The silent palace
796 Words
Chapter 3: The Silent Palace
The Demon Palace didn’t look like a palace. It looked like a grave.
Li Chen stepped through the gates and the air turned to winter. No guards. No servants. Just wind moving through empty black arches. Everything was black stone - floors, walls, pillars carved with beasts that seemed to watch. The only color was ahead of him: white hair, leading deeper without looking back.
Xie Wuchen walked like he was alone. Like he’d forgotten _He comes with me_. His boots made no sound. Li Chen’s sandals slapped loudly down halls that went on too far.
They passed dead trees, dry fountains, a training ground split down the middle like the sky had hit it. Vast, pristine, abandoned. A tomb for one man.
They stopped at a smaller courtyard. A single pear tree stood there, half-dead. Three white blossoms clung to the lowest branch.
Xie Wuchen spoke. Two words, hoarse. “You stay here.”
Li Chen blinked. “Here?”
The Demon Lord stared at the tree like it grew through his ribs. His hand twitched. He didn’t touch it. He turned and left, robes vanishing around a corner.
That was it. His welcome to the Demon Realm.
*Day One.*
A servant appeared. Demon, judging by the horns, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She left food, robes, and vanished. The food was mortal - rice, vegetables. The robes were black with silver trim. Too fine. They’d drown him.
He didn’t sleep. The courtyard was too quiet. He kept hearing _You came back_ in the wind.
*Day Three.*
He found the duty list pinned to his door. One line, harsh brush strokes:
_Bring tea. Three times daily. Do not speak unless spoken to._
He’d been a servant before Qingyun Sect decided beating him was better. He learned the kitchen path, the route to the main hall where Xie Wuchen sat on a throne and did nothing. No reading. No training. No court. The Calamity just sat, staring at nothing.
Li Chen set tea down. Xie Wuchen didn’t look at him. Didn’t drink. Didn’t speak.
*Day Seven.*
He broke a rule. He explored.
The palace got worse deeper in. Sealed wings. Rooms with furniture under white sheets like corpses. Dust thick enough to track footprints. A monument to absence.
Then he found the locked room.
End of a hall where air felt heavier. Black door, iron bands, humming with qi that made his teeth ache. He shouldn’t touch it. He did anyway.
It wasn’t locked.
The room was spotless. One thing on the far wall: a painting.
Li Chen’s breath stopped.
It was him. But not him. The man wore white immortal robes. His hair was black, not Li Chen’s muddy brown. He smiled, soft, holding a brush and looking at the painter like the painter was the world. No signature. Only two words in the corner, in elegant script:
_Bai Ze. Mercy._
Li Chen’s knees hit the floor. Bai Ze. The name from his dreams. The name the white-haired man screamed. _A-Ze!_
His chest hurt - physical, ribs bending inward. Eyes burning. He pressed his palms to his face and found them wet.
“You shouldn’t be in here.”
Li Chen flinched. He hadn’t heard anyone enter. Xie Wuchen stood in the doorway. For the first time, his face wasn’t blank. It was furious. Under it, wrecked.
Li Chen couldn’t speak. He pointed at the painting, then at himself.
Xie Wuchen went still. He crossed the room in two steps. Not to Li Chen. To the painting. He stared, hand lifting like he might touch the ink. It stopped an inch away, trembling.
“Get out,” he said. Voice splintering. “Get out before I—”
He didn’t finish. The qi spiked, cold and killing. Li Chen scrambled up and ran.
He didn’t stop until his courtyard, under the dying pear tree. Back to the trunk, gasping. Hands shaking. On his palm was a smear of white dust.
Not dust. Dried paint. From the frame’s bottom.
Same shade as Xie Wuchen’s hair.
That night, he dreamed harder.
White robes. Xie Wuchen - younger, eyes less dead - teaching him sword forms. Laughing. _No, A-Ze, like this._ Hands on his waist, fixing his stance. White hair falling forward, brushing Li Chen’s cheek. Li Chen - Bai Ze - reaching up to braid it with red thread, smiling. _So you won’t forget me._
Li Chen woke choking on a sob. The name tore out:
“Wuchen.”
Across the palace, in the main hall, a teacup shattered.
The Demon Lord hadn’t moved in seven days. Now he stood. And for the first time in three hundred years, Xie Wuchen bled from a split lip.
Because someone said his name.
- Writer
