The Oracle of Broken Vows
The temple’s interior was not empty.
Wei Chenxing stopped mid-step, Yan Lihua’s arm still draped across his shoulders. The air had changed—thicker, warmer, carrying the scent of dried plums and old incense. A fire pit sat in the center of the main hall, unlit, but the ashes stirred as if breathing.
“Someone’s here,” Yan Lihua murmured, his voice a rasp against Wei Chenxing’s ear.
A figure emerged from behind a collapsed pillar. Old, bent, wrapped in layers of grey cloth that blended with the dust. A woman—or what had once been a woman. Her eyes were white, clouded over, the pupils dissolved into milky nothing. She leaned on a staff carved from bone, and when she smiled, her teeth were stained red.
“The mirror’s children,” she said. Her voice crackled like dry leaves. “I wondered when you would arrive.”
Wei Chenxing shifted Yan Lihua to a sitting position against the nearest pillar. The prince’s breathing was too shallow, his fingers trembling where they gripped his own robes. The black veins had reached his jawline, pulsing faintly with each heartbeat.
“Who are you?” Wei Chenxing asked, positioning himself between the oracle and the prince.
The old woman laughed, a sound like stones grinding together. “I am what remains of those who entered the Mirror’s Heart and returned. Not whole. Never whole.” She tapped her clouded eyes. “I saw what lives inside. The price was my sight. But I see better now than I ever did with flesh.”
Wei Chenxing’s hand drifted to the small knife at his belt. “You serve the mirror?”
“No one serves the mirror, scholar. The mirror consumes.” She shuffled closer, her staff clicking against the cracked stone floor. “But I remember. I remember the vows that were spoken, the promises that were broken. That is why I am here. To warn you.”
Yan Lihua coughed, black dust speckling his lips. “Warn us of what?”
The oracle stopped. Her head tilted, as if listening to something beyond the walls. “The mirror does not trap a spirit. It traps a vow. To break it, you must remember what you swore to forget.”
Wei Chenxing felt the words land like stones in his chest. The dreams. The woman’s face. The grief that woke him before dawn, clutching at sheets he did not recognize. “What vow?”
“Yours.” The oracle pointed a gnarled finger at him. “And his. And the one before you both, whose blood still sings in your veins.”
Yan Lihua tried to stand, but his legs buckled. Wei Chenxing caught him, lowering him back down. The prince’s skin was hot, feverish, the black veins pulsing faster now, as if responding to the oracle’s presence.
“He doesn’t have much time,” the oracle said, her voice softening. “The curse is reaching its final stage. When the veins reach his heart, he will crystallize from the inside out. His body will become a prison for the mirror’s resentment.”
“How do we stop it?” Wei Chenxing demanded.
“You don’t.” The oracle sat down cross-legged before the fire pit, her robes pooling around her like shed skin. “You break the vow. But to break it, you must remember it. And remembering will destroy you both in different ways.”
Wei Chenxing’s jaw tightened. “Speak plainly, old woman. I have no patience for riddles.”
The oracle smiled again, that red-stained grimace. “Plainly, then. The mirror was forged from a broken promise. A scholar swore to love a prince until the stars burned out. The prince swore to protect her until the mountains turned to dust. They both lied.”
Yan Lihua’s breath hitched. “The scholar… was she called Yue’er?”
The oracle’s blind eyes snapped toward him. “You remember her name. Good. That means the curse has not fully claimed your mind.” She leaned forward. “What else do you remember, prince?”
Yan Lihua’s face contorted. His hands pressed against his temples, fingers clawing at his hair. “I see… a wedding. Red silk. A woman laughing. Then screaming. Then nothing but cold.”
“The cold of the mirror,” the oracle said. “The cold of being forgotten.”
Wei Chenxing knelt beside Yan Lihua, gripping his wrists to stop him from hurting himself. “Stop. Breathe.”
