"Run!" Shoya's voice echoed above the loud rumbling that was fast increasing in amplitude, accompanied by the violent vibrations beneath their feet.

The both of them took off in flight, moving as quickly as they could away from the direction of impending doom. Above head, Ember couldn't resist but take a backwards peek at what was headed their way, and he squawked in alarm when he caught sight of a massive stone wheel rolling down the corridors, threatening to flatten anything in its path.

Bonus points to these people for being able to have a giant stone wheel rolling down these corridors without damaging any of these mirrors, he squeaked. Now was not the time to contemplate intellectual questions like these though—now was the time to fly as fast as he could because the damn wheel was from floor to ceiling and would mow him into a flattened feathered mush as well.

"What the hell! A stone wheel?" Yuehwa yelled when she picked up words that Ember had just conveyed.

When you were running for your life, time seemed to slow down. Yuehwa didn't really know how long they were running for. It hardly seemed that long, but it also felt like ages; the next thing that registered in her mind was coming to a screeching halt in front of a huge statue of a tiger carved out of white marble.

It appeared completely out of the blue, so much so that it made her momentarily forget about the giant wheel that was still hurtling towards them.

"Wait a minute, this room..." She paused, spinning round to get a better look at the chamber they were in.

Similar to the one they had started off in, they were now in a small octagonal-shaped room with eight doorways radiating out from it. This particular room, however, had mirrored walls just like much of the maze they had come through, and right in the middle sat the white tiger, quietly observing them with its stern gaze.

The sound of the rumbling was becoming thunderous as the wheel continued breathing down their necks, but instead of picking another doorway to escape through, Shoya stopped in front of the marble tiger, placing one hand on its head.

"What are you doing! If we continue standing here, we'll be right in the path of the wheel!" Yuehwa shouted anxiously.

To her surprise, Shoya calmly shifted his hand onto the tiger's left ear and turned it clockwise. At that moment, eight heavy trap doors suddenly came hurtling down, sealing off all the doorways that led out of the chamber.

All of a sudden, silence fell.

"What just happened?" Yuehwa looked around in shock, her voice echoing around the chamber.

Shoya turned the tiger's ear once more, this time rotating it exactly three times anti-clockwise. Slowly but surely, the heavy marble statue began shifting backwards, revealing a hidden stairway that led downwards into the darkness.

Yuehwa looked at Shoya warily, waiting for an explanation.

"I don't know why I know this," was his reply. "I just... Never mind. This must be the correct way. Come on."

The stairway took them further and further downwards, and as they progressed the air gradually became colder. This was not like the hidden passageway they had discovered within the Dahai palace, which seemed to have been a creation of nature that had been repurposed for the king's use. This stairway had been purposefully created, each step carved out of the same luxurious white marble that the tiger had been made of. On both sides of the passageway were engravings in the same script that they had seen all over this building, adding to the air of mystery and majesty of this place.

Sensing her curiosity as they made their way down, Shoya said, "They tell the story of the first king of Feng and the early beginnings of the kingdom. He is somewhat of a legendary character here."

When they finally arrived at the foot of the stairs, the duo found themselves in a vast chamber with rows and rows of marble shelves filled with scrolls.

"Is this it?" Yuehwa asked.

"The prophecy room."

Shoya immediately began scanning the shelves for any sign of what he was looking for, but there was no easy place to start. The more they searched, the more they realised just how extensive this place was. It contained every single prophecy made by the astrologers of Feng since the beginning.

"Dahai... Gi... Hwa... These prophecies are categorised by kingdom," Yuehwa mused as she ran her hands across the scrolls. "The astrologers haven't just been foretelling the future of Feng, they've been watching the five kingdoms."

She casually picked up one of the scrolls on the shelves and unrolled it.

Shoya kept searching through scroll after scroll. There were prophecies that foretold the outcomes of past battles, of the rise and fall of important families, even of the deaths of kings—but none of it came anywhere close to the one that defined his life.

Turning around, he said, "I don't think it's in here. They might have kept it somewhere else."

"Look at all these prophecies. Almost every one is about some war between kingdoms. They seem to be a dime a dozen here," Yuehwa remarked, casually browsing through some scrolls dated decades back.

"I suppose. The history of the five kingdoms go a long way back. Many border clashes took place and kingdoms rose and fell."

"How accurate are these?"

Shoya shrugged his shoulders. "The royal astrologers of Feng are the most well-known seers across the kingdoms, although they have been known to have made errors in their readings from time to time. Most of those mistakes are hastily covered up to protect the reputation of the institution though, so there may actually have been more inaccurate prophecies than we know of."

