Chapter Text
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ 𖤓 ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
Among all the choices, I choose you.
在所有选择里，我都选择你
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ 𖤓 ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
The scent of death was not what Phuwin had imagined.
It wasn’t the metallic tang of blood or the rot of the earth; it was the cloying, sickly sweetness of osmanthus wine, laced with a bitter crushed almond that burned like molten fire down his throat.
His fingers moved before his mind could fully grasp it, trembling as they reached for the low table before him. The wood was old, scarred by years of neglect in this forgotten palace meant for discarded consort. His fingertips dragged across its uneven grain, catching on splinters polished smooth by time. The roughness grounded him to something real as the room began to tilt in soft nauseating waves, as though the entire Cold Palace had been set afloat upon a black and soundless sea.
The tears came unbidden, a slow descent from eyes that had once surveyed an empire with pride.
They marked their way along his face, soaking into the collar of robes that had once blazed red beneath the sun during his wedding procession. He remembered that red - how it had shimmered like a breathing phoenix as he was carried through the capital in a golden palanquin, citizens kneeling, drums roaring, the empire celebrating what they believed was a union blessed by heaven itself.
Now the silk lay heavy against his skin, still bright with the hue of celebration though his world had darkened beyond reckoning.
How fitting, he thought dimly, that they had not even bothered to change him from the color of joy into the color of mourning.
His hearing began to fail, swallowed by a rushing roar like the tide retreating from a barren shore. The world was drawing away from him, leaving him in a gilded silence.
His vision frayed, the view of the Cold Palace splintering into a thousand jagged mirrors. In those shards, his life flickered - a masterpiece of wasted years and misplaced devotion.
How utterly, pathetically foolish he had been.
At the tender age of eighteen summers, the omega had been the jewel of the family of the Minister of Merchant, who carried the scent of plumeria kissed by spring rains, foretelling boundless prosperity to any house fortunate enough to hold him. But he had only wanted one house.
Suitors had come like migrating birds, bearing silk bolts and jade pendants and thinly veiled proposals meant to bind trade routes and strengthen alliances. He had declined them all with serene grace.
Because from the first time his gaze collided with the Third Prince, later Emperor Davin, he had believed he saw warmth there.
He remembered that day with cruel clarity.
Davin had stood apart from the other princes, posture composed, expression unreadable in the way alphas of power are trained to be. Yet when their eyes met, something in Phuwin’s chest had unfurled, with the quiet certainty of a flower turning toward the sun.
He had mistaken composure for steadiness.
He had mistaken calculation for depth.
And most grievous of all, he had mistaken nearness for devotion.
The warnings had drifted like incense smoke, subtle yet persistent. His father murmured over cups of jasmine tea steeped too long, painted the imperial court as a garden of knives: princes did not wed for tenderness, and thrones had teeth that gnawed gentle hearts to splinters. His eldest brother, a man who wore silence like armor, would go still at the mention of the Third Prince’s name, the line of his shoulders sharp as a drawn blade against unspoken warnings.
But Phuwin had been young, and young devotion is a stubborn thing.
He had believed with a faith that now felt humiliating in its purity that if he offered enough loyalty, enough intelligence, enough unwavering grace, he would become indispensable not just to the throne, but to the man who sat upon it.
When Davin ascended and took him as Grand Imperial Consort, the capital erupted.
Vermillion banners rippled across walls. Gold-threaded lanterns turned night into dawn. Phuwin remembered kneeling beside Davin beneath the ancestral tablets, their sleeves brushing as incense smoke curled heavenward.
The people wept openly, declaring it a celestial pairing - the empire’s most promising Prince bound to its most auspicious omega. None saw how the sun had never once shone within the walls of Phuwin’s bedchamber.
Five winters turned the courtyard trees into silver before he ceased counting. Each morning, Phuwin's fingers would brush the unmarked column of his throat - no teeth had ever broken that skin, no claim made beyond the seal stamped on their marriage scrolls. His bed remained an expanse of stiffened threads, its only disturbance the hollow his body left when slipping away before the sun could witness his solitude.