Yan Lihua’s eyes snapped open. They were not his own. For a moment, they glowed silver—the same silver as the mirror shards they had seen at the Border Gate. “She is inside me,” he whispered. “Yue’er. She is not just in the mirror. She is in my blood.”
The oracle nodded slowly. “The curse is a tether. The prince’s bloodline has carried her resentment for generations. Every child born to that line is born with a piece of her soul, screaming to be free.”
Wei Chenxing’s stomach turned. “So the mirror is not a prison. It’s a cage for her soul, and the prince’s family are the bars.”
“Clever scholar.” The oracle’s voice held a note of approval. “Yes. The mirror holds her consciousness. The prince’s bloodline holds her pain. To break the mirror is to kill the prince. To save the prince is to leave her trapped forever.”
Silence fell over the ruined temple. The ashes in the fire pit stirred again, forming patterns that looked like faces before collapsing back into grey dust.
Yan Lihua’s hand found Wei Chenxing’s wrist. His grip was weak, but his eyes had cleared, the silver receding back to their usual dark brown. “If I die,” he said, “the mirror breaks. She is freed. The empire is saved.”
“No.” Wei Chenxing pulled his wrist free. “I did not travel to the edge of the world to watch you die for a crime committed by your ancestor.”
“It is not a crime,” the oracle said. “It is a vow. And vows are not crimes. They are chains we choose to wear.”
Wei Chenxing turned on her, anger flaring. “Then how do we break the chain without destroying the one who wears it?”
The oracle was silent for a long moment. The fire pit crackled, though no flame had been lit. The ashes rose, swirling into a column that took the shape of a woman—tall, graceful, her face obscured by shifting grey.
“Yue’er,” Yan Lihua breathed.
The ash-woman turned toward him. Her voice was the sound of wind through dead trees. “You carry my pain, child. But you do not carry my hatred. That is why you can still be saved.”
Wei Chenxing stared at the apparition. His chest ached with a grief that was not his own—or was it? The dreams. The woman’s face. The name he had never spoken but always known.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
The ash-woman reached out a hand made of swirling dust. “I want to be remembered. Not as a monster. Not as a curse. As a woman who loved a prince and was betrayed. That is all I ever wanted.”
“Then we will remember you,” Wei Chenxing said. “We will tell your story. We will carve your name into the stones of the capital.”
The ash-woman laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Words are wind, scholar. Promises are dust. I have heard them before.” She turned to Yan Lihua. “But you, child. You carry my blood. You can give me what no one else can.”
Yan Lihua’s voice was barely a whisper. “What?”
“A choice.” The ash-woman’s form began to dissolve, the column of dust collapsing back into the fire pit. “The mirror offers you one. Come to its heart. Face me. And decide whether to break the vow or fulfill it.”
The oracle stood, her staff thumping against the stone. “She has spoken. The path is clear. Rest tonight. Tomorrow, you enter the Mirror’s Heart.”
Wei Chenxing helped Yan Lihua to a relatively clean corner of the temple, spreading his cloak over the cracked floor. The prince’s fever had not broken, but the black veins had stopped spreading, pausing at the hollow of his throat.
“She was beautiful,” Yan Lihua said, staring at the ceiling where moonlight filtered through broken stone. “Yue’er. In my dream, she was laughing. Her hair was full of jasmine flowers.”
Wei Chenxing sat beside him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin. “Do you remember her face?”
“No. Just the sound of her laugh.” Yan Lihua turned his head, meeting Wei Chenxing’s eyes. “But when I look at you, I feel like I should know it.”
Wei Chenxing’s breath caught. The oracle’s words echoed in his mind: *You must remember what you swore to forget.* “Perhaps you do,” he said quietly. “Perhaps we both do.”
Yan Lihua reached up, his fingers brushing Wei Chenxing’s cheek. The touch was featherlight, tentative, as if testing whether the scholar was real. “If I die tomorrow—”
“You won’t.”
