The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 364: What Next?

If the old Emperor wanted a last vision of his life to be of a boy he tried to break, he would not find him. If he wanted the shape of the throne to bless him, he would meet only a wall.

Words tried to form and broke.

The eyes, untroubled by humility for seventy years, hunted the corridor for a minister, a petition, a screen, any furniture with which to props a life.

The only furniture here was a bowl, a pile of straw, a bar, and four men whose history with him had never included worship.

A tremor took the left hand, crawled up the arm, and then lost interest. The right hand stilled on the floor.

Yaozu lifted two fingers again for the second stick.

The physician watched the mouth for the moment when the body chose silence over effort and found it at the end of a breath that never turned around.

A long time passed in a short space.

"For the record," the physician murmured, with the dry simplicity of a man writing a weather note, "The Late Emperor has died of a fever."

Deming angled his head toward the door. "We will finish this."

Yizhen touched the boy between the shoulder blades and sent him up the stairs with the tray.

The boy moved as if he had always known how to carry empty bowls and not spill them.

Yizhen waited until the child’s footfalls had fled the last curve.

Then he looked through the bars at the face that had once held an empire between the eyes and the mouth and examined it like merchandise that would never be bought.

"No procession," Yaozu reminded the air, and the air obeyed.

He took the ring of keys from his sleeve and set the right one to the lock.

The door swung inward with the patience of wood that had heard worse stories. Yaozu crossed the threshold and knelt by the shoulder that had lifted and fallen nations as if shifting a robe.

He checked the throat. His hand did not press hard; there was no need to. There was no pulse left to find.

Longzi’s absence in the corridor gathered itself into the stair a breath later.

He had remained above to listen for feet that did not belong. Now he filled the doorway like a black stroke drawn across paper.

When his eyes landed on the stillness on the floor, a small satisfaction moved his mouth, not for cruelty’s sake, but because a duty had fulfilled itself without waste. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Mingyu did not look at Deming.

He kept his gaze on the straw and the shape of the man who had once wielded the word exile as if it cost less than salt.

He let himself count to ten.

He did not ask anyone to confirm what he already knew. He did not request a prayer. He did not request anything.

"Ledger," he prompted.

Yaozu inclined his head. "A nameless servant," he returned, tone sparse. "Cremation before noon. No entry in any hall that carries oil."

"Ash dispersal?" Deming pressed.

"In the garden beds that feed soldiers," Yaozu replied. "They will not starve."

Yizhen’s eyes brightened, humor returning like a cat to a warmed stone. "Practical poetry," he approved.

Mingyu turned without hurry and climbed the first stair. He did not look back.

Not because he feared a last word from a mouth that could no longer shape one, but because there was nothing left on the floor he wanted to bring into the room above.

The cold followed him up and thinned in the throat of the hatch. Shadow greeted him with a single exhale and a touch of muzzle to his wrist. Mingyu closed his hand over the fur once and released it.

Deming emerged next and eased the hatch only to the first inch, leaving room for Yaozu and Longzi to work.

Yizhen came last, fingers already tucking a coin into the boy’s palm in the passage beyond the study, a coin heavy enough to pay for forgetfulness.

The boy would leave by a gate that rarely opened and would wake tomorrow certain he had slept soundly.

The physician stood in the corner like a shadow that had remembered its body. He opened his case and lifted out the small brush and the tablet.

He wrote with a neat, unfussy hand: fever, exhaustion, imbalance of humors—phrases any steward could read without swallowing the lump in his throat.

Mingyu crossed to the map table and laid his palm on the river that cut the southern provinces as if checking a pulse that actually mattered.

He did not sit. He did not remove his cloak.

Outside, night continued its work on tile and tree. Somewhere a patrol turned where Longzi had willed it to turn.

Deming waited for a cue that did not take long. "The couriers?" he prompted.

"At dawn," Mingyu answered. "Quiet notices to the ministries. No proclamations. The empire wakes to the same breakfast."

Yizhen leaned a hip to the desk and studied the line of Mingyu’s mouth. "And the old Empress?"

Mingyu lifted his hand from the map and finally looked at him. "She left when Lin Wei was kidnapped. She has more than earned to live the life she wants. I’m sure she’ll come home when she has finally seen the world."

"If you say so," Yizhen murmured, entirely willing to let irrelevance remain a road someone else might one day walk. He didn’t know the Old Empress, but if Mingyu was fine with her, then that was the end of it.

Yaozu and Longzi rejoined them after a time that matched the length of a third stick. Neither tracked ash across the rug. The hatch closed with a soft, good-mannered acceptance.

Yaozu restored the runner to its place, smoothing the edge with one hand. Longzi set the inner bolt with a sure thumb.

No one reached for wine.

"What remains," Deming inquired.

"Letters," Mingyu answered. "Corn in the east. A caravan at the western gate with news that smells like salt. A boy who thinks Shadow prefers him. And let’s not forget the old Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Baiguang."

Shadow, hearing his name without understanding anything else, lifted his head and looked entirely satisfied with the world as it currently existed.

Mingyu drew a breath that reached all the way to the bottom of his lungs and released it without sound.

The room aligned itself around the exhale. He met each man’s gaze in turn—the blade, the shadow, the fox, the stone—and allowed himself one truth, clear and unadorned.

"The old Emperor will not touch her again."

Deming’s mouth barely moved. "No one will."

Longzi’s fingers flexed as if closing on air. "Let them try."

Yaozu’s eyes slid to the door and measured the worlds beyond it. "They will not reach this room."

Yizhen’s smirk returned and settled like a folded fan. "They will run out of courage long before they run out of steps."

Mingyu reached for the brush he had not used earlier, dipped it once, and wrote a single character on the blank scrap near his hand.

Not grief. Not vengeance. The character cut the air cleanly and dried quickly: finished.

He set the brush down, lifted his gaze to the window where the night pressed its quiet spine against the glass, and let the palace breathe again.