The courtyard house lay draped in winter's silence, its stone walls slick with frost and ivy crawling like skeletal fingers across fading crimson paint. The golden studs on the heavy wooden gate had long since dulled, no longer catching the light of a rising sun with imperial brilliance. Above, the sky was an endless expanse of grey, heavy with unfallen snow.
This house, a fading relic of the Qing Dynasty, had been granted to Zaifeng, Prince Chun, decades ago—an offering of false dignity from a world that had outgrown emperors and crowns. Once, he had been the Regent of China, father to the Last Emperor, steward of a throne that had been both celestial and hollow. Now, he was an old man, frail and broken, confined to this crumbling compound where time felt like it had stopped ticking long ago.
Tonight, however, time was moving again. And it was running out.
Inside the dimly lit chamber, a faint flicker of an oil lantern cast trembling shadows on the carved beams of the ceiling. The air was thick with incense smoke and the faint metallic tang of medicine—scents that clung stubbornly to the old silk curtains framing the bed.
Zaifeng lay propped against silk cushions, each embroidered with the coiling golden dragon of the Qing Dynasty. His skin was pale and waxen, stretched thin over angular cheekbones. His eyes, once sharp and observant, were sunken and clouded, staring vacantly at the fragile glow of the lantern. His body, frail and skeletal beneath layers of silk blankets, seemed barely tethered to this world.
The only sound was the slow, relentless ticking of an old clock on the mantel—a ceaseless drumbeat marking the final moments of a man who had once held an empire in his hands.
At the edge of the room stood Li Yuan, Zaifeng's most loyal servant. An old man himself, a eunuch he brought with him who is almost a hundred. His head was bowed low, hands trembling as he clutched a porcelain teacup. His frail frame, bent with age and duty, seemed barely able to hold itself upright.
"Your Highness…" Li Yuan's voice cracked like brittle parchment. "Would you care for some tea? Or perhaps your medicine?"
The silence that followed felt heavier than the walls of the Forbidden City.
Zaifeng stirred faintly, his thin lips parting as he exhaled a faint whisper, each syllable carried on the fragile wings of his final breaths.
"No… leave me."
Li Yuan froze, hesitating as though he might protest. But the weight of duty held his tongue. With a deep bow, he shuffled toward the heavy wooden door, sliding it closed behind him with aching slowness.
Zaifeng was alone now, save for the shadows and the ticking of the clock.
The silence swallowed him whole.
The lantern light danced across the wooden panels, illuminating fragments of the past—an old desk cluttered with forgotten scrolls, brittle letters yellowed with age, and imperial seals heavy with unfulfilled promises.
Zaifeng's thoughts began to drift, unmoored by the weakening grip of his failing body.
He was no longer in this decaying chamber. He was back in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, standing tall in the fading light of a cold autumn day.
The Guangxu Emperor was dead. The Empress Dowager Cixi had followed mere hours later. And Zaifeng—then still young, still untested—stood before the imperial ministers, his two-year-old son Puyi clutching his hand.
"Your son will be the Emperor."
"You will act as Regent."
Those words had carried a weight no man could bear.
Zaifeng had believed, in those fleeting moments, that he could hold the empire together—that he could shelter his son from the wolves circling the Dragon Throne. But the truth had been cruel and sharp, like shards of glass pressed into his palms.
The foreign powers had already set their hooks deep into China's flesh. The warlords had begun carving up the land like scavengers at a rotting feast. Treaties had been forced onto his desk, written in languages he barely understood, signed under the watchful eyes of men who held both guns and smiles.
Every signature had been a surrender. Every document, a death knell for the dynasty.
"Did I ever have a chance?"
The question gnawed at the corners of his mind, as it had every night since the day he signed the edict of abdication on behalf of his son.
He remembered holding Puyi's small, trembling hand as they walked out of the throne room for the last time.
"Baba, are we still emperors?"
The boy's voice had been so small, so afraid.
"Yes, my son," Zaifeng had lied, his throat tight with unshed tears.
But even then, he had known the truth.
Zaifeng's eyes flickered open, his gaze falling on a small, faded portrait on the desk.
It was a family photograph—himself, his wife, and his children. Puyi sat stiffly in imperial robes, his face frozen in a practiced mask of authority he did not understand. Beside him was Pujie, dressed in Western attire, his eyes filled with a quiet sadness.
His daughters were there too, each locked in their own distant smiles, faces framed by elegant hairstyles meant to hide their exhaustion.
"Did I protect them? Did I do enough?"
Puyi had been stripped of everything—his crown, his dignity, his childhood. And yet, Zaifeng had been powerless to stop it.
His second son, Pujie, had been sent to Japan, caught between two worlds—neither fully Chinese nor fully Japanese, a man torn apart by the allegiances of two nations.
And his daughters… he had married them off into alliances that brought no peace and no happiness.
"I tried. Heaven knows, I tried."
But trying had not been enough.
The weight of their collective suffering pressed down on Zaifeng's frail chest. His breathing became shallow, his chest rising and falling like a flickering flame desperate to stay alight.
The mantel clock struck midnight. Its chime reverberated through the chamber, a cold and heavy sound that settled into Zaifeng's bones.
The world was growing distant now—the walls, the lantern light, the ticking clock—all fading into a grey mist.
But somewhere in that fading silence, a thought rose—bright and sharp against the haze.
"If only I had another chance."
The thought cut through him, searing into his mind.
"If only I could go back. If only I could change things. If only… I could save them."
The fragile ember of hope flickered in the darkness.
His lips parted, trembling with the weight of unspoken prayers.
"Heaven… if you are listening… grant me one more chance."
For a moment, it felt as though the air itself held still, as if the universe had paused to listen to a dying man's final plea.
His chest shuddered once, twice—then stilled.
The faint light in Zaifeng's eyes dimmed. His hand, which had been clutching weakly at the silk blanket, fell limp against his side.
The ticking of the clock continued, relentless and unfeeling.
But death is not always the end.
Outside, the night deepened. Snow began to fall—soft, silent, and uncaring of the tragedy unfolding behind those aging walls.
And somewhere, deep within the cold silence of eternity, something stirred.