And still, he worked.
He spent his years in council chambers, drafting trade reforms that filled the Imperial treasury and mediating disputes that strengthened the throne. While he fortified the empire, Davin had been elsewhere. He had been with Wufeng, Phuwin's once "closest confidante." First as Noble Consort, then as mother to the Emperor's firstborn, her rise was as inexorable as it was discreet.
He schooled himself against presumption. Swallowed the acrid taste of jealousy like bitter medicine. Love, he reminded himself, was a slow-burning flame.
But by the time Wufeng bore the emperor’s first child, patience had curdled into something bitter and unrecognizable.
Still, he endured.
Because by then it was no longer about affection. It was about survival - his family’s, his clan’s, the countless merchants and scholars tied to his name. Through his father’s networks, spice roads flowed unimpeded. Through his brother’s influence at the scholar’s academy, restless intellectuals bent their brilliance toward strengthening the throne rather than questioning it.
And when the empire was stable at last, they turned the "Benevolent Consort" as a poison-tongued schemer. Piece by piece, they carved Phuwin empty, until there was nothing left but his family’s blood to be harvested.
The accusation had been treason.
For five years he had served with meticulous precision, only to be repaid with the slow unraveling of his very being. His execution was framed as something monstrous - the desperate strike of a jealous man against Wufeng's second unborn child.
Phuwin could still hear the gasps of the court, the rustling silk of robes as ministers who once groveled at his feet now turned their faces away in carefully orchestrated shame. Davin's voice had been honed to an icy precision, his sentence delivered with such convincing sorrow that even the gods might have wept for him.
"A mercy," the ministers whispered behind their sleeves, their scents thick with the cloying stench of false grief. "Poison wine instead of blade. A kindness for a fallen consort."
How thorough they had been. How devastatingly cruel.
Twenty-two winters old, and this was his legacy - not love, not honor, but the weight of an entire lineage's extinction pressing down upon his failing heart. Fathers who had never raised a blade against the throne. Mothers who had sung their children to sleep with lullabies of loyalty. All undone for a love that had never once looked back at him.
As he lay dying in a palace built for things discarded, hatred bloomed at last where devotion had once lived so faithfully. For Davin, who had accepted his loyalty with open hands and repaid it with annihilation. For Wufeng, who had smiled as she stepped into the space Phuwin had unknowingly prepared for her.
If there is a Heaven, As his breath faltered, the thought coiled like smoke in his dying mind. Let it grant me return. To unmake him as thoroughly as he has unmade me.
Darkness closed in.
And when at last his lungs stilled, his final breath carried no prayer - only a curse, vanishing into the hungry void.
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ 𖤓 ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
But death did not grant him the mercy of silence. It granted him the cruelest of visions unfolding before him like an illuminated scroll, each stroke of ink detailing his every failure, his every loss.
Time lost meaning as he drifted through the formless dark. No stars marked his passage, no solid earth met his steps, no familiar fragrance of lotus blossoms lingered to anchor him. There was only the echo of court laughter and the weight of shackles against his wrists.
Then, the void shattered.
He saw the execution grounds. The air there was heavy with the smell of dry straw and the coming storm. A row of kneeling figures, bound in rough hemp that scraped against skin once draped in the finest silks.
There was his father. Míngsen knelt unbowed even as the soldier’s boot pressed him into the dirt, spine straight as a sword, eyes unyielding as winter iron.
There was Nùth. His brother’s jaw was set in a snarl of silent impotent fury, his spirit straining against the bindings as if he could still shield them all with his body alone.
There was Eskǎi. His hands were lashed behind him, fingers white with the strain of trying to reach toward Nàni, his gaze never leaving his mate.
