eclipsed the horror outside. And yet, the echoes persisted, seeping through her embrace and intermingling with her voice, creating a strange, unsettling harmony. It was as if the dungeon itself conspired to compose a new kind of music for us—a symphony of sorrow and solace, despair and devotion.
To my young mind, those blended sounds became something extraordinary. Almost beautiful.
They were, after all, the soundtrack of survival.
I had no sense of days or time. The passage of hours meant little to me; my world was contained within the walls of that cell.
But I noticed her. My mother changed. Her moods shifted like the seasons—anxious at first, then hopeful, only to spiral into disappointment and, eventually, the quiet resignation of giving up. Emotions swirled within her, mixing and shifting until even the fiercest of them were worn smooth by time.
But I… I was a child. And children, in their ignorance, are content.
Sleep. Food. Play. That was enough.
Sometimes, I think of prisoners today—these so-called modern cells. Showers. Beds. Books. Televisions. A place to live. A place to think.
Strange, isn't it? That we punish people with structure and comfort. With time to read. With order.
They call it justice. But I found no such comforts in that place.
And yet, I found something far rarer—something they never will.
I found love.
Distilled.
Burning.
My mother, ever a paradox of care and restlessness, would gather the stray bits of straw scattered across our cell, tying them neatly, one by one, until they resembled soldiers and horses—an army, she said, to protect us. I followed her lead, though my attempts lacked her precision. Still, I adored them. To my young eyes, they were real—solid companions, brave and bound by silence.
We gave some of them names. In my imagination, they whispered to one another, guarding the kingdom we had built.
Those soldiers of straw—fragile, lifeless, yet utterly loyal.
They never betrayed. Never questioned. Never left.
How simple loyalty seemed back then—woven from bits of straw and a child's imagination.
With rocks and straw, my mother built rivers and mountains, crafting landscapes that she told me were the world—our world.
Your heaven, she said—a place of beauty, harmony, and peace, safeguarded by the armies we made together.
When the sun set, she would point to the small, high window in the wall of our cell. Through it, I could see the stars shimmering against the dark expanse. She would weave stories about the moon and the constellations, her voice gentle, filled with a kind of magic I've never heard again.
I cannot describe the bliss of those moments—listening to her stories, surrounded by the soldiers of our creation, imagining a vast, boundless world where rivers flowed and mountains touched the heavens.
And when darkness fully claimed the cell, the flickering lamplight from the corridor outside would dance across the walls, turning our space into something otherworldly.
To me, it was heaven.
A sanctuary—warm with love, safe within her voice.
I would drift into sleep, nestled beside her, lulled by the harmony of her stories and the dreams of the world we had made.
Those nights—they became etched into the deepest corners of my memory.
The purest distillation of love.
Of safety.
Of joy.
How could I have known, in that fragile, fleeting time, that I would one day rise so high, only to build an eternal monument to what I had lost?
An empire of stone and soil.
Armies of clay.
Impressive, yes.
But eerily similar to those soldiers of straw.
A grand mystery, they call it now—my mausoleum, my terracotta legions.
But for me, it was always simpler:
A shrine.
To a love that even power could never reclaim.
All to house those feelings again.
Ah.
The years we spent in that dungeon were pivotal, shaping me in ways I could not have imagined. Those were the years when the world etched itself into me—quietly. Indelibly.
My mother and I became bound to each other. Inseparable in our dependence. She relied on me as much as I relied on her.
In that damp, dark cell, where life was stripped to its barest essentials, there was only her.
And me.
There was no malice in that cell. No treachery.
Only love.
Raw. Unyielding.
As fleeting as sunlight through a barred window.
It was love in its purest form. Untouched by the ambitions that would one day devour me. A relationship untainted by the world.
Pure. Serene.
Even as the echoes of screams punctuated our nights.
The dungeon. The prison. The cage.
Yes, it was all of these things.
But it was also something far more profound.
It was hell, yes—a place of filth, of deprivation, of relentless cold.
But it was also my Eden.
Within those walls, amidst the squalor and despair, I found something rare.
There, with nothing but my mother's stories and our shared creations, I experienced the richest moments of my existence.
It's a cruel joke, isn't it?
That the happiest moments of my life were born in a cage meant to break me.
Even now, after lifetimes of contemplation, I wonder:
Did that dungeon forge the emperor I became—
or merely polish the inevitable?
Perhaps the greatest joke of all is this:
Even freedom
could not offer
the riches I found in that cage.
Hell, they called it.
But for me, it was a garden—
bleak, yes,
but fertile in its way.
What irony, that the prison meant to crush me
became my haven.
A womb from which an emperor would emerge.
And those days—however harsh—
were my days of beauty.
Of love.
Days whose echoes would shape
the very fabric of what I was to become.