“If I die,” Yan Lihua repeated, his voice firm despite his weakness, “promise me you will remember. Not the curse. Not the mirror. Me.”
Wei Chenxing covered Yan Lihua’s hand with his own, pressing it against his cheek. “I promise.”
The prince smiled—a fragile, broken thing that did not reach his eyes. “Liar.”
“I am many things,” Wei Chenxing said, “but I am not a liar.”
They sat in silence as the moon climbed higher, casting silver light through the temple’s broken roof. The oracle had vanished into the shadows, leaving them alone with the ashes and the weight of forgotten vows.
Wei Chenxing did not sleep. He watched Yan Lihua’s chest rise and fall, counting each breath as if it might be the last. The black veins pulsed beneath the prince’s skin, a constant reminder of the clock ticking down.
At some point, Yan Lihua’s hand found his in the dark. Their fingers intertwined, warm and trembling.
“Tell me a story,” Yan Lihua murmured, his eyes closed. “Something happy.”
Wei Chenxing thought for a moment. Then he began to recite a poem—the same one he had used to calm the prince in the temple of upside-down gods. The words came easily, flowing from his lips as if he had known them his whole life.
*The jasmine blooms in winter’s chill,*
*A promise kept against the frost.*
*The heart that loved beyond the kill,*
*Remembers what the soul has lost.*
Yan Lihua’s breathing slowed. The tension in his shoulders eased. By the time Wei Chenxing reached the final verse, the prince was asleep, his hand still clasped in the scholar’s.
Wei Chenxing looked down at their intertwined fingers. The oracle’s warning burned in his mind: *To break it, you must remember what you swore to forget.*
But what if remembering meant losing everything he had found?
He pushed the thought aside. Tomorrow, they would enter the Mirror’s Heart. Tomorrow, they would face Yue’er and the truth of the vow. Tonight, he would hold the prince’s hand and pretend the world was not ending.
The ashes in the fire pit stirred one last time, forming the faint outline of a woman’s face. She was smiling.
Wei Chenxing pretended not to see.
Wei Chenxing stopped mid-step, Yan Lihua’s arm still draped across his shoulders. The air had changed—thicker, warmer, carrying the scent of dried plums and old incense. A fire pit sat in the center of the main hall, unlit, but the ashes stirred as if breathing.
“Someone’s here,” Yan Lihua murmured, his voice a rasp against Wei Chenxing’s ear.
A figure emerged from behind a collapsed pillar. Old, bent, wrapped in layers of grey cloth that blended with the dust. A woman—or what had once been a woman. Her eyes were white, clouded over, the pupils dissolved into milky nothing. She leaned on a staff carved from bone, and when she smiled, her teeth were stained red.
“The mirror’s children,” she said. Her voice crackled like dry leaves. “I wondered when you would arrive.”
Wei Chenxing shifted Yan Lihua to a sitting position against the nearest pillar. The prince’s breathing was too shallow, his fingers trembling where they gripped his own robes. The black veins had reached his jawline, pulsing faintly with each heartbeat.
“Who are you?” Wei Chenxing asked, positioning himself between the oracle and the prince.
The old woman laughed, a sound like stones grinding together. “I am what remains of those who entered the Mirror’s Heart and returned. Not whole. Never whole.” She tapped her clouded eyes. “I saw what lives inside. The price was my sight. But I see better now than I ever did with flesh.”
Wei Chenxing’s hand drifted to the small knife at his belt. “You serve the mirror?”
“No one serves the mirror, scholar. The mirror consumes.” She shuffled closer, her staff clicking against the cracked stone floor. “But I remember. I remember the vows that were spoken, the promises that were broken. That is why I am here. To warn you.”
Yan Lihua coughed, black dust speckling his lips. “Warn us of what?”
The oracle stopped. Her head tilted, as if listening to something beyond the walls. “The mirror does not trap a spirit. It traps a vow. To break it, you must remember what you swore to forget.”