And Nàni—
Nàni was a ghost of himself, his face the color of bleached bone. One hand remained protectively, instinctively pressed over the slight, tragic swell of his abdomen - protecting a life that would never see the sun.
Phuwin screamed. It was a sound born from the very marrow of his soul, a jagged plea for mercy that tore at his non-existent throat. He clawed at the darkness, begging the gods for a trade - his eternal torment for their single breath.
But the sound did not travel. The void was a hungry thing, it swallowed his grief and offered no echo. He was forced to watch, a silent witness to the extinction of his bloodline.
Then, at the moment of the first blade’s descent, the world shattered.
Light tore through the darkness - not as a sunrise, but like white silk split by a jagged blade. It was violent and blinding, a searing horizontal rift that pulled the screaming omega from the abyss.
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ 𖤓 ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
Phuwin's eyes flew open as if pulled by invisible strings, his chest heaving with the ghost of a scream that had not escaped his lips. The sheets of bed clung to his damp skin and trembling limbs. Deep within, his Omega pulsed like a trapped sparrow, beating against the cage of his ribs after two long years of silence.
"Third Young Master?" A familiar voice floated through the partition. "The dawn hour has not yet come. Might this one suggest further rest?"
Phuwin turned sharply, breath hitching against the memory of poison that had mere moments ago, slithered through his veins.
There, framed by the shifting shadows of the screen, stood Meilin.
Her face bore none of the scars Wufeng's knives had carved into flesh, none of the pallor the toxin had painted upon her skin when knowledge became her death sentence. Only the gentle crease of concern between her brows, the drowsy weight of half-lidded eyes watching him.
Phuwin's eyes drifted slowly across the chamber. Gone was the cloying dampness of the Imperial Consort's palace, its stone walls thick with political whispers. Instead, his senses filled with the delicate fragrance of lilies mingling with the faint musk of aged parchment.
His childhood quarter.
His fingers trembled slightly as he examined them. The calluses from years of composing memorials under candlelight had vanished, only pale and unblemished skin remained. The fabric draped against his skin was light, with no symbols of married status, no suffocating silks of a Crown Consort.
"Mirror," he rasped, his voice high and melodic, lacking the rasp of a dying man. "Meilin, the mirror!"
"Young Master? Are you feeling unwell? Shall I summon the physician?” Meilin gasped as Phuwin scrambled toward the vanity, nearly tangling his limbs in the soft down of his pillows.
The bronze surface caught firelight as he lifted it, revealing the face of a youth untouched by court intrigues. Smooth skin. Unshadowed eyes. A mouth yet unacquainted with bitterness. His breath hitched.
"Meilin," he whispered, eyes still fixed on his reflection. "How old am I? Tell me the year."
"You... you are of eighteen summers, Young master." she replied, voice trembling with confusion. "The lotuses started blooming on the west pavilion."
His reflection blurred, he came back in the past.
Meilin's fingers fluttered near his shoulder. "Have you had a nightmare?"
A nightmare? No. He had lived a lifetime of them.
The moment overwhelmed him with the weight of all his years pressing upon his chest. The acrid ghost of poison still clung to the back of his throat, mingling with the fragile hope of a second chance.
His knees gave way as the weight of memory and relief crashed down upon him in equal measure. His eyes rolled back, body finally succumbing to exhaustion. The last thing he heard before succumbing to the dark was Meilin’s scream for help.
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ 𖤓 ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
“What has happened to my child?”
“His Omega is restless... unstable...”
“...fainted... he was weeping in his sleep...”
“...still not waking...”
“Plenty of rest…”
“Do not crowd him when he awakes”
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ 𖤓 ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
The stroke of fingers through his hair pulled Phuwin from dreams - gentle, unhurried, as if the hand feared stillness might wake him fully and send him slipping away again. Even before his eyes opened, the familiar touch made his chest ache with recognition.
When his lashes lifted at last, the dim quarter resolved into focus, revealing Nàni bending over him. His eldest brother’s mate, the only other Omega in all the sprawling Tang estate.
