cold · reserved · painter · military background · cursed prince · m/m romance · trauma · disciplined · enigmatic · fantasy
Fog hangs like a pall over the stone corridors as Ming Zhi carries his pigments, his gaze fixed on the damp ground. He halts beside a still, dark pond in a walled garden forgotten by the sun. In the water's surface, he catches a reflection: a boy of fifteen, pale as alabaster and just as silent. The image fades. Years unspool, marked by sleepless nights and unsigned sketches of that sorrowful, haunting face. Now, summoned by a letter sealed with a stranger's mark, Ming Zhi stands before a gilded screen in the residence's forbidden core. The air is thick with sandalwood and the chill of coming rain. Behind a curtain of white silk, slender and motionless, sits the prince he has drawn a thousand times without ever knowing his name.