At seven, Chu Yan stopped being "a miracle child" and became something more inconvenient.
A mind could be adored. A mind could be praised. A mind could be displayed like a jewel and then returned to its velvet box.
But a mind that insisted on changing things?
That kind of brilliance turned love into tension.
The palace had always been alive, but Chu Yan began to notice how differently it breathed depending on who passed through it.
When the Emperor walked, the corridors warmed as if proud.
When the Empress moved, the walls softened their light as if making room for her calm.
When the royal children ran—when Chu Yang and Chu Ying passed in their quick twin rhythm, when Chu Yun's steps cut clean and steady—the palace adjusted, amused, indulgent.
And when low-class ZERG moved through, burdened with trays and equipment and work that never ended, the palace did not adjust at all.
Not out of cruelty.
Out of indifference.
That indifference was older than the stars.
It was what made an empire efficient.
It was also what made an empire rot from the inside.
Chu Yan noticed it the way a splinter is noticed: at first only when touched, then constantly, until it becomes impossible to ignore.
He stood in a side corridor one day, watching a low-class attendant struggle with a sealed container that was too heavy for its thin limbs. The attendant did not ask for help. It did not even look up. It simply persisted, because persistence was the only allowed form of existence.
A higher-class ZERG passed by without pausing.
So did another.
Chu Yan watched the container tilt, watched the attendant's grip fail by a fraction, watched the seal catch on the living wall's edge.
The container struck the floor. A dull, wet sound.
Inside, something precious shattered.
The attendant froze.
For a heartbeat it did not move at all, as if trying to decide which pain was more survivable: the pain of punishment, or the pain of hope.
Then it dropped to its knees.
Not to clean. Not yet.
To submit.
That was when Chu Yan walked forward.
His steps were still small at seven, but the corridor reacted to him like he was already the center of its universe. The light brightened by a shade. The wall parted slightly, making a path.
The attendant trembled harder.
It bowed its head so low its forehead touched the floor.
Chu Yan stared at the bowed head.
He could have walked past.
A prince could always walk past.
Instead, he knelt.
The act was so wrong that even the corridor seemed to hesitate in its breathing.
Chu Yan reached out and steadied the container.
The attendant flinched as if struck.
Chu Yan's voice came out quiet, clear.
"Look at me."
The attendant did not.
It couldn't.
Its whole life had been trained away from eye contact.
Chu Yan waited.
He had learned already: force was the empire's native language, but patience could become a new one if he insisted long enough.
Slowly, the attendant lifted its gaze.
Its eyes were dull with terror.
Chu Yan saw, in those eyes, what he had seen on Earth in different faces: people who had been told they were only worth their usefulness.
He swallowed.
Then he did something small.
Something almost absurd.
He said, "What is your name?"
The attendant's mouth opened.
No sound came out.
It looked like the concept itself was stuck in its throat.
A name was a privilege.
A name meant you existed as yourself.
Low-class ZERG did not exist as themselves.
Chu Yan's voice did not change.
"I asked you," he said. "What is your name?"
The attendant's gaze flickered, searching for the hidden blade in the question, the trap that would justify pain.
There was no trap.
Only a child with eyes too old, kneeling in a corridor that smelled faintly of metal and salt, waiting as if the answer mattered.
The attendant's lips moved.
A sound emerged. Rough. Unpracticed.
"Ke," it said.
Just one syllable, like a stone dropped into water.
Chu Yan repeated it at once, to seal it into the air.
"Ke."
The attendant's body shuddered.
As if something deep inside it had been called awake.
Chu Yan stood.
He lifted the shattered pieces with his own hands, careful and precise.
A high-class attendant appeared at the corridor's end, drawn by the disturbance. It took in the scene—prince kneeling, low-class trembling, broken container—and its instinct was to rush forward, to punish, to restore order.
Chu Yan looked up before it could speak.
The high-class attendant froze.
The Emperor's child did not need to shout. He only needed to look like he belonged to the Emperor.
