Chapter 1 — The Heir to the Throne with the Wicked Face

The Night of Kim Loan Bloodshed

In the third watch, rain began to fall on the glass tile roof of Kim Loan Palace, each droplet tapping like a distant war drum heralding something bad. Sixteen-year-old Khương Nhược Hi was studying writing in her private study, the oil lamp swaying with the wind blowing through the door, her shadow falling long on the mountain and water painting hanging in the middle of the wall. She didn't know that in just a moment, the whole world she knew would collapse into ashes.

The first scream rang out from the Emperor's palace.

Nhược Hi put down her pen, her heart pounding. She rushed out into the hallway, her bare feet stepping on the cold stone floor, just in time to see figures dressed in black flying through the painted columns, holding blood-stained short knives. The palace maids and eunuchs fell everywhere, their moans drowned out in the increasingly loud sound of the rain.

"Your Highness!" A hoarse voice rang out from behind, pulling her back into the shadow of a large pillar. That was Khấu Đình Ân, the general manager of internal affairs who had served the royal family since the time of the first king. His face was pale and his hands were shaking as he held her shoulder tightly. "Don't go that way. Father and mother..."

"I have to see." Nhược Hi pulled away, tears welling in the corners of her eyes even though she did not understand what was happening. "Eunuch Khấu, let me go!"

"It's late." Khấu Đình Ân held her tightly, his voice cracking as if the person was about to break in half from the inside. "I just ran from there. The Emperor and Empress... did not survive."

Nhược Hi knelt down, her whole body felt cold as if she had just been doused with a bucket of ice water in the middle of a summer night. She wanted to scream, wanted to rush to her parents' corpses, but Khấu Đình Ân's old hand tightly covered her mouth, dragging her into a secret alcove behind a screen embroidered with birds, a place only a few people in the palace knew about.

"Your Highness, listen to me." He leaned close to her ear, his voice urgent as if every word had to be fought with death. "This is not an outside rebel army breaking in. Someone inside the court is making this move. If Her Highness the Queen Mother steps out now, I am afraid the entire royal bloodline will be extinct before dawn."

"Who... who dares?" Nhược Hi asked tremblingly, her voice choked in her throat.

"I don't dare to confirm, but the decree to mobilize the forbidden army tonight was not issued by the usual military department." Khấu Đình Ân glanced around, his hands constantly rummaging through an old wooden chest hidden behind a screen. "They planned months in advance, waiting for the night of heavy rain so that the sound of weapons would be drowned out. Your Highness, I'm sorry for having to do this."

He pulled out a worn black cloak and a glossy black wooden mask engraved with a fierce demon face, red lines drawn across both cheeks like dried blood. Nhược Hi recognized it at once: it belonged to the notorious thief known throughout Vân Khánh as the Ghost-Faced Witch, who robbed corrupt officials and was said to command ghosts. No one had ever seen her real face clearly.

"Why do you have this?"

"There's no time to explain." He quickly put the cloak on her, his hands trembling as he fastened each clasp. "That thief entered the palace tonight for an unknown purpose and was killed by the same assassins in the west corridor—perhaps to silence her, or to frame her. I found her body before they could dispose of it."

He paused for a moment, his eyes shining with the painful calculation of a person betting both his own life and that of the child he considered his own grandchild.

"If Lady Khương Nhược Hi disappears without a trace tonight, they will search the whole world for Her Highness. But if the Ghost-Faced Witch appears alive while the princess is believed to have perished in tonight's riot, perhaps they will stop looking so hard."

Nhược Hi realized what he was planning and her whole body froze.

"Go ahead and make everyone believe that I'm dead?"

"I intend for everyone to believe that the Ghost-Faced Witch is still alive." Khấu Đình Ân put the mask on her face, his voice trembling but his eyes unusually steadfast. "As for Your Highness, from this moment on, you must learn to die in the eyes of the world to truly survive. Nhược Hi, my child has taught you since childhood. Listen to me one last time."

In the hallway, the heavy footsteps of the assassins grew closer and closer. Nhược Hi held Khấu Đình Ân's hand tightly, feeling that old arm tremble not only from fear but also from the despair of someone who knows he is about to die.

"The Duke comes with me."

