The Hollow Sovereign

For sixteen years, Wei Changye has been dying. The village calls it the Long Night affliction — a hereditary curse that takes every child of his bloodline before their seventeenth year. Twice a year, a lacquered box of silver arrives to pay for his keep. In eight days, the man who sends it will come to collect. Wei has finally understood the truth. He was never sick. He was being kept — fattened, provisioned, livestock for a harvest he was never meant to survive. But the village has made a mistake no one will live long enough to regret. The frail, coughing boy in the doorless shed is not a boy. He is the reincarnated soul of the heretic who founded the forbidden Hollow Dao — the sovereign the Nine Heavens Court buried beneath six hundred years of silence and a sealed stele of ash. The seal is cracking. He remembers every face that put him in the ground. And he has eight days, no power, and no mercy — he carved that out of his own soul long ago. It will be enough. The Hollow Sovereign has returned, and he intends to climb back to his throne one quiet, calculated, unforgivable step at a time.