"I see..." Yuehwa looked thoughtful. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I said I don't think it's in here," he repeated himself, eyes rapidly scanning the entire area for any clues. "The librarian must have given me the key for a reason, but so far we haven't come across anything that might have a use for it."

Ember, who had been zig-zagging from shelf to shelf and exploring the prophecy room from above, suddenly re-appeared in front of the both of them, chirping in excitement. Yuehwa arched her eyebrows with interest when she heard what her friend had to say.

"He says he found something in the wall behind one of the shelves," she translated helpfully. "Come on, he'll show us the way."

They walked for a good ten minutes or so before they reached the shelf in question. It was flushed up against the wall, just like all the other shelves beside it. Ember gestured towards the topmost shelf, towering high above them.

Using the lower shelves as ladder rungs, Shoya and Yuehwa quickly scaled to the top.

"There's something engraved in the wall," Yuehwa remarked, squinting to figure out what exactly was hidden behind all those scrolls. Reaching out her free hand, she pushed aside the scrolls so that they could get a better look. It was an intricate engraving of a single chrysanthemum—and right above it was a small keyhole. "Looks like we found where that key needs to go."

Shoya quickly fished out the silver key that the librarian had given him, cautiously fitting it into the hole in the wall. The key slid in perfectly, and seconds later, an audible click could be heard as it turned in the keyhole. They waited with bated breath for something to happen, and they didn't have to wait long. The shelf that they were hanging off suddenly jerked backwards, before rotating a hundred and eighty degrees and sliding itself back into place.

They were no longer in the prophecy library. They were somewhere else altogether.

Sliding down the shelf, the duo landed lightly on the ground, turning to study their new surroundings.

The chamber was mostly empty, save for the bed of chrysanthemums in the middle of the room, surrounding what looked to be a stone sarcophagus on a raised platform. There were no lamps in this room, yet the room was bathed with a golden glow—light that came from the chrysanthemums.

"Is that..." Yuehwa whispered, awestruck by what she was looking at.

Shoya nodded his head.

"I've been here before," he mumbled. "But why can't I remember?"

Looking around, he carefully studied the various images that had been engraved into the stone walls, one that told a story from a long, long time ago, a story that most people of the kingdom would know only as an old wives' tale that was told to little children to get them to fall asleep. Wading through the sea of chrysanthemums, he slowly stepped up onto the raised platform, peering down at the sarcophagus that lay before him.

"I'm glad you didn't disappoint me," a female voice suddenly rang out across the chamber, breaking the unearthly silence. "I've waited twenty-five years for your return. A little longer than I had hoped, but still, it's not too late."

A lady stepped out of the shadows, a white cloak with intricate gold embroidery hanging off her shoulders. Her long hair was jet black, which created at eerie contrast against the fairness of her skin. She was studying Shoya carefully with her cat-like eyes, as if assessing whether or not he was what she had been expecting. Beside her stood a young girl, whose huge eyes seemed to have the ability to stare right through you. Whoever they were, they gave Yuehwa the creeps.

Yuehwa immediately abandoned the golden chrysanthemums and moved closer to Shoya, in case he needed back-up. The two women seemed entirely uninterested in her though, their gazes fixed upon Shoya and Shoya alone.

"Who are you?" Shoya asked, his right hand wrapping itself around the crystal hilt at his waist.

The lady stopped in her tracks and smiled. "I mean you no harm," she said. "If I did, then I wouldn't have sent you away all those years ago." Seeing the momentary look of confusion on his face, she continued, "My name is Sheng Yun, and I am the chief astrologer of Feng. Did you think you would have made it this far if I hadn't known that you were coming? There are good reasons why the astrology building needs no guards. I'm glad you made it though. If you didn't manage to get here, then that would mean that you weren't the one that I'd been waiting for."

"You sent me away? What do you mean by that?" Shoya narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You've been waiting for me?"

Sheng Yun turned to her disciple and took the scroll that the younger girl had been holding in her hands. In one swift motion, she tossed the scroll towards Shoya. "This is what you came for, isn't it? The prophecy that speaks of the day when the world was set in darkness, the day when a certain child," she looked pointedly at Shoya, "was born."

Shoya's hands trembled as he looked down at the scroll that he was now holding.

"Open it," Yuehwa said, peering over his shoulder curiously.

Taking a deep breath, Shoya unrolled the scroll and began reading the words that had been written on it.

"This can't be," he whispered hoarsely. Looking up at Sheng Yun, he asked, "Is this really it? Is that all?"

Yuehwa placed a hand on his shoulder worriedly, sensing that he was on the brink of losing his usual sense of calm. Based on what he had shared with her and the lengths he had put himself through just to get here, she knew that this prophecy mattered a great deal to Shoya. To him, there had to be something more to this prophecy than met the eye. He wanted to know that the prophecy was false, that it had been tampered with, that it was someone's cruel joke on him—something to prove that he had been wronged all this while, that they had taken away everything that rightfully belonged to him on the basis of a lie.

