“Y-Your Majesty...”

The nearest minister stared at Nana Shi like he’d seen a ghost at noon, voice shaking like a wind-bent reed.

“W-why... why are you here?” He gulped air like a fish on sand, eyes wide as cracked ice.

Weren’t those people swearing she’d never wake again, like vows carved into stone?

Then who was this woman standing before him, a shadow cut from midnight?

“How strange. You already called me Your Majesty. Why can’t I be in my own hall?” Her smile curled like a crescent blade, aimed at a minister already halfway into the grave, his breath thin as winter fog.

Her body had just woken, strength frayed like silk worn thin, and she’d burned more oil on private errands, so her face held a pale frost like moonlight on snow.

That pallor only sank knives into the hearts of those who knew her temper, sweat beading like dew on both cheeks under the storm-front of her presence.

She didn’t need to move; she stood there like a mountain on a throat, and the hall’s air turned into iron water.

“You lot prayed day and night for my death,” she said, eyes bent like new moons, pupils black as a deep well, her smile a curtain hiding the blade. “Too bad I didn’t die. Does that sting, like pepper in a wound?”

In her gaze, the man before her wasn’t a person, just a lump of quivering lard under a butcher’s hook.

“M-Mercy, Your Majesty! I—I was led astray like a moth into flame. I won’t dare again!” Their foreheads hit stone like drums in a storm, begging as if clinging to a floating plank.

“Please, grant us one more chance,” others added, robes neat as folded fans, faces ash-grey like burned paper, all collapsing as one like wheat under hail, terrified she’d snuff them out with a flick of a sleeve.

They’d let the rumor of her coma rush their heads like cheap wine, thinking she’d sleep forever under stone, and fate answered with a slap like cold water.

Regret now was ink spilled on silk; this woman remembered every thorn, and her vengeance was a winter that never thawed.

“Heh. Your words are a delight,” Nana Shi laughed, silver bells tinkling like wind through glass, as if she’d heard a traveling tale told by a drunk under a willow.

Then the laughter snapped shut like a trap, and her voice turned blade-cold as frost on steel. “Soldiers,” she said without a ripple, “behead them all.”

No warning, no cloud before thunder; one heartbeat she joked under lantern light, the next she flipped the table like a gale through a tent.

Those ministers never thought she’d cut the script to ribbons, and their last inner wall fell like rotten timber.

Skulls thumped the floor like thrown gourds; their pleas scattered like leaves in a river.

Nana Shi didn’t soften; her gaze was a north wind that stripped bark.

“If you’re this afraid of death, what were you doing picking a fight with the cliff?” She slouched on the throne like a cat on a warm step, one leg crossed, chin propped on her knuckles, a laugh like a whetstone on bone. “You chose the road to ruin and sprinted it like runners in festival light. Own it. Otherwise, others might think I forced you to collude with foreign states and scheme a revolt, like a snake under the mat.”

Held down by soldiers, the chosen few turned the color of old wax, because her word was a seal in iron, and her verdict shut like a coffin lid.

“But who told you to drag them out?” Nana Shi’s brow ticked like a wingbeat when she saw soldiers hauling the ministers away. “Do it here. Why waste breath and stairs?”

Her words fell, and faces drained like paper left in rain; even past rulers had never salted the earth like this.

“Your Majesty, this is your great hall,” one of her usual thorns said, voice cautious as a lantern in wind. “And foreign envoys are present. Blood here... it may be imprudent, like snow in summer.”

Others stepped up, smoothing water with trembling hands. “They spoke rashly of your illness, but the crime isn’t capital, like shadow not stone. In the six months of your coma, they worked hard, sharing your burdens like ants carrying grain.”

“Oh, they shared my burdens, all right.” Nana Shi flicked a golden scroll, and it rolled across the floor like a sun coin spinning into shadow. The elder who spoke went cold as plunged into a well when he saw the writing; sweat bubbled up like spring water. “It’s the list of your friendly chats with foreign envoys. I won’t name names; the ink’s wasted on the soon-to-be headless, and I won’t gift anyone a keepsake.”

“As for you saying we shouldn’t spill blood with foreign eyes watching? Heh. This is my turf, not theirs. Today, if I feel like beheading people right here, I will. If I feel like lopping off those diplomats’ heads and kicking them like balls, you can’t stop me.”

