Bonus Chapter 1- The Blood of the Amethyst | A Gilded Stag- Joffrey SI [Locked] (Patreon)

The memories of his first death never faded; they festered, rising to the surface whenever the air grew hot and thick with dust. They tasted of cordite, dried blood, and the bitter tang of shattered brick. He remembered a great city falling to the Empire of Japan. He remembered the deafening, unnatural thunder of the invader's artillery that shook the earth, and the absolute, screaming chaos of Nanking.

In that life, he had been Zhu Liang, a starving peasant conscript from the terraced hills of Sichuan, thrust into the doomed ranks of the National Revolutionary Army. He remembered the grinding exhaustion of the march, the weight of his jamming Hanyang 88 rifle, and the hollow, haunted eyes of his squadmates. Lao Chen, the veteran who had shared his last cigarette before a mortar sheared off half his jaw. 'Sparrow', the sixteen-year-old farm boy who had died weeping in the rubble, clutching frantically at his own spilled intestines. Liang’s life had ended not with glory, but with the sudden, breathless agony of a Type 30 bayonet slipping between his ribs, pinning him to the muddy earth of a ruined street. He had died with a mouthful of ash, mourning a family he knew would surely starve without him.

He had closed his eyes amidst that mechanized slaughter, only to open them in another world entirely.

Luo Shen stared down into the still, dark waters of the courtyard pond. The face reflected back at him from among the wide, floating lotus pads was young, the unlined visage of a boy of twelve name-days, framed by jet-black hair meticulously bound in a rigid ji topknot. But the eyes were the true anomaly. They were not the dark, earthen brown common to the people of the Golden Empire. They were a vivid, piercing purple, the color of crushed amethysts.

It was a hereditary echo that marked him, his father, his three elder brothers, and his two elder sisters. The red priests of Volantis, the shadowbinders of Asshai, or the pale scholars of Valyria might have recognized the truth of it, crossing distant seas to study the remnants of such a lineage. For this was not merely a quirk of birth; it was the legacy of the noblewoman of Valyria who had crossed the world thousands of years ago to marry Chai Duq, the fourth Yellow Emperor. Here, in the shadow of the Jade Sea, wearing the blood of a deposed imperial dynasty was a mark of immense, dangerous prestige.

Shen dragged his gaze away from the water and looked out over the Luo Walled Manor. It was a traditional ancestral clan seat in the humid riverlands, its curving, tiled eaves pressing against the heavy evening sky. Paper lanterns swayed lazily in the breathless air, casting long, wavering shadows across the manicured plum trees.

For twelve years, Shen had played the part of the quiet, prodigious youngest son of the primary wife—a Di son of a minor martial-gentry house. He had not simply rested on his modern intellect. To forge a flawless mask of a gentleman scholar and secure a Xiaolian—a formal recommendation of filial piety and incorruptibility—he had endured years of mind-numbing rote memorization, transcribing the thousands of complex strokes of the YiTish classics until his knuckles cramped and his fingers bled. He had forced his soldier's mind to adapt to the brutal, heavy momentum of cold-era warfare, practicing the stances of the single-edged dao and the ash-wood spear under the blistering sun. By masking his modern strategic mind as brilliant classical scholarship, he had planned to secure a dual civil-military commission. He would use the chaos of the fanatical Yellow Emperor's brewing rebellion in the east to farm military merits, quietly elevating his family to forge an unassailable power base from within Yin, the sprawling, ancient capital city of the Azure Emperor.

That careful, years-long blueprint had unravelled precisely three hours ago.

The heavy wooden doors of the main hall slid open. Shen’s father, Luo Han, stepped out onto the veranda. The older man’s face, usually a mask of stoic, aristocratic calm, was drawn tight, his own amethyst eyes hardened into cold flint. Behind him, Shen could hear the muffled, frantic arguments of his three elder brothers.

The envoy from Lord Gao had come and gone. Gao was the Taishou, the Grand Administrator of the commandery. He was a man in his sixtieth year, bloated on corrupt land seizures, his immense regional power cemented by marrying his daughter to a high-ranking eunuch's nephew.

Gao had sent his emissaries to demand Shen’s eldest sister, Luo Mei. Months ago, a wandering court poet had composed a flowery ode to Mei’s "Amethyst gaze," and the parchment had found its way to the Taishou's desk. Gao had not asked for an alliance or a marriage. He had demanded her as a concubine.

