Foreword

˚⊱✿—✦✦✦—✿⊰˚

Since the age of four, I have been captivated by the grand tales of the Three Kingdoms. Names like Cao Cao, Sun Ce, and Liu Bei felt intensely alive to me—as if they were restless spirits that never truly departed this world. Yet, as I grew, I realized that while history belongs to the victors who shouted, the truth often belongs to the shadows who whispered.

The most profound figures of that era came to me not from dusty books or ancient artifacts, but from the vivid clarity of a dream.

Before I saw them as mortals caught in the fires of war, I saw them as sovereigns of the celestial sky.

I dreamed of a brutal winter twilight, where the heavens bled in bruising shades of crimson and cold orange. In that frozen expanse, I witnessed the ancient deities of life and death: Da Siming, the Great Arbiter of Lifespan, and Shao Siming, the Weaver of Fates. They were tethered by a cosmic thread, swapping their very souls to shelter one another from the cruelty of the universe. Whenever danger neared the Weaver, the Arbiter would shift the stars, stepping into the path of destruction to keep her light from flickering out. It was a bond of absolute, sacrificial devotion.

But then, the celestial sky faded, and the dream pulled me down to the bitter dust of the mortal earth. I watched as those divine spirits took human breath, their vast power hidden beneath the heavy silk of imperial robes.

The Arbiter of the stars was reborn as Prince Xi—a man whose heart was as stoic as the North Star, yet destined to wither before his time.

And beside him, I saw the Weaver of Fates take her earthly form. I was only thirteen when I first glimpsed her, not as the "wise lady" the histories would later praise, but as a solitary figure standing behind a thin silk curtain. Her gaze was lost in a distance no one else could see, as if she were still searching for the stars she had left behind.

“I am now the wife of a tyrant,” she said softly, her voice a ghost of a forgotten era. “But my heart… has been a widow since that day.”

At the time, my young mind did not understand the depth of her sorrow.

Only later did the dream shift—like a fragment of time folding back upon itself—and I saw her again. She was not alone this time. She was standing beneath a younger, kinder sky, beside the man I had come to recognize. Prince Xi.

They were both still young. Unbroken. Untouched by the suffocating weight of what was to come. And yet, there was already a quiet finality in his eyes—as if he, like the Arbiter of Lifespan, had long since made peace with a tragic ending no one else could foresee. He was preparing to take the destruction upon himself, just as he did in the heavens.

It was then that I heard him speak his final command to her:

“Go. Enter the very heart of the enemy. Become the mother of their kings… and bear witness, with your own eyes, to how their greed will one day set ablaze the very house they built upon the ashes of my kin.”

Those words pierced deeper than any blade, leaving a mark upon my soul that has never faded. And... from that moment on, I could no longer look at her as merely a “wise lady” preserved in the margins of history. I began to wonder—what if her first loyalty was never to a throne, but to a love she was forced to outlive?

Prince Xi is not part of the history we are taught to know. But sometimes, history is not about the ink that remains—it is about the blood that was washed away. When the Blossoms Blow Upon the Star is my humble attempt to rewrite the page that was never read.

This is not a story of victory. Nor is it a gentle fairy tale. It is a chronicle of love sacrificed for power, of two souls who could never share a lifetime in the waking world—yet found each other again in every rebirth. Like fallen blossoms carried by a merciless wind, their love drifted freely… far into a sky that refused to record their names.

But the stars knew. They were the silent witnesses to it all.

This novel is not strict history, but neither is it a lie. It is a voice born from the quiet of the author’s dreams. And if you listen closely to the winter wind, perhaps you will understand: some loves are destined to last forever… precisely because they were never allowed to end.

I have woven this tale from the fragments of my dreams. And if, while reading, you feel an ache in your chest as if you have known this story before... then you know.

It was meant for you.

— E. M