"I can't." He pushed her into a gap behind the stone wall, which led down to the old escape tunnel that only the previous royal family still remembered. "If we both disappear, they will immediately become suspicious. I must stay, be captured, and let them interrogate me so Your Highness will have enough time to escape the capital before dawn."

"Impossible!" Nhược Hi burst into tears and tried to pull him with her, but Khấu Đình Ân pushed her hard into the tunnel and slammed the stone door with his own hands.

"Remember, Your Highness," his voice echoed through the thin stone crack, choked but each word was clear, "Your father and mother died not because of a natural disaster, but because there was someone in this court who wanted the throne so much that he was willing to stain the entire Kim Loan Palace with blood. Your Highness must live. Live to one day return and expose that person's true face before the people of the world. That is the last will I can give to Your Highness."

Nhược Hi stood still in the musty darkness of the tunnel, her hand clutching the cold ghost mask on her face, hearing the sound of Khấu Đình Ân's footsteps fading away, then the shouts and the sound of weapons clashing vaguely echoing through the thick layer of stone. She bit her lips until they bled to keep from crying, groping step by step in the dark, one hand leaning against the wet rock wall, the other hand clutching the only piece of jade her mother ever wore that she was able to snatch away before being pushed into the tunnel.

The tunnel led to a small creek behind the royal garden, where the rainwater had risen to knee level. Nhược Hi waded through the cold water and looked back at Kim Loan Palace one last time. The flickering torchlight reflected on the wet tiled roofs, and in the distance there were still chaotic screams. She didn't know what had happened to Khấu Đình Ân or which corner of the bloody palace held her parents' bodies; she only knew that if she stopped for a moment, everything he had sacrificed would become meaningless.

She ran through the small gate behind the royal citadel, usually used only to transport vegetables into the palace, then through the dark alleys of the capital while Vân Khánh slept, unaware of the storm that had just swept through the depths of the palace. The rain continued to fall, washing away the bloodstains on the black dress she was wearing and the innocent face of a noble lady, revealing behind the cold wooden mask the identity of a notorious thief.

By the time she collapsed, exhausted, next to an old tree outside the city, it was already dawn. Nhược Hi looked up at the gray sky after the rain, took off her mask, and buried her face in it, crying without a sound. She thought of her mother's gentle smile every time she taught her to embroider and of her father's warm voice every time he explained the tactics of war to her. She had always known that one day the throne would belong to her rather than to another prince, but now those dreams were only memories buried beneath a bloody, rainy night.

She looked at the jade tablet in her palm, its blue veins sparkling in the pale dawn light, then slowly put the mask back on her face. From that night on, Khương Nhược Hi — Đại Hạ's only princess — had died in the eyes of the world. Only the Demon-Faced Witch, with her terrifying mask, existed in this world.

"I will find the person who killed my parents," she whispered to the wind, her voice hoarse but no longer shaking. "No matter how long I have to wear this devil's face, I will demand justice for my parents, for Eunuch Khấu, and for all of Đại Hạ."

In the distance, the alarm bells from Vân Khánh Imperial Citadel began to ring loudly, tearing through the sky that still smelled of last night's rain. Nhược Hi stood up, pulled down her hood to cover half of her masked face, turned around and took her first steps away from the capital - the steps of someone who had just lost everything, but had also just found a reason to continue living.

She followed the riverside path, away from the guard posts that had been hastily erected along the city gates. People began to stir and spread bad news to one another; street vendors stopped in the middle of the market, and wooden doors slammed shut as if the disaster in the palace could spread to the streets. Nhược Hi passed a crowd of people chatting and vaguely heard someone mention the name Ghost-Faced Witch in a voice that was both frightened and indignant, blaming the king's murder on the person bearing that alias. She clenched her fists in her sleeves, knowing that from that day on, every curse directed at that name would also be a layer of armor protecting her true identity, even though that armor came at the cost of her unjustly defamed honor.

She did not dare to look back at the curved roof of the royal palace again, afraid that one moment of weakness would be enough to make all of Khấu Đình Ân's sacrifices go in vain. The road ahead was unclear and led nowhere, but in Nhược Hi's heart only one clear thought remained: survive, hide carefully, and wait until she was strong enough to expose the person who had stained the ancestral main hall with blood.