It was not merely a crude, lustful insult. It was weaponized genealogy. Gao knew the Azure Emperor's dynasty was crumbling. By forcing a daughter of the Luo into his bedchamber, Gao intended to breed the ancient, royal blood of Chai Duq and Valyria into his own line, forging a legitimate claim to the throne for his heirs when the empire finally shattered.

Luo Han had refused, ordering the envoy from the clan seat.

"They will not let this rest," Shen’s eldest brother, Jian, said, stepping out onto the veranda. Jian was twenty, broad-shouldered, tasked with managing the compound's defenses. His hand rested heavily on the ring-pommel of his single-edged dao.

"Gao is a petty, venomous creature," added Bo, the second brother. He was eighteen, having just returned home from his studies to prepare for his journey to the capital. "But he cannot simply seize a daughter of the gentry."

"He will not seize her," Luo Han said, his voice dropping to a harsh, absolute whisper. "A man denied a prize destroys the prize, so no other may claim it. He will use his son-in-law in the capital. He will buy the magistrates. He will paint us as traitors."

Shen stepped out of the shadows of the plum trees. "We cannot hold the compound," he said, his voice carrying the steady, flat cadence of a veteran analyzing a lost frontline. "Gao commands the imperial guard in this province. We must take the buqu and ride for the foothills of the Bone Mountains tonight, before the seal is even pressed to the warrant."

Before Luo Han could answer, the rhythmic, terrifying beat of an imperial drum echoed outside the heavy iron-bound gates of the compound. Then came the shrill, amplified voice of a court eunuch reading from a long silk scroll.

"By edict of the inner court and the Azure Emperor!" the voice carried over the high walls. "The House of Luo is condemned! They funnel grain and castle-forged iron to the local lieutenants of the Yellow Horde! Their amethyst eyes bear the blood of the usurpers, and they scheme to see the Sorcerer Lord of Carcosa upon the throne! Slay the men! Bind the women!"

Shen felt a chilling numbness wash over him. It was the perfect, inescapable lie. By tying their specific Valyrian and Yellow Emperor heritage to the fanatical death cult currently burning the eastern provinces, Gao had turned a personal vendetta into a state-sanctioned extermination.

"Form the line!" Luo Han roared, drawing his ancestral sword.

From the adjacent barracks, the Luo family’s hereditary retainers—the buqu—swarmed into the courtyard. There were only forty of them, hardened veterans sworn by blood to the family, led by Shen's older cousin, Luo Wei. They formed a tight shield wall, leveling their heavy spears.

Then the heavy iron ram struck the gates.

The wood splintered and groaned under the immense kinetic force. On the third strike, the massive hinges gave way, and the heavy doors collapsed inward.

Scores of men poured through the breach. They were elite imperial guardsmen, clad in heavy, lacquered lamellar armor that clattered like dragon scales, their faces hidden beneath grim iron helms. Leading them was a younger man wielding a heavy ji halberd—Gao Ren, the Taishou's ambitious, martial nephew, come to claim the glory of butchering a fallen house.

The clash of steel was deafening. Spear points scraped against hardened lamellar, and the heavy, hooked blades of the halberds sheared through flesh and bone. Blood sprayed across the manicured plum blossoms.

Shen’s three elder brothers charged into the fray. Jian parried a halberd thrust and drove his ring-pommel dao deep into a guardsman’s neck, the hot blood splashing across his face. Feng, the martial third brother, fought with two shorter blades, weaving through the heavy infantry. But the crushing weight of numbers was absolute. For every guardsman the buqu cut down, three more poured through the shattered gates.

"Shen!" Luo Han grabbed his youngest son by the collar of his silk tunic. "Take your sisters. Take the southern postern gate. Cousin Wei will escort you to the reeds."

"Father—"

"Your mother has already partaken of the poisoned wine in the ancestral hall," Luo Han said, his voice cracking, though his eyes remained fierce. "She chose her own end. You are the last root of our clan. Survive!"

Luo Han turned and plunged into the swirling melee, his blade flashing in the lantern light, selling his life dearly to buy his children a head start.

The mind of the Nanking soldier took over. Shen sprinted through the sliding paper doors into the inner sanctum. He found Mei and his second sister, Lin, huddled near the rear corridors, trembling.