Wei Chenxing felt the words land like stones in his chest. The dreams. The woman’s face. The grief that woke him before dawn, clutching at sheets he did not recognize. “What vow?”
“Yours.” The oracle pointed a gnarled finger at him. “And his. And the one before you both, whose blood still sings in your veins.”
Yan Lihua tried to stand, but his legs buckled. Wei Chenxing caught him, lowering him back down. The prince’s skin was hot, feverish, the black veins pulsing faster now, as if responding to the oracle’s presence.
“He doesn’t have much time,” the oracle said, her voice softening. “The curse is reaching its final stage. When the veins reach his heart, he will crystallize from the inside out. His body will become a prison for the mirror’s resentment.”
“How do we stop it?” Wei Chenxing demanded.
“You don’t.” The oracle sat down cross-legged before the fire pit, her robes pooling around her like shed skin. “You break the vow. But to break it, you must remember it. And remembering will destroy you both in different ways.”
Wei Chenxing’s jaw tightened. “Speak plainly, old woman. I have no patience for riddles.”
The oracle smiled again, that red-stained grimace. “Plainly, then. The mirror was forged from a broken promise. A scholar swore to love a prince until the stars burned out. The prince swore to protect her until the mountains turned to dust. They both lied.”
Yan Lihua’s breath hitched. “The scholar… was she called Yue’er?”
The oracle’s blind eyes snapped toward him. “You remember her name. Good. That means the curse has not fully claimed your mind.” She leaned forward. “What else do you remember, prince?”
Yan Lihua’s face contorted. His hands pressed against his temples, fingers clawing at his hair. “I see… a wedding. Red silk. A woman laughing. Then screaming. Then nothing but cold.”
“The cold of the mirror,” the oracle said. “The cold of being forgotten.”
Wei Chenxing knelt beside Yan Lihua, gripping his wrists to stop him from hurting himself. “Stop. Breathe.”
Yan Lihua’s eyes snapped open. They were not his own. For a moment, they glowed silver—the same silver as the mirror shards they had seen at the Border Gate. “She is inside me,” he whispered. “Yue’er. She is not just in the mirror. She is in my blood.”
The oracle nodded slowly. “The curse is a tether. The prince’s bloodline has carried her resentment for generations. Every child born to that line is born with a piece of her soul, screaming to be free.”
Wei Chenxing’s stomach turned. “So the mirror is not a prison. It’s a cage for her soul, and the prince’s family are the bars.”
“Clever scholar.” The oracle’s voice held a note of approval. “Yes. The mirror holds her consciousness. The prince’s bloodline holds her pain. To break the mirror is to kill the prince. To save the prince is to leave her trapped forever.”
Silence fell over the ruined temple. The ashes in the fire pit stirred again, forming patterns that looked like faces before collapsing back into grey dust.
Yan Lihua’s hand found Wei Chenxing’s wrist. His grip was weak, but his eyes had cleared, the silver receding back to their usual dark brown. “If I die,” he said, “the mirror breaks. She is freed. The empire is saved.”
“No.” Wei Chenxing pulled his wrist free. “I did not travel to the edge of the world to watch you die for a crime committed by your ancestor.”
“It is not a crime,” the oracle said. “It is a vow. And vows are not crimes. They are chains we choose to wear.”
Wei Chenxing turned on her, anger flaring. “Then how do we break the chain without destroying the one who wears it?”
The oracle was silent for a long moment. The fire pit crackled, though no flame had been lit. The ashes rose, swirling into a column that took the shape of a woman—tall, graceful, her face obscured by shifting grey.
“Yue’er,” Yan Lihua breathed.
The ash-woman turned toward him. Her voice was the sound of wind through dead trees. “You carry my pain, child. But you do not carry my hatred. That is why you can still be saved.”
Wei Chenxing stared at the apparition. His chest ached with a grief that was not his own—or was it? The dreams. The woman’s face. The name he had never spoken but always known.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
The ash-woman reached out a hand made of swirling dust. “I want to be remembered. Not as a monster. Not as a curse. As a woman who loved a prince and was betrayed. That is all I ever wanted.”
