For a long, suffocating silence, the Jade Empress lay motionless, her mind a turbulent sea of fractured thoughts.
Anohara's words hung in the cool, enchanted air of the pavilion like a physical weight.
Something more valuable than my territory? The phrase echoed in the hollows of her chest, sparking a frantic, internal dialogue.
'Is he talking about me? My body? My soul?' she wondered, her breath coming in shallow hitches. 'Does he intend to keep me as a trophy, a living testament to his triumph over the Jade Empire? Or is there some dark, esoteric ritual that requires the essence of a fallen Empress?'
The territory she had spent years cultivating, the hundred thousand worlds, the emerald trade routes, the trillions of loyal subjects, had been her pride, her very identity.