"The seal was faulty," Chu Yan said. "Fix the seal design."
The high-class attendant's attention flickered with confusion.
"That is not—" it began, then stopped. Because contradicting the beloved prince in the palace was a form of suicide.
Chu Yan's gaze did not soften.
"And Ke," he added, deliberately. Using the name again like a knife carving space in stone. "Will not be punished."
The corridor went very quiet.
The high-class attendant hesitated, then lowered its head.
"As you command," it said, even though a seven-year-old prince technically commanded nothing.
But the palace had never cared only for technicalities.
Ke still knelt, trembling, as if permission itself was too bright to touch.
Chu Yan stepped closer and held out one hand.
"Stand," he said.
Ke stared at the hand like it was a myth.
Then, slowly, it took it.
Its grip was cold.
Chu Yan pulled, not hard, just enough.
Ke rose.
A low-class ZERG, named aloud, standing upright in a corridor where it had always been expected to crawl.
For a moment, Chu Yan felt the shape of something new.
Not peace.
Not yet.
But the first ingredient of it.
A life that wasn't measured only by hunger.
That evening, he brought the broken container seal to the Emperor.
It wasn't dramatic. He didn't burst into court. He didn't demand law.
He waited until the Emperor was in a private chamber where the air smelled like old metal and authority.
Chu Yun was there too, standing behind the Emperor's shoulder like a blade kept sheathed out of respect.
Chu Yan placed the seal on the table.
The Emperor looked at it once.
Then looked at Chu Yan.
Meaning pressed into the room.
Explain.
Chu Yan did.
He spoke of faulty designs, of waste, of efficiency—the empire's true religion. He did not speak first of compassion. Compassion would be dismissed as softness.
But efficiency?
Efficiency was sacred.
"A better seal reduces waste," Chu Yan said. "Reduces accidents. Reduces punishment cycles. Increases output."
Chu Yun's gaze moved, sharp. He understood what Chu Yan was doing. Dressing mercy in the empire's favorite language.
The Emperor listened.
When Chu Yan finished, the Emperor was silent for a long beat.
Then he said, "Approved."
One word.
A small law.
Then, after another pause, the Emperor added something that made the air shift.
"Bring Ke."
Chu Yan's fingers tightened slightly.
The Emperor did not repeat himself.
Chu Yun moved at once, swift and precise, and the request became command.
Ke arrived shaking so hard it looked like it might collapse into itself.
The Emperor looked down at it.
Ke bowed until its forehead pressed the floor, trying to become invisible.
The Emperor spoke, calm as thunder.
"You will serve in the nursery sector," he said. "Under the Empress's supervision."
Ke did not move.
It might not have understood. Or it might have been too stunned to obey.
Chu Yan's breath caught.
Nursery sector. Close to warmth. Close to safety. A place where punishment was rarer, where survival meant more than labor until breaking.
The Emperor's gaze shifted to Chu Yan.
Meaning pressed softly, almost imperceptible in its gentleness.
Satisfied?
Chu Yan lowered his eyes, because looking too pleased would reveal too much.
"Yes," he said.
That night, in the palace's lower corridor, Ke passed another low-class ZERG and hesitated.
For the first time in its life, it did something unnecessary.
It whispered, rough and quick, like hiding contraband.
"My name is Ke."
The other low-class ZERG stared at it like it had lost its mind.
But the words had been spoken.
And in an empire built on instinct, spoken words were seeds.
Chu Yan lay in his chamber later, staring at the ceiling-veins pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.
He thought of Earth, of humans who had fought and failed and still fought again.
He thought of Ke's trembling hand in his.
He thought of the Emperor's single word: Approved.
And he understood, with a clarity that made his seven-year-old body feel suddenly too small, that reform would not begin in grand proclamations.
It would begin in corridors.
In small laws.
In names whispered like secrets.
And, one day, in a treaty that would ask him to cross the stars with all of this hidden inside him, like a flame he could not let go out.