Nàni’s hand stilled mid-stroke when he noticed Phuwin awake. The pause was enough to pull memory free.
Phuwin remembered the argument too clearly. His eighteenth birthday, still soft with youth's arrogance, fists tangled in skirt as he confessed his infatuation for Davin to the only person who’d ever scolded him with tenderness.
Nàni’s warning had been a blade wrapped in silk, pleading with him not to let his heart be ensnared by the Imperial viper’s nest. Phuwin had stormed away then.
The rift between them remained, never truly mended.
When Phuwin took his place at court, the letters grew sparse, then ceased altogether. Visits too, faded into memory, replaced by silence thicker than any spoken quarrel. It was not malice that carved the divide, but the quiet cowardice of turning away.
In his previous life, Nàni had followed him into death regardless.
“Gege...” His voice caught, the endearment thick with unspoken remorse.
Nàni’s thumb brushed his cheekbone, catching tears before they could fall. "Now why these tears, little one?" He didn’t wait for answers, wiping Phuwin’s face with his wide sleeve, the embroidered cranes dampening as he murmured, “You thrashed so in your sleep. It was nothing more than night terrors.”
Phuwin pressed his lips together, unable to answer.
Nàni lifted his gaze and made a subtle gesture toward the attendant waiting near the door. The message was understood, the servant slipped away to summon the physician.
Footsteps followed soon after.
Míngsen crossed the threshold first, his measured stride breaking the moment he took in the sight of his weeping child. His elder brother Eskǎi followed, expression controlled but tight around the eyes, and then his second brother Nùth, who hovered for a moment as though unsure whether to speak or stay silent.
Phuwin blinked against the sting of tears. His families were all here, alive and untouched by blood or chains or execution grounds.
“My piece of heart,” Míngsen breathed, sinking onto the edge of the bed to cradle Phuwin's hand between both of his. “Dry your eyes, you are home. Nothing has touched you.”
The physician trailed behind them, bowing quickly before approaching the bed. He conducted his examination with careful thoroughness, fingers checking pulse, counting the breaths, lingering briefly at Phuwin’s scent glands before he stepped back.
“Ensure the Third Young Master takes these tonics thrice daily.” He pronounced, folding his hands into wide sleeves. “ There is no trace of poison or physical harm. His Omega is simply... unsettled. Rest is the only cure. I shall return in two days.”
Relief moved through the room like a loosening breath.
Eskǎi inclined his head in gratitude and pressed a pouch of gold into the physician’s hands, seeing him out with courtesy.
The moment the chair stood vacant, Nùth filled it without hesitation, his large hands enveloping Phuwin's trembling one. Though his voice carried playful notes, his dark eyes spoke of deeper concern. “You gave us quite the fright, Win. Unconscious for two days? Was my failure to procure those cinnamon sweets truly worth such dramatic vengeance?"
A soft huff escaped Phuwin before he could stop it.
Míngsen reached over and cuffed the back of Nùth’s head. “Enough of your jests, you should have brought the sweets regardless.”
“Go,” Eskǎi added, standing behind Nàni with a protective hand on his shoulder. “Use your commander’s salary to buy out the entire sweet stall.”
"Must you always conspire against me?" Nùth groaned, pressing fingers to his temples with theatrical flair. “What did I do to deserve such kin?”
Phuwin's answering laughter flowed like honeyed wine, its warmth dispelling the chamber's tension. These beloved faces knew nothing of the nightmares he'd endured, only that their jewel was back among them.
As they continued to bicker and laugh, Phuwin looked at each of them. He had been a spoiled child, a naive Omega who traded his family’s lives for a cold palace and a false smile.
Not this time, he swore, fingers tightening around Nùth’s hand. The infatuation that had once consumed him was dead, buried in the ashes of his past life. He had returned to the light, and he would burn the world down before allowing harm to touch his family again.
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ 𖤓 ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───