“Then we will remember you,” Wei Chenxing said. “We will tell your story. We will carve your name into the stones of the capital.”
The ash-woman laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Words are wind, scholar. Promises are dust. I have heard them before.” She turned to Yan Lihua. “But you, child. You carry my blood. You can give me what no one else can.”
Yan Lihua’s voice was barely a whisper. “What?”
“A choice.” The ash-woman’s form began to dissolve, the column of dust collapsing back into the fire pit. “The mirror offers you one. Come to its heart. Face me. And decide whether to break the vow or fulfill it.”
The oracle stood, her staff thumping against the stone. “She has spoken. The path is clear. Rest tonight. Tomorrow, you enter the Mirror’s Heart.”
Wei Chenxing helped Yan Lihua to a relatively clean corner of the temple, spreading his cloak over the cracked floor. The prince’s fever had not broken, but the black veins had stopped spreading, pausing at the hollow of his throat.
“She was beautiful,” Yan Lihua said, staring at the ceiling where moonlight filtered through broken stone. “Yue’er. In my dream, she was laughing. Her hair was full of jasmine flowers.”
Wei Chenxing sat beside him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin. “Do you remember her face?”
“No. Just the sound of her laugh.” Yan Lihua turned his head, meeting Wei Chenxing’s eyes. “But when I look at you, I feel like I should know it.”
Wei Chenxing’s breath caught. The oracle’s words echoed in his mind: *You must remember what you swore to forget.* “Perhaps you do,” he said quietly. “Perhaps we both do.”
Yan Lihua reached up, his fingers brushing Wei Chenxing’s cheek. The touch was featherlight, tentative, as if testing whether the scholar was real. “If I die tomorrow—”
“You won’t.”
“If I die,” Yan Lihua repeated, his voice firm despite his weakness, “promise me you will remember. Not the curse. Not the mirror. Me.”
Wei Chenxing covered Yan Lihua’s hand with his own, pressing it against his cheek. “I promise.”
The prince smiled—a fragile, broken thing that did not reach his eyes. “Liar.”
“I am many things,” Wei Chenxing said, “but I am not a liar.”
They sat in silence as the moon climbed higher, casting silver light through the temple’s broken roof. The oracle had vanished into the shadows, leaving them alone with the ashes and the weight of forgotten vows.
Wei Chenxing did not sleep. He watched Yan Lihua’s chest rise and fall, counting each breath as if it might be the last. The black veins pulsed beneath the prince’s skin, a constant reminder of the clock ticking down.
At some point, Yan Lihua’s hand found his in the dark. Their fingers intertwined, warm and trembling.
“Tell me a story,” Yan Lihua murmured, his eyes closed. “Something happy.”
Wei Chenxing thought for a moment. Then he began to recite a poem—the same one he had used to calm the prince in the temple of upside-down gods. The words came easily, flowing from his lips as if he had known them his whole life.
*The jasmine blooms in winter’s chill,*
*A promise kept against the frost.*
*The heart that loved beyond the kill,*
*Remembers what the soul has lost.*
Yan Lihua’s breathing slowed. The tension in his shoulders eased. By the time Wei Chenxing reached the final verse, the prince was asleep, his hand still clasped in the scholar’s.
Wei Chenxing looked down at their intertwined fingers. The oracle’s warning burned in his mind: *To break it, you must remember what you swore to forget.*
But what if remembering meant losing everything he had found?
He pushed the thought aside. Tomorrow, they would enter the Mirror’s Heart. Tomorrow, they would face Yue’er and the truth of the vow. Tonight, he would hold the prince’s hand and pretend the world was not ending.
The ashes in the fire pit stirred one last time, forming the faint outline of a woman’s face. She was smiling.
Wei Chenxing pretended not to see.