༻❁༺

---

It was not a call to action as much as it was a summons.
To what, Yue could see quite clearly:

Rarely did dreams have so much agency. They were like a story that happened, and she was their captive audience – willing, or unwilling. This one was different. Where she looked, she saw different options. Different horrors, each of which spoke to a different part of her soul. Her self-preservation. The obligation to the Dynasty that had been drilled into her since birth.

She was filled with an urge to choose. Yue hurled herself into the corner of the universe, which spoke of love and beauty and song.

As a young child, learning to sing had been her favorite of lessons. It was so much more fulfilling than the other requirements of history and strategy, though a younger Yue had taken a penchant for languages due to their proximity to song and poetical composure. Her instructors had taught her that singing brought peace and harmony, where once there was only discord.

Would they be proud of her, now? For living this purpose so deeply, that her voice was akin to a blade on a battlefield?

At first, the Empress did not know if her eyes were open or closed. When she thought they were open, all was white. When she squeezed them shut, all was black. The roar of the winds was persistent through either.

Behind the cacophony, it rang true. The voices of others, some more graceful than others, but all joining together to banish the long night. It might have only been her awareness becoming clearer, but it was as if the voices amplified and became louder. If she squinted her eyes, somewhere between open and closed, she could even see them though the frigid chill.

Though her lips refused to move (they felt quite frozen), eventually she urged them into her accustomed positioning, and she sang. Nothing with words or phrases, nothing that needed to be understood to be felt.

Yue, no more an Empress than the other souls that joined around her, wrapped everything that plagued her around the carrier of her voice, and unleashed it to the Gods.

Perhaps, now, the Crystal Dragon would listen to her.

---

༻❁༺