Ah, the wheel of fate—so predictable in its cruelty, so capricious in its mercy. It grinds some into dust, raises others to fleeting heights, and always, always, it turns without care for the cries beneath it.
Back in Qin, the court played its game in robes of silk and whispers, every move lacquered in solemnity. But here—here in Zhao—my mother and I were pieces on a lesser board. Tossed like dice. Dragged through dust. Forgotten by the hands that once placed us with such care.
Thrown and played around? How quaint. We were pawns. But pawns, as I later learned, are not without potential. Even on the filthiest board, a pawn—clever, relentless—may one day reach the end. May one day become a king.
But I was no king then. Only a child. And like a child, I clung to illusions—those bright, desperate lies the mind spins to survive. I thought, in those first moments after the tent, that they would take us back. Back to the cool embrace of stone. Back to the shadows that had wrapped me in safety. Back to my true home.
But no.
The path veered.
Every step pulled me further from the world I had known, and disbelief bloomed in my chest like poison. We weren't going back.
At first, I couldn't comprehend it. My mind, shaped by three years of dark rhythm and damp certainty, searched desperately for reason. But reason had no place in what followed. Only the cold blade of realization—quiet, surgical, final.
We would never return.
The little straw soldiers and horses that marched to war beneath my fingertips—gone. The rivers and mountains my mother and I had sculpted from nothing but dust and imagination—gone. The corner where her voice had lulled me to uneasy dreams—gone.
Everything.
To others, perhaps, these were trifles. A child's lament. But to me? They were my kingdom. My universe. My entire existence, torn apart without pause or pity.
Ah, but loss—how curious a creature it is. It does not leave a hollow. No, it builds something. A hunger. A resolve. You know how my story ends, don't you?
You know I could not leave it buried.
The rivers and mountains. The soldiers. The horses.
They were never truly lost.
They would rise again.
Not in straw and breath and childish games,
But in stone.
In scale.
In permanence.
One day, I would rebuild them all.
And they would never die.
And they would be magnificent.
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They placed us in a house. Small, yes—but above ground. A shack, by any noble measure. But after the dungeon, it felt unreal. The air moved here. Light lingered without shame. The walls didn't sweat, and the floor didn't bite. It was, for all its poverty, a kind of paradise. A cage, still—but gilded now.
They called it a compound, though it was really a holding pen. A purgatory for lost sons—scattered hostages from Qi, Han, Yan. Boys like me. Not brothers. Not friends. But fellow captives. We circled each other like small moons—drawn not by affection, but by gravity. A quiet camaraderie born of shared dislocation.
Our home was humble, but ours. A corner of stillness amid chaos. My mother and I had space now—a bed to sleep on, a bowl not chipped to the bone, a ceiling that didn't drip. It was enough. It had to be.
And there was Teacher Shen.
Sent, they said, by my father. A gesture, they called it. A thread, however thin, tying me to the world I had been dragged from. Shen was a patient man. Steady. Not cold, but measured—as though warmth, like power, should be rationed with care. He carried with him the old stories—tales etched into the bones of our lineage, legends polished by repetition until they gleamed.
He taught me history. Not the kind you read. The kind you feel. Bloodlines that clawed their way from stable-boys to kings. Wars waged not for land, but for vision. Victories won not with brute force, but with clarity—of purpose, of thought.
And then—there were the swords.
He did not teach them as violence. He taught them as language. The curve of the blade, the silence before the strike, the space between breath and blood. Every movement was a lesson. Every lesson, a philosophy. It was not about killing. It was about control.
I learned quickly.
I had to.
The straw soldiers were gone. The make-believe empires burned to ash. My kingdom of shadows had been taken. In its place, I was given metal. Movement. Strategy.
My mother watched me change.
And she said nothing.
She who had once cradled me in the dark now sat quietly in the light. Her smile, once indulgent, turned wistful. I saw it in her eyes—that moment at the army field, when she had smiled not with hope, but with resignation. She knew. The child she had known was slipping away.
And I—I began to understand that I would have to protect her now. Not with lullabies. With knowledge. With strength.
I buried the past.
Not out of grief.
Out of necessity.
The dungeon became a place I carried, not a place I mourned. The boy who had wept for straw horses—he was gone. In his place stood a student. A sword. A shape in the making.
They call it transformation.
I call it survival.
Teacher Shen's voice became the clock by which I measured my days. Each story was a brick. Each parable, a weapon. He spoke of strategy like scripture. He told me:
"Your blood is forged in hardship. Qin was born not of blessing, but of will. We were not always kings—we were once grooms. And even then, we plotted. Never forget, young master: your legacy is not a gift. It is a claim."
His words thrilled me.
I devoured his lessons, my mind sharpening like the blades we practiced with. Every strike became cleaner. Every counter more precise. It was no longer training. It was declaration. A promise I made with every movement.
A promise the world would one day come to fear.
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And then—there were the others.
The hostage princes.
Qi. Han. Yan.
Boys like me, but not like me.
Each from their own crumbling kingdom, each carrying a silence they didn't speak of. We didn't ask. We didn't need to. The silence was the bond.
