The air was still.
Wu Zetian stepped into the chamber. Her hard slippers made no sound against the polished mirror-like floor. No, not only the floor, but even the walls and ceiling were made of mirrors.
These drank in the light like black water, and when they returned it, they gave no reflection of her present self.
Instead, they showed fragnts of her past.
A child’s face stared out from the first mirror, her own, barely nine years old, head bowed as her father, Wu Shihuo, the Duke of Ying, praised her brothers but overlooked her.
She had been born to privilege, yes, but privilege was only an ornant for a girl; her father’s wealth could not buy her place in the histories.
"You are clever," the mirror whispered with her father’s voice, "but a daughter’s cleverness brings only trouble."
Wu Zetian’s lips curled down, but she quickly covered them with her fan. She moved on, refusing to et the child’s eyes.
The next mirror was sharper.
She saw herself at thirteen, leaving the family ho in Wenshui, the wooden gates closing behind her as she was taken to Chang’an. She had been chosen for the imperial court. Not for her wit, not for her learning, but for her beauty.
She rembered the carriage ride, her heart caught between excitent and a fear she did not dare na.
"You were sent as an ornant to amuse a man you had never t," the glass sneered in a voice so familiar to her, her very own voice. "Was that victory, little Wu Zhao, or the first chain around your neck?"
Her jaw tightened.
The third mirror showed her kneeling before Tang Taizong.
He was younger than she had rembered him, vigorous and sharp-eyed, yet already burdened with the weight of an empire. She was one of many in his harem, her silk robes crimson and her hair coiled like a serpent. In the mirror, she was smiling... but in reality, she rembered how her heart pounded like it wanted to get out of her chest.
"You thought you would captivate him and rise," the voice in the glass mocked. "Yet how many nights did you wait alone, your clever words unsaid? How many tis did you bow, knowing your face would fade from his mory by morning?"
The image rippled.
Around her, all the mirrors began to stir, each surface showing another failure; a mont she had been ignored, underestimated, or dismissed. The mocking noise of her voice gradually lted into a single chorus, reviving painful mories she kept deep in her heart.
Wu Zetian closed her eyes.
"That’s not true!"
She growled in a rumbling voice, defiant.
"My Emperor, Tang Taizong, taught how to love. He taught the bitterness of regret and the sweet nectar of ecstasy. He promised to love for all eternity, no matter how far apart we may be!"
"Are you sure?" But as if mocking her, the mirror’s voice continued. "Right now... is he even looking at you?"
"...!"
That sentence beca the last straw.
Zetian’s mind, which she barely kept intact, finally shattered. Negative energies began to rush toward her, swirling into a powerful whirlwind... an indication of Qi Deviation!
Just one vaguely true sentence was enough to almost break her Dao Heart!
"Urgh...!"
Feeling her Qi running in reverse, she vomited blood. Her vitals were all over the place, and even her senses started to bug out.
At that mont, a figure appeared... Xu Tao.
His wide back stood just ahead of Zetian’s eyes, seemingly close enough to reach, but still too far.
"Enough, you mirror demon."
He spoke, voice clear and resonating.
"Don’t you dare touch what’s mine." And he declared so.
They were words that the clone didn’t think through, simply coming out as naturally as any words he said. Zetian, who heard this, felt her heart tighten.
"I... am my Emperor’s...!" She gasped, a mix of bliss and realization in her voice. "So my Emperor does love , he just doesn’t show it!"
"Huh? Well, I..."
But just as Xu Tao’s clone was about to clarify things, changes began to occur.
The rampaging negative energy dissipated. Along with it, the image displayed on the mirrors completely changed, too. Instead of Zetian’s childhood, it now showed scenes of a certain Emperor... Xu Tao’s past life.
"The fuck?"
Xu Tao’s clone watched, completely bewildered by it.
Seeing his face in the mirror, doing things he couldn’t rember doing, felt so surreal. Most of all, since this vision appeared, it confird that Xu Tao truly was Emperor Tang Taizong in one of his past lives!
One scene, in particular, caught the pair’s eyes.
A scene where a younger version of Zetian stood by the ailing Tang Taizong’s bedside.
Her position in the harem was too low, sowhere between an ornant and a shadow. Still, there she was, standing by the Emperor’s side without fail, worrying for his health.
"Xiao Zhao," he murmured, his voice as thin as rice paper.
She knelt, lowering her head until her forehead brushed the cold floor. "Your Majesty."
Taizong’s eyes moved, glancing at her figure, a hint of sadness in his flickering eyes. He parted his lips, as if hesitating about which words to use, to say.
"You’re... wasted here," he said slowly, each word pulled from sowhere deep. "Too bright... to be a bird in a cage..."
COUGH! COUGH!
He looked like he wanted to relay sothing, but his violent cough stopped him.
Fearing that she might catch the Emperor’s disease too and spread it around the palace, Zetian was dismissed. Taizong’s gaze followed her sad, fading back, shaky arms outstretched, lips parting with words unsaid.
"This..."
Zetian sighed.
She could rember that ti, the final ti she had seen the Emperor.
To her, that mory was a bitter one. After all, she barely had ti to talk to him before getting forced out by the imperial doctors. However, she couldn’t believe it beca one of the Emperor’s regrets, too.
"What was it that he wanted to say..." she whispered, wondering.
Of course, the mory entered a loop without clarifying what his regret was. Even Xu Tao’s clone had no idea. It was a mory he didn’t have, after all.
"...I want to figure it out."
Zetian’s expression straightened up. With a wave of her sleeve, her injuries were healed. The rampaging Qi caused by Qi Deviation was already calm enough that one would wonder if the Deviation truly happened.
With a firm voice, she declared:
"I will watch all the mories here, and find out what my Emperor wanted to say!"
"..."
Xu Tao’s clone had no choice but to let her be. He only guided her toward the "right" path, waiting until she finished watching all the mories on display.
mories of Tang Taizong... and mories of Xu Tao.
In the end, it was half an hour later when she finally left the mirror maze. Together with a shriveled-up clone.
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