There was none of that in the scroll.

The scroll recorded the prophecy exactly as it had been told all those years back: On a day when darkness descends upon the kingdom and the light of the sun is extinguished, the end of the kingdom will be born.

"That's all there is to that prophecy," Sheng Yun replied, her eyes twinkling mysteriously as she spoke. "But that's not all to the story."

Shoya marched forwards and grabbed the chief astrologer by the shoulders, shaking her roughly. "What do you mean by that?" he demanded. "Are you saying that there's something wrong with this prophecy? There's something wrong with it, isn't it? What it says can't be true!"

Sheng Yun didn't flinch in the slightest. Instead, she looked straight into his eyes. "What is written there is true, every single word, but that's not the entire reason why you had to be sent away. No, let me correct myself, that's not the entire reason why the king ordered for you to be killed. Over the course of Feng's history, there have been countless prophecies that have predicted the fall of the kingdom, whether it be through wars with the other kingdoms or internal strife within the royal court—but because we knew what was going to happen before it did, we've always managed to find a way out."

"And this time round there was no other way but to have me killed?" Shoya said, his hands falling limply to his side.

"The problem with that prophecy, and the problem with you, was not the fact that you were predicted to bring about the end of the kingdom, but the conditions under which you were born." Sheng Yun walked up the platform and looked down at the stone sarcophagus. "Do you know who lies here? This is the final resting place of the first queen of Feng, Wan Jue."

Running her hands along the carvings in the stone, she gestured to Shoya, "Read what it says."

It annoyed Yuehwa that the writings on the sarcophagus were once again in that archaic Feng script that she couldn't read (and the fact that the chief astrologer was still treating her like thin air). She would have liked to be able to read it for herself, but it wasn't until Shoya read the words out loud could she understand what exactly it said.

"Within lies the one true love of he who was born in the darkness of day, to whom he promised an eternity of light," Shoya murmured.

With the golden chrysanthemums all around, it made perfect sense that this burial chamber belonged to the queen who had first made the chrysanthemum her insignia. The queen who had been so loved by her king that he went through such lengths to ensure that she would always have the warmth of light to keep her company, even in the afterlife. Ironically, Wan Jue was never formally crowned queen in the short span of her life, for she had died before Feng was formed.

"There has only been one other who was born under the exact conditions as you, when the sun, the earth and the moon came into perfect alignment at midday—Hwang Nanzhe. That man was the reason why the kingdom of Feng, or any of the other four kingdoms, even exists. Your father didn't order you killed because he was afraid that you would bring the downfall of his kingdom. He couldn't tolerate your existence because of the possibility that you might one day overshadow him and become just as great as the one who came before you. Feng has had eight kings since the kingdom was first created, yet the people only remember him—the first one. Kings don't fear the end of kingdoms. What they really fear is being lost in time."

"But just because we were born under the same conditions doesn't mean that I'll ever become half the man that he was," Shoya replied. He looked down at the carving of the queen's name in the stone—Wan Jue—a legend in her own right. Then he turned towards the chief astrologer and asked, "Have I ever been here before?"

Sheng Yun shook her head. "The king was not afraid without reason. The fact that you managed to find your way down here even without having stepped foot in this place before... These are all signs, signs that he lives within you, and through you his greatness may see the light of day once more."

"That's impossible," Shoya retorted. "Hwang Nanzhe died more than a hundred years ago! I'm not him!"

"And yet you hear his memories in your mind, and your subconscious remembers the places that only he would know of. You are not him, but you cannot deny that a part of him lives within you. The heavens work in mysterious ways and it is not for us to decipher their true intentions."

"If that's true, then this prophecy would be null and void. If I truly were the first king reincarnated or if there was a part of him that lives within me now, then there's no way I could bring about the end of the kingdom. If anything, the kingdom should prosper under the reign of someone like him. All that goes to show is that all of this is bogus—why am I even listening to you?" Turning to Yuehwa, he took her by the hand and said, "Come on, we're leaving. I was wrong to have come here."

Taken slightly by surprise by his sudden action, Yuehwa found herself being dragged back towards the exit. She quickly plucked one of the golden chrysanthemums and swiftly kept it in her sleeve, remembering the main reason for her being in Feng in the first place.

Just as they were about to reach the bookshelf through which they had entered, Sheng Yun's voice echoed once more.

"Because the end of one kingdom necessarily means the rise of another. The time of the five kingdoms is coming to an end, but from its ashes a new kingdom will rise—the question is, who will reign over them all?"