Silence fell like ash in snow. The hall froze, even the torches holding their breath; behind the throne, the envoy from Neqiwana didn’t dare draw a full lungful of air, like a deer in a snare.

One glance from Nana Shi felt like claws on the soul; words shrank like salted slugs under that look.

“Attend me!”

“By your command, Your Majesty!”

“Use every name on that scroll,” she said from the throne like a bandit queen on a mountain road, “and leave no one standing. I want to see which idiot dares raise a head.”

They had no answer that mattered; in Chronos City, her word was the only weather.

No plea held sway; no old friendship could thicken the ice.

The executions moved quick, blades falling like rain. With Nana Shi seated like a storm-anchor, and the soldiers brisk as hawks stooping, even those who tried to bolt found their wings cut.

Chronos City wasn’t short of would-be ministers; pull any net from the river and you’d catch a basketful. She didn’t fear empty chairs; weeds grew fast after rain.

“Frankly,” she said, voice calm as a midnight pond, “I’ve already been kind. If you skulk and I don’t see, I won’t hunt shadows. But if I catch you, you’d better greet death like an old acquaintance.”

On the floor, dozens of heads and headless bodies lay like toppled statues, blood pooling like dark lacquer, the copper stench filling noses like smoke from a forge. Ministers fattened by easy years turned pale as rice flour, lips violet as bruised plums, and would’ve retched if not held up like wilted willow by their peers.

Nana Shi always punished betrayal like iron through silk, but today was bloodier, like the river in flood.

“You,” she said, eyes sliding to the back like a knife through curtains, “are the envoy from that... Ababa place, right? Speak. Why have you come to my house?”

In her days on the throne, these people walked wide circles around her, like crows avoiding a hawk. She’d slept only a few months, and their dirty hands crawled over her walls like vines; their guts were balloons stretched to bursting.

“...” Named in the hall, the envoy from Neqiwana jolted like a fish pricked by a hook, flesh quivering when her gaze touched him, regret pooling in his belly like cold oil.

This Nana Shi was a rogue wrapped in silk, a storm that argued with no one. One wrong word and he could kiss his head goodbye like a leaf in a fire.

“Oh, and don’t try to wriggle like an eel,” she added, a lazy blade across velvet. “State your business straight. If I catch one lie, I can’t promise you’ll walk out of this city.”

Madwoman, he cursed in his heart like thunder under a blanket, but his face stayed smooth as a lake.

“E-Er... Your Majesty,” he said, swallowing like a man choking on sand, “we heard your nation planned to sell a batch of high-tech goods. Our country trails in science like a cart behind a horse. So we’ve paid many visits, hoping for first purchase rights.”

“Oh?” Nana Toki’s eyes arched like bows, a smile playing like a cat with string. “Funny. I never heard we were selling high-tech. Are you making it up, hoping to muddle me like ink in water?”

“N-Never!” The envoy gulped, throat clicking like a pebble in a gourd. “I came by my prince’s order, like a courier with sealed letters. I know nothing else.”

“So you’re saying someone in my house plans to fatten his purse by selling high-tech in the dark, like a rat chewing rice sacks?”

“This is your domain, Your Majesty,” he said, words careful as feet on thin ice. “I don’t dare judge.”

Slick man, Nana Shi thought, irritation a spark on dry straw; she prodded and got smoke, not flame.

In the end, she waved him off like dust on a sleeve and let him go.

It was unlike her, a river holding back a flood, but the envoy from Neqiwana didn’t care about character notes; pass in hand, he bolted for the gates of Chronos City like a hare from a drumbeat.

He wouldn’t stay one heartbeat longer in this tiger’s den.

As for Nana Shi, someone selling her things on her own ground wasn’t a small leak; that was a crack in the dam.

She’d send people to dig, like ants mapping a hill, and soon.

She’d only been gone a breath of seasons, and hands she’d kept in the shadows now stretched like roots through stone.

“Seems I need to make time to check on that one,” she murmured, a thought like a knife tucked into a sleeve.

Leaving the cleanup to the shaken survivors, she stepped out of the hall and headed toward the edge of Chronos City, her mind a sky full of wheeling crows.