"Up," Shen commanded, his voice devoid of a child's inflection. He grabbed a heavy, iron-wood walking staff from a nearby rack. "We leave now."

He dragged them toward the rear of the compound. The sounds of the slaughter echoed behind them—the crash of breaking pottery, the wet thud of steel on bone, the harsh commands of Gao Ren ordering his men to push forward.

They reached the southern postern gate, a small, heavy oak door leading out into the dense, muddy reed beds that bordered a tributary of the great river. Cousin Wei and four bloodied buqu were waiting, breathing heavily. Jian was with them, his left arm hanging limp, a deep gash across his shoulder.

"The front is lost," Jian gasped, gripping his dao. "Bo and Feng fell at the steps. Father is surrounded."

Before Wei could unbar the door, the corridor behind them filled with the clatter of lamellar armor. A squad of Gao's guardsmen had breached the rear servant quarters.

"Open the gate!" Jian roared, pushing Shen and his sisters behind him. He stepped into the narrow corridor, raising his blade.

The first guardsman lunged with a heavy spear. Jian deflected the shaft and drove his sword into the man's unarmored armpit. But the corridor was too narrow to dodge. The second guardsman thrust his halberd forward. The heavy, crescent blade punched cleanly through Jian's boiled leather cuirass, burying itself deep in his gut.

Jian spat a mouthful of bright arterial blood, but he did not fall. He grabbed the wooden shaft of the halberd with his bare hands, locking the weapon and the guardsman in place, wedging his own dying body into the frame of the corridor to create an impassable choke-point.

"Go!" Jian screamed, his teeth stained crimson.

Cousin Wei threw his shoulder against the oak door, bursting it open. Shen grabbed Mei's wrist, physically dragging his weeping sister out into the suffocating darkness of the riverlands. The mud was thick and treacherous, sucking at their boots. The reeds grew taller than a man, providing a claustrophobic, wet cover as they fled away from the estate.

The rain began to fall. It started as a warm drizzle and quickly escalated into a heavy, blinding downpour. The water washed the sweat and grime from Shen’s face, soaking his fine silk clothes until they clung heavily to his small frame.

They ran for hours, guided only by the distant, roaring sound of the great river that led east, toward the Bleeding Sea and the jagged peaks of the Bone Mountains. The surviving buqu formed a tight perimeter around the siblings, their spears leveled at the shadows.

When the muscles in his legs began to burn, and Lin collapsed into the mud, entirely spent, Shen finally called a halt. They were deep in the wilderness, hidden within a dense, uncharted expanse of the river marshes. Even if Gao’s men saw the distant glow of the burning manor, heavy imperial cavalry and lamellar-clad guardsmen could never track fugitives through such deep mud and reeds in the pitch black of a rainstorm.

Shen stood at the edge of the dark water, leaning heavily upon the iron-wood staff. He turned and looked back the way they had come. Miles away, against the pitch-black canvas of the night sky, a dull, angry orange glow pulsed on the horizon. The Luo Walled Manor was burning to ash.

The carefully constructed plan of the gentleman scholar burned with it. To fight monsters who wielded the law as a dagger, one had to step completely outside the law.

Shen walked to the edge of the riverbank and fell to his knees in the freezing mud. The rain battered his shoulders, flattening his black topknot against his skull. He pulled a small, sharp dagger from his belt and drew the blade across his own palm. The warm blood welled up, mixing with the cold rain, and dripped steadily into the mud of Essos.

Cousin Wei and the four buqu watched in silence, understanding the gravity of the ancient rite. Slowly, heavily, they knelt in the mud behind the twelve-year-old boy.

"Huangtian Houtu," Shen whispered into the storm, invoking the Sovereign Heaven and the Queen Earth, the words a blood oath bound to his very marrow. "Spirits of my fathers, hear me. I will not just return for Gao. I will skin the magistrates. I will sever the heads of every eunuch who holds a seal. And when the capital chokes on its own blood, I will tear down the Azure Emperor and burn his rotting dynasty to ash."

He rose slowly from the mud. He was twelve years old, a fugitive hunted by the greatest empire in the world, leading a ragged band of survivors into the unforgiving wilds.

But as he looked at the hardened men kneeling in the mud before him, Luo Shen knew this was not an end. The scholar was dead. The Bandit King of the Bone Mountains had just taken his first breath.

~~~

PS- Happy Ramanavami to my Indian readers.