Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Du Niang told me that when I was born, there was a crimson mark between my brows. The midwife fled the moment she saw it, claiming I was cursed with a fragile fate and wouldn’t live past the age of ten.

Father didn’t believe it.

For the first time, he violated our ancestral precepts and began a Pre-embroidery for his own daughter. In that Death Portrait, I was destined to die of a sudden illness in my tenth year, bleeding from all seven orifices.

When Mother discovered it, she took a pair of silver shears and snipped the finishing stitch.

Once a Pre-embroidery is severed, the method of death backlashes onto the person who cut the thread. Mother died in the embroidery room that night, bleeding from all seven orifices, still clutching the broken half of those silver shears in her hand.

I survived.

And from then on, Father forbade me from ever touching Pre-embroidery.

“So, the death depicted on this current portrait… was it originally meant for me?”

Du Niang shook her head, weeping.

“No. Your mother paid your debt of fate; that account was settled. Someone has sewn that old death back onto you.”

I pulled out the broken half of the silver shears.

On the inside of the handle, there was a very faint engraving: *To the Fate-Seer, a needle cannot be formed without Shen blood.*

I suddenly understood why the fake portrait looked like Father, yet wasn’t him.

To activate the Shen Family Pre-embroidery, one must use Shen blood.

Father is dead. I am the only Shen blood left.

Yet the portrait is already complete.

Unless the killer has another source of Shen blood.

At midnight, Lu Wenzhou knocked on my door.

He said he had tracked down the destination of the embroideress who delivered the thread.

An abandoned temple south of the city-the Fate Shrine.

The Fate Shrine had long been derelict.

Legend says the Shen Family ancestors were not embroiderers, but executioners. Later, a great fire destroyed all the judicial records. Our great-grandmother fled south with a register of criminals, hiding the death sentences within her needlework. That was the origin of Pre-embroidery.

When we arrived, a single lamp was lit inside the shrine.

A woman sat beneath the light.

She wore a veiled hat, an embroidery frame resting on her lap. Red Thread was wound around her wrists, coil after coil, like chains.

Lu Wenzhou stepped in front of me, shielding me.

The woman let out a soft laugh.

“Miss Wanying, you’ve finally come.”

She lifted her veil.

I saw a face that bore a slight resemblance to mine.

Du Niang cried out, “Second Young Miss?”

It turned out my father had another daughter.

Her name was Shen Zhaoyue, a child born to a mistress during my father’s youth. After the mistress died, Father brought her into the Shen household to learn embroidery. However, because she was not born of the primary wife, he refused to enter her name into the genealogy or allow her to touch Pre-embroidery.

Shen Zhaoyue looked at me, her eyes filled with nothing but hatred.

“Why is it that someone died for you the moment you were born? Why is it that I knelt outside the Embroidery Tower for three years, only for him to teach me nothing but flat satin stitches?”

With a flick of her finger, the white silk on the embroidery frame flipped over.

The portrait depicted me, clutching a gold-tailed embroidery needle and plunging it into Father’s heart.

The needlework was identical to my own.