(Signing the Concordat in the Golden Sun Throne Room & Aerial Homecoming)
The Golden Sun Throne Room was a stone-built marvel designed to embody the blazing majesty of the midday sun.
Soaring eighty arm-lengths toward a vaulted dome of gold-trimmed bronze and polished amber glass, the throne room was flanked by twelve huge columns wrapped in coiled, five-clawed golden dragons. For three hundred years, monarchs of the Zhao lineage had sat atop the raised sun-carved dais, receiving kowtows from scared vassals and stamping declarations of punitive campaigns against frontier barbarians.
Today, however, the air within the royal hall was devoid of royal arrogance.
Upon a broad, red-lacquered treaty table set not atop the dais. But directly in the center of the hall on equal level with the ministers, rested the finalized silk scrolls of the Humanitarian Concordat.
Emperor Zhao Tai, dressed in his modest white-and-gold peace robes, held the Grand Royal Jade Seal. Beside him stood Crown Regent Zhao Chen, Grand Marshal Wu Zhan, and senior delegates from the merchant guilds, scholar assemblies, and border prefectures.
And across the table, standing in his eighteen-year-old scholar avatar with sleeves tied back with blue silk cords, was Lin Xiao.
“By this seal, the Zhao royal bloodline binds its destiny to the living welfare of the realm,” Emperor Zhao Tai announced. His voice carrying the was calm, steady weight of a monarch who had found his true Dao.
