Xie Song-jun

2010 years after The Long Night

Hei’an Palace

“Tell me the story! Tell me!” Xie Song-jun was giggling too much to really be making any sense. The more her father tickled her the louder she got, until finally she heard a deep chuckle and a soft shh…

The King’s eyes were wide and full of sunlight and warmth, something that Song-jun had always been entranced by ever since she was very young. She recalls staring up endlessly at those dark eyes, for what felt like hours, listening to the familiar lull of her father’s voice as he spoke.

Xie Yi-jun shook his head with a sigh, trying once more to tuck the little girl under the covers. It was hours past her bedtime. They’d stayed up playing again.

“Princess-” her father’s tone was a gentle warning but he still smiled as she kicked the blankets away once again.

“Please, tell me the story?! Then I’ll go to sleep! I promise-”

Xie Yi-jun frowned, narrowing his eyes.

“Haven’t you heard it so many times already? From all of us? Aren’t you bored, little one?”

The girl shook her head, turning onto her side and placing her hands under her cheek as she pleaded once more.

“I’m not! I wanna hear the story about The Stone King again! The way you tell it,”

Song-jun wrinkled her nose. “Uncle tells it different. Not the same…”

Xie Yi-jun chuckled, then sat back in his chair and nodded.

“Alright, get comfy then. It’s a long story, as you are well aware.”

Xie Song-jun closed her eyes and let the visions come. Her father’s words became the brush with which she painted the most beautiful scenery, places she’d never been and people she’d never seen. It came to life amid the darkness, as vivid and real as anything. She loved dreaming of being a part of that world…

“-then I opened my eyes,” her father whispered. “And seven hundred years had passed. What was I to do? Where was I to go?”

Song-jun blinked and interjected fondly; “Wúmeng?!”

Xie Yi-jun smiled and nodded, then gently told her to hush. It was a little while later, after the story had already moved to a place called Jíngshen, that Xie Song-jun finally started to drift. Her father’s story merged with her subconscious, depicting strange adventures, creating magic she knew had never before existed.

Just as the story was ending, or perhaps at some point shortly after, Song-jun felt her father lean down and kiss her cheek, smoothing her hair away from her face and sighing…

Xie Song-jun held onto those last few fragments of consciousness as she listened to her father slowly leave the room, the sound of the door closing echoing softly in her mind.

Her father’s last whispered words lingered in the air long after, their meaning bringing a strange sense of longing to the little girl’s heart. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but she knew it was the same feeling as when she dreamed of these far off, magical places-

“The end…”

But Song-jun knew, in her heart, that it wasn’t.

At the age of six, the Princess of Hei’an City had already begun imagining herself on epic adventures alongside her family; fighting off demons with the great King Xie Yi-jun, and saving souls with the Legendary Healer Jin Songcai. The older the Princess got, the more she began to understand that adventure isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be, and that sometimes the battle needs to be fought not with swords, but with words instead.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Swords… words, even her Assassin's Cord proved to be useless when it came to defending herself and her uncle against their captors in the south. Held for weeks at The Roaran Stronghold, the Princess spent a lot of her time behind bars searching for a way out. In the end, after being rescued by her uncle, Xie Song-jun became even more attached to the idea of adventure. But next time, she was going to be prepared! The fact of the matter was, she shouldn’t have needed to be saved. Having spent sixteen years under the instruction of both her fathers and the best teachers in the city, Song-jun should have been able to fight, talk, or kill her way out of any situation.

So… why didn’t she?

Loathe as she is to admit it, Xie Song-jun agrees with her fathers that she must have been very frightened. Bravery, to her, is not something she wants to lack in crucial moments. Song-jun fits in well enough with her adoptive family in terms of temperament, but she needs to stand beside them in every other way too; she needs to keep going until courage isn’t something she simply possesses, but something she is.

To be fair, growing up, her fathers and her uncle have occasionally shown their own fear, but Song-jun believes that is okay because Xie Yi-jun, Jin Songcai, and her uncle Wen Reian, have all already proved themselves to be good and courageous people. As Princess, as the daughter of legends, she needs to do the same.

Song-jun’s feeling that something is wrong begins around her twelfth year, with the first occurrence of the rain. Hei’an City, surrounded by the Hei’an Hills, naturally has a very dry climate, maybe getting two or three storms every year during the darker months. Suddenly, with the rain verging on incessant, Song-jun heard her fathers talking over dinner about flooding… reinforcing some of the homes and farms in the lower cities to withstand this kind of rain. Around that time was when Song-jun began documenting everything.

Her journal was never a place for childish gossip and woes, instead, Song-jun fills first one, then four over the years, with every possible thing that changes as she grows up, be it rain, the migratory patterns of several species, abrupt power drains to the city’s underground fire reserve, and much, much else…

By the time she’s eighteen, Song-jun has begun to put enough of the pieces together to start looking for the same signs elsewhere.

There are very few resources in the palace library, or anywhere else for that matter, on what happened during The Long Night. Being over two-thousand years ago does make it a bit hard to just go up and ask somebody, and any documents from around that time are scarce and usually irrevocably damaged.

Lan Kai-Le, who Song-jun supposes must also count as her uncle now, comes through in a big way on the cusp of the Princess’s nineteenth birthday in that regard…

“Lan-Le has brought you something,” Wen Reian smiled one evening, gesturing at the taller man to step forward.

Song-jun waits patiently for the hunter to hand her the object, and as he does he says;

“Merchant in my home-town was selling it. Thought of you.”

Song-jun watches the way her uncle’s eyes soften, and then Reian globs onto Lan Kai-Le’s arm where he usually is. Song-jun likes that her uncle found what her parents have…

“Thank you, I-”

Then Song-jun realizes what she’s holding.

All the many times she’s questioned and complained about their lack of understanding of The Long Night… they all must have noticed. Lan Kai-Le must have heard her and remembered.

The book in her hands couldn’t even be called a book. To the discerning eye, it’s evidently several sheets of incredibly aged paper, bound together with thin, fraying thread. The words on the cover are written in a highly stylized way, almost if this were an official royal document, but Song-jun’s never seen one this old before.

The date… the date at the bottom of the page-

“This was written during the first King’s rule. During The Long Night…”

Song-jun’s speechless silence is interrupted by Jin Songcai humming thoughtfully-

“How fascinating. Darling, come have a look.”

Xie Yi-jun approaches and glances at it, then he looks up and notices that Song-jun is practically vibrating out of her skin she is so excited.

Her father laughs, “Alright, alright. No need to linger, I’m sure you want to head up to compare notes as soon as-”

“Thank you again!! I’ll be back soon!” The Princess’s voice echoes down the halls as she dashes away.

Very faintly she hears her beloved family say something about moving her bedroom to the library. She realizes they might be right.

Song-jun spends weeks, maybe actually three or four months, holed up at the center of a large collection of books in her favorite corner of the library, right beneath a beautiful window that lets in both the sun, and the moonlight. She spends hours upon hours, days upon days, finally able to judge their present against the past. What she finds only confirms her suspicions.

Somehow, like it or not, all the signs are there. The Long Night is returning. And Xie Song-jun is going to be the one that stops it.