We were children in name only—each shaped by the absence of home, of certainty, of fathers who gambled our lives like coins on a table. But in this court built for waiting, we learned to laugh. To walk in step. To feign ease.
It was... normal.
A strange, almost disorienting normal.
Life in that little enclave had a rhythm. Lessons. Meals. Laughter. No chains. No screaming. The sun rose and set without menace. My days were filled with voices that didn't echo. With conversations that didn't feel like claws.
My mother—she smiled again.
Not the trembling smile of survival, but something softer.
A flicker of the girl she might have once been.
She watched me grow. She would run her fingers through my hair—still childishly fine—and murmur, "You're so smart. So strong. You'll be great one day."
Ah, her hope.
How light it was. How heavy it made me feel.
I worked harder for it. For her.
Though even then, I wondered—was it truly for her?
Or for the seed her words had planted?
Teacher Shen's stories became my compass. Tales of men who bent fate with bare hands. Kings who carved kingdoms from nothing. Ancestors who clawed past ridicule and rose through resolve alone. They taught me that greatness was not gifted. It was taken. Forged. Held tight, even as the world tried to rip it from your grip.
The boy who found joy in straw horses?
Gone.
In his place stood something harder. Something hungrier.
Not yet the man I would become, but no longer the boy I had been.
I was learning how to wear the mask.
To walk the line between child and prince.
To let the softness recede—until the world could no longer wound me.
But the world—ah, it never forgets where to strike.
Not when the flesh is young.
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It was a quiet day.
One of those rare afternoons when we were allowed beyond the walls of the hostage court.
Dan from Yan and I wandered just past the gates, boys pretending to be free. We kicked pebbles. Traded jokes. Laughed in that way only boys do—light, thoughtless, like nothing in the world could reach us.
In my arms, I held a kitten.
A small, soft thing. White fur, warm belly. It fit in the curve of my hand like it belonged there. It had no name. I never gave it one. Perhaps I was afraid of getting too close.
But I loved it.
It was mine.
The only thing in my life that needed me.
I fed it. Held it.
Listened to it purr like the world hadn't broken yet.
And then—the cart came.
You could hear it before you saw it.
Gilded wheels grinding over dirt, arrogant in its arrival. It didn't stop with grace. It stopped with entitlement.
Two boys stepped down.
Silk robes. Zhao insignia. Faces cut from the same stone as their fathers.
One looked at us—at me, really—and sneered. "What have we here?" he said. "The poor little hostages. Abandoned. Forgotten. Pretending to be princes."
The other one laughed. A sharp, ugly sound. "Not even pretending well."
Their eyes landed on the kitten.
"What's this?"
"A plaything? For the orphaned mouse?"
Before I could move, one of them picked up a stick. He poked the kitten—hard. It squealed. I pulled it close.
"Leave it alone," I said. My voice trembled.
I hated that it trembled.
But the other boy had already drawn his sword.
I didn't see the strike.
Only the blur of steel.
Then a sound I didn't understand. Not right away.
A soft, wet crunch.
Then silence.
The kitten lay on the ground.
Motionless.
Its fur stained red. One paw twitching.
And then—nothing.
Dan beside me stopped breathing.
I couldn't even cry.
My mouth opened, but no sound came. Just breath. Just shock.
The Zhao prince stepped back with a satisfied smirk. "Oops," he said. "You'll cry now, won't you?"
They climbed back into their cart, laughing.
"Drive on," one of them said.
The wheel rolled forward.
Crushed the kitten's body with a sound I'll never unheard.
The white fur flattened into the earth. Blood seeped into dust.
And I—still silent—watched it all.
That image...
It never left me.
It lives behind my eyes. Even now.
—————————
They came more often after that.
Those Zhao princes.
Sometimes in the morning, sometimes just before dusk.
Always when they thought no one would stop them.
They'd wait just beyond the court gates—lounging in their fine robes, spitting out laughter like wine.
"The little hostage who cries for a kitten!"
"Not a man at all."
"Weak. Soft. A girl in prince's robes."
Their words followed me like shadows. Echoed long after they left.
But it wasn't their laughter that broke me.
It was mine.
The silence I'd failed to keep.
The sound that nearly escaped when the kitten died.
The tears that hadn't fallen—but almost had.
I hated that most of all.
So—I stopped going outside.
I stopped pretending to be normal.
Stopped pretending to be a boy who played.
Instead, I withdrew.
And trained.
I held my sword until my arms ached.
I read until my eyes blurred.
I drilled the words Teacher Shen had fed me until I could recite entire strategies in my sleep.
They had taken something from me, yes.
But in doing so—they'd given me something else.
Purpose.
Rage.
A vow.
Every insult, every smirk, every careless cruelty... it became flint to my fire.
I sharpened myself against them.
Let them laugh.
Their laughter was a forge.
And I—
I was steel.
Let them think they had humiliated me.
Let them think they had wounded a child.
They did not wound a child.
They forged a weapon.
One day, I would carve their names into the earth itself.
And when I did, I would make sure they remembered—
It wasn't strength that broke me.
It was their weakness.
Their need to feel superior.
Their hunger to crush the smaller thing.
I was that smaller thing.
But not for long.
None of it will be forgotten.
And none of it—ever—will be forgiven.