Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The mirror’s surface wasn’t bronze; it was water.

The moment my brush tip touched it, I was dragged into darkness.

Countless voices crowded into my ears.

Someone wept, asking why they were chosen.

Someone laughed, saying being a noble lady wasn’t bad, at least they wouldn’t starve to death.

Someone screamed, telling me to give their face back.

Someone whispered the names of their children over and over, terrified they would forget them once they woke up.

I saw faces peeling away from flesh and bone, only to be pressed onto the skeletons of strangers. I saw the memories of noble ladies like golden threads and the lives of poor girls like hemp ropes, twisted into a single cord by the people of Wuxiang Tower. I saw Empress Jiang kneeling before the mirror, pleading not to grow old, not to be deposed, and not to die silently like the other women in the palace.

Finally, I saw my mother.

Shen Yuan held an infant who wouldn’t cry, kneeling before Wuxiang Tower. Pei Zhaoye tried to persuade her: “Junior Sister, you cannot keep a stillborn.”

She said, “He just hasn’t had the chance to live yet.”

“Changing fate requires a price.”

“Take mine.”

“It also requires a face.”

Shen Yuan fell silent for a long time. “Do not harm the living.”

Pei Zhaoye smiled. “Of course.”

But in the end, the portrait he sent was of Gu Huaibi, a youth from the Northern Prison.

That youth was already dead. He didn’t die because I painted him, but my words “sending him home” became the final seal of the contract.

In the darkness, I saw Gu Huaibi. He still looked sixteen, standing under a withered pagoda tree. He asked me, “Shen Yan, have you ever looked at spring with my face?”

I couldn’t answer.

He asked again, “Have you ever loved someone with my face?”

I thought of Xiao Lingyi, of the pastries she handed me beneath the palace walls, and of her asking if I dared to take her away.

I whispered, “I have.”

Gu Huaibi smiled. “Then it wasn’t a total loss.”

My eyes burned. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry is useless,” he said. “Give the faces back to everyone who still wants to be themselves.”

A door appeared at the end of the darkness.

There was no lock on The Door, only a blank face.

I raised my brush and used my own blood to write a single word on The Door: Return.

The Door opened.

When I woke up before the bronze mirror, the secret chamber was in ruins.

All the portraits were burning, yet there was no smoke. The flames were cyan; as they consumed the silk paper, the faces within turned into specks of glimmering light, flying off to parts unknown.

The people of Wuxiang Tower were collapsed across the floor. Some had their face-skins peeling off, revealing their original features; others had two faces struggling against each other upon their flesh, making them roll on the ground in agony. A few sat quietly, as if they had finally shed a heavy garment they had worn for far too long.

Liu Ah Ruan knelt in a corner.

Xie Wanning’s face was receding from hers inch by inch, like a mask softened by water. The face revealed beneath was covered in scars, but it was her own. She touched her brow bone, freezing in shock before bursting into loud sobs.

Empress Jiang crawled on the ground, half of her face already withered. She reached out and grabbed the hem of my robe. “Save me… Mr. Shen, paint me a face. I can give you wealth and glory, I can let the Grand Princess live…”

I looked at her.

Even in death, she didn’t understand that one cannot live as oneself by relying on another’s face.

Pei Zhaoye stood before the shards of the bronze mirror.

The skin on his body was cracking layer by layer. An old man, a youth, a woman, a general, a scholar-all sorts of faces flashed across his own. Every single one hated him, yet every single one was evidence of a life he had once lived.

He muttered, “I just wanted to live on.”

I said, “The people whose lives you took to live on wanted that, too.”

He looked at me and suddenly smiled.

“Shen Yan, do you think it ends just because you returned them? What about your own face? What about your life? Can you afford to pay it back?”

I didn’t answer.

Because I could already feel the pain on my face.

It wasn’t the pain of a wound, but rather the sensation of my entire face being soaked in hot water, the flesh and skin slowly loosening. Gu Huaibi’s face was leaving me.

Xiao Lingyi lay not far away, the wound on her side bleeding incessantly. I crawled over to hold her, my hands shaking violently.

She opened her eyes to look at me, her gaze momentarily vacant.

“Shen Yan?”

I whispered, “It’s me.”

She raised her hand, her fingertips touching my face, only to feel an edge that was peeling away.

I tried to pull away, but she held me firm.

“Don’t hide,” she said softly. “I want to see you.”

“This face isn’t mine.”

“Then what about you?” she asked. “Where are you?”

I froze.

For twenty-six years, I had lived with Gu Huaibi’s face, lived with the life Shen Yuan gave me, and used the brush Qin Lao taught me to hide the ugliness of the powerful. I thought that if the face shattered, I would shatter too.

But Xiao Lingyi asked me: where are you?

I squeezed her hand and finally said, “I am here.”

The footsteps of the Imperial Guard echoed from outside the secret chamber. Dawn was approaching.

I picked up Xiao Lingyi and walked toward the exit.