---
The next day began with heavy clouds that hung low over the Shen estate, casting a muted light across its courtyards. The Osmanthus trees, though still fragrant, swayed gently as if murmuring secrets through their branches.
In the quiet morning hours, Orchid Pavilion remained serene, yet something within it had begun to shift.
Xiao Yue, Shen Yulan's personal maid, stepped into her young mistress's room with a furrowed brow. "Miss, the incense you left burning last night… it's gone out, and the ashes have scattered oddly."
Shen Yulan, brushing her hair before the mirror, paused. "Oddly? What do you mean?"
Xiao Yue hesitated. "It looks like… characters. Written in ash. Perhaps it's just my imagination, but… I swear I saw the word 'return' drawn on the tray."
Shen Yulan's hand faltered slightly, the comb catching on a tangle. She glanced at Xiao Yue's reflection, her voice cool. "Don't speak nonsense. It was just incense."
"But Miss," Xiao Yue continued in a whisper, "the wind didn't blow from that direction last night. And the ashes were untouched elsewhere—only the tray was disturbed."
Shen Yulan stood, wrapping her cloak tightly around herself. "Then clean it up and say nothing. If the servants hear of it, they'll spread superstitions."
Yet as she turned toward the table, her steps slowed.
Because it wasn't just the incense. The porcelain crane she kept by the window—an ornament she'd always positioned northward—was now facing west.
She hadn't moved it.
"Who entered my chambers last night?" she asked sharply.
"No one but me, Miss," Xiao Yue answered quickly. "I locked the doors myself."
Shen Yulan said nothing, but a prickling sensation crawled up her spine.
—
Later that day, just as the clouds darkened and the first drops of rain touched the edge of the tiles, an old servant from the north wing passed quietly through the servant paths with a scroll in her sleeve. Granny Zhang moved without a sound, placing the scroll inside a clay jar near the Orchid Pavilion's garden wall—just as instructed.
Hours later, the scroll appeared under Shen Yulan's pillow.
When she opened it—startled and confused by its sudden presence—she found inked lines in a trembling hand:
"She walks when no one sees her.
She waits by the water's edge.
She was robbed of her name.
And now she takes another's instead."
Beneath the words, an illustration—subtle, faint, almost faded—of a woman in bridal red, face half-veiled, eyes hollow.
Shen Yulan dropped the scroll with a muffled cry.
—
The next day, one of the maids tripped over a small black shoe placed by the Orchid Courtyard well. The same kind of shoe Shen Yulan had worn as a child, embroidered with red thread. No one claimed it. No one had placed it there.
And that night, as Shen Yulan lay stiff beneath her covers, the sound of weeping—soft, drawn out, eerily childlike—echoed faintly from the hallway.
When she rose to check, the hall was empty. The air smelled faintly of magnolia.
—
At Osmanthus Courtyard, Shen Yuhan sat by candlelight, carefully brushing over a new page of her ledger while Ah Zhu sorted through boxes of receipts.
"Granny Zhang delivered the scroll," Ah Zhu whispered.
"And the poem?" Shen Yuhan didn't look up.
"She copied it exactly as you wrote."
A faint smile ghosted across Shen Yuhan's lips. "Good. Now it begins."
She tapped her brush once against the inkstone. "Fear is more potent when the cause is invisible. Shen Yulan wanted me to be the haunted one. Let's see how long she lasts when the shadows follow her instead."
The candle flame flickered as wind brushed past the window. From far off, thunder rumbled—low and deep.
And in the Orchid Pavilion, Shen Yulan curled tightly beneath her quilt, clutching a silk talisman one of the housemaids had given her.
But even with it pressed to her chest, she could not sleep.
Because someone—or something—had turned her mirror to face her bed again.
---
That night, a soft drizzle veiled the Shen estate in mist. A servant girl from Orchid Courtyard ran breathless to the back kitchen, her face pale as wax. "Th-there was someone in the courtyard," she stammered, clutching the cook's sleeve. "Standing under the plum tree. I saw her… dressed all in white, with her hair loose and her face pale like… like paper lantern light!"
The cook, a grizzled woman not fond of nonsense, scolded her for spreading fear. But two more maids claimed they heard sobbing outside the window after midnight. One even swore she saw a shadow moving across the latticed screen—gliding, not walking.
By morning, half the Orchid Courtyard staff looked like they hadn't slept. Shen Yulan screamed at them for their incompetence, but the twitch in her fingers betrayed her. No matter how many lamps were lit, the corners of her chambers felt darker than usual.
And then came the scripture.
It was found tucked inside Shen Yulan's pillow, a crumpled page soaked faintly with rosewater—the scent her mother favored. At first glance, it looked like a copied folktale verse. But the more one read, the stranger it seemed.
"Bride of sorrow, wronged and wed,
Eyes weep crimson, heart left dead.
One shall pay, the veil shall fall—
Blood answers silence, truth will call."
At the bottom, a red smudge resembling a fingerprint marked the parchment. The ink hadn't bled, and no one could explain how it ended up in Shen Yulan's bedchamber.
She had it burned.
But that night, a second scripture appeared. This time, written in pale ink on her mirror. The message vanished as soon as she screamed, the surface suddenly clean.
Su Wanning dismissed the maids who had seen it, accusing them of lying to stir unrest. But Shen Yulan began refusing to sleep alone.
---
Meanwhile, in Osmanthus Courtyard, Shen Yuhan calmly poured herself a cup of sweet-scented osmanthus wine.
"How long before she breaks?" Ah Zhu asked as she lit a new incense stick.
"Not long," Shen Yuhan murmured, watching the flickering candlelight reflect off the silver teapot. "She was raised to believe she's untouchable. But fear… it doesn't knock. It seeps."
She reached for a small lacquered box tucked beneath her table. Inside was another folded scripture page, aged with tea and careful smudging, and a delicate white hair ribbon—eerily similar to Shen Yulan's.
Ming'er hesitated. "Will she start to suspect us?"
"Only if she dares," Shen Yuhan said, her smile quiet and sharp. "And by then, everyone else will already believe she's the one haunted. Not me."