In a room sealed from sunlight, where dust floated like ash in the high beams and a lacquered screen of cranes in flight masked the draft from the garden, three men gathered—not as family, but as architects of quiet ruin.
Gu Jian Heng, head of the second branch, sat at the long teak table with the stillness of a man who believed patience itself to be a kind of dominance. His robes were too fine for a soldier, his hands too soft for a craftsman.
The only blade he'd ever wielded was sharpened with ledgers and ink. His fingers, pale and soft with disuse, tapped an idle rhythm against the rim of a forgotten teacup. His tea had long since cooled, but he sipped it anyway, as if to remind the others that time, here, answered to him.
Across from him reclined his son, Gu Zhi Wei, composed like a poem written for flattery. His robe hung too perfectly, his expression too polished. He smiled not to express, but to perform. A man trained for courtrooms and corridors, not battlefields.
Between them perched the unfortunate Uncle Wu—cousin, perhaps, or some lesser tie—whose talent lay not in counsel, but in his remarkable instinct for avoiding culpability. He sat forward, spine bent like a question mark. He was a man of vanishing points, there when needed, gone when blamed.
"The boy is no fool," Jian Heng murmured at last, fingers brushing the rim of the teacup. "More stubborn than his father, perhaps. But shrewder."
"Clear-sighted," Zhi Wei agreed, tapping one polished nail against the table's grain. "And that makes him inconvenient."
Uncle Wu leaned in, voice barely more than breath. "Captain Hou obeys him now. The guards do too. Even old Master Lin, the sword instructor—he bows like a servant."
"Respect bought with memory," Zhi Wei replied. "Memories fade. Coin does not."
Jian Heng exhaled through his nose—a sound like distant thunder. "Words failed. Steel failed. And still he walks unshaken."
He turned his gaze to the lacquered screen, watching the painted cranes as if they might lift and vanish from the panel.
"No more strikes at shadows," he said, voice low. "He's too vigilant for knives now. We strike where his gaze falters."
Wu's brow creased. "Where?"
"Her," Jian Heng said. The word landed heavy.
"Mu Lian?" Zhi Wei's tone edged with disbelief. "She's nothing."
"She is noticed," Jian Heng replied flatly. "And worse—she is listened to. The servants murmur her name. The soldiers lower their voices when she passes. He speaks to her without command."
There was a pause, the kind that stretched like drawn silk across an open blade.
"She's too visible," Wu said slowly. "But untouched."
Zhi Wei leaned forward, all affectation gone. "Then make her less."
"Precisely," Jian Heng said. "Spread doubt. Turn affection into suspicion. Loyalty into scandal. Bribe the servants. Invent what you cannot uncover. And if that fails…"
He trailed off, his gaze now resting on nothing at all.
"...find someone to make her forget where her loyalties lie."
Zhi Wei hesitated. "She doesn't seem the type to fall."
"Even towers fall," his father replied. "You need only strike the right foundation."
Uncle Wu gave a nervous chuckle that no one joined.
Jian Heng's voice dropped to a whisper, but the chill in it turned the room cold.
"No falcon soars forever. Especially not with a snare at its heart."