Featured in The Copper Press, 3 February, 2158 A.M.
Translated from the original Han-Common by Yuan & Sons Press.

If you stand atop the ruined weather-spire of the Old Cathay Bank at dusk, the Yangtze Rim spreads beneath like a rusted gear-garden. Junk-barges tug cables of floating lanterns, factories chant hymns to steam and sulfur, and every third alley exhales the sick-sweet reek of raw Shardisite curing in secret stills. That is modern Shanghai: half cathedral, half slaughterhouse, and all promise.

Among its mud-slick warrens lived a girl named Mei Magnolia—though most called her Princess, half in jest, half in prayer. She sold paper flowers dipped in incense dust for a copper cracked-cash each, bowed like royalty to every drunk stevedore, and vanished before the wolfish patrols of the Imperial Excise Guard could demand their bribes. A crooked crown of tin and blue glass rode her black hair, and it suited her better than jade.

I was no hero to her, only another river-rat bard plucking strings in tea dens. Yet the night she died—or ascended, depending which preacher you favor—I alone followed the blood-petaled trail to its grisly end. What I witnessed I set to page now, that you who sip clean water beyond these deltas may judge whether angels or devils claimed Shanghai’s street princess.

Mei Magnolia’s empire measured six blocks: from the Fallen Gate Pagoda—a stunted tower sunk to its eaves in silt—to Twelve-Coin Bridge, where beggars dangle hooks for the silver fish that glitter radioactive green. She ruled not by knife but by voice.

Her larynx, they said, bore hairline shards of meteoric crystal. When she sang, even iron lampposts hummed in sympathy. It made the opium-soaked and Shard-sick dream gentle dreams, spared them the rages that burst minds like rotten gourds. So the folk gave her safe passage; the thugs of the Black Lotus Syndicate took “protection” in name only, lest their own cutthroats grow docile and weep beneath her lullabies.

But compassion draws predators sharper than thieves.

In Harvestmoon, a green plague smoldered through the slums—lungs scarred to glass, eyes leaking emerald tears. Doctors from the mainland queued refugees at cathedral gates and turned them away; only Choir sanctuaries charged coin for absolution, and slum rats had none. Mei Magnolia drained her purse of saved coppers buying foul tonic from back-alley alchemists, then sang sleepless nights to ease the dying. When her purse was bare she sought stronger panacea: refined Shardisite, perfect as teardrops, price measured in blood.

Rumor holds she found it the only place such purity gathers unsupervised: the Imperial Mint Smeltery, where Customs melts contraband ore before shipment to Europa’s mage-lords. She crept through smoke ducts, stole three thumb-sized shards, and left lantern lilies floating on the vats—her signature.

Next dawn, the Mint’s overseer discovered lilies among the slag and screamed for vengeance. By suppertime, Captain Shou Liang of the Guard posted decrees: “THIEF OF THE EMPEROR’S PROPER METAL—TO BE TRIED BY HEAT AND HANGING.”

Black Lotus would have ignored the edict—until they learned Magnolia embroidered their sigil into the bloom-petals she left, to frame a stranger for her heist. Humiliation is lethal currency on Shanghai streets.

They cornered her behind St. Amity’s Leper Chapel, lanterns shuttered, blades bright with gutter-oil. I trailed in secret, hired by nobody save curiosity. From a drain arch I watched Red-Fang Zhen, Lotus lieutenant, level a pistol longer than my forearm.

“Little Queen,” he chuckled, “you owe flowers and faces. The Guard wants your head; we only want our honor. Pay one, lose the other.”

Magnolia knelt. Instead of tears she offered two shards, glowing soft like dawn through rice paper.

“Medicine,” she said. “Cure half your men of blight and the rest of Shanghai’s children besides. Take it. Let me go.”

Zhen weighed the gems. But greed seldom partners mercy. He holstered iron, drew corded whip etched with demonic ward-script—insurance against Shard-mad flares—and bound her wrists. Then came a second voice, velvet, scholarly:

“Double your price, lieutenant. Deliver the girl to me.”

From cathedral shadow stepped Supervisor Gao Qirong—alchemist to the Governor, beard threaded gold, spectacles rimless crystal. Gao commanded plague-wards across the prefecture. He flipped a minted dragon medallion; its authority iced the Lotus’ bravado.

Magnolia spat. “You burn the sick to fuel your furnaces, Gao. I’d sooner bleed Glow than serve you.”

Gao smiled thin. “That, too, can be arranged.”

Zhen saw profit in obedience, shackled the princess, and together Syndicate and State marched for the Copper-Bone Tower, Gao’s private laboratory above the Bund.

Shanghai’s skyline climbs from antique pagodas to smoke-stacks to glass spires wrapped in leash-lines for zeppelins. None is fouler than the Copper-Bone: a nine-storey cylinder plated in thaum-alloy ribs, copper sheets riveted over whale skeleton—spoils from the atlantean hunts. Inside, retorts sing, Shard cores churn oceans of phosphorescent serum. The Tower’s heart houses The Mirror Kiln, where alchemists test soul-density of ore by reflecting a subject’s memory until it calcifies.

Gao wanted Magnolia inside that kiln.

I bribed a janitor, donned soot-stained robes, and slipped through freight lifts. Higher floors swelled with monk-chirurgeons prepping gouty elites for rejuvenation baths, yet none glanced at a poet hauling buckets of slag.

On level seven I found viewing gantry over the Kiln. Through quartz glass I watched Gao secure Magnolia inside a mirrored crucible. Tubes funneled steam laced with purgative salts; rune-lamps pinioned her shadow. Gao addressed a dictation orb:

“Subject M-13, female teen, vocal cords laced with micro-Shard tumors. Hypothesis: tumor lattice can be harvested, scaled, and implanted to pacify riots without lethal force. Secondary hypothesis: laryngeal crystal fertile ground for Glow variations. Commencing extraction.”

Extraction—nice word for vivisection.

Magnolia began to sing then, not lullaby but defiant aria—notes sharpening into blades that shattered gauges. Mirrors fogged with frost-fern. Men dropped tools, weeping. Even hidden behind glass I felt my heart strings knot. Gao staggered, mesmerized.

She changed key: sorrow bled into each register, as though recounting the orphan hymn of every child Shanghai lost to plague and poverty. In that instant I believed her crown and lineage; she was Empress of Every Unfed Mouth.

Gao, shivering, slapped rune-panel. A thunder-clap of cancel-chant severed the song. Electric fetters stitched her throat with ghostfire. Magnolia collapsed silent.

“Amplify stage two,” Gao hissed. “If her song breaks men, imagine what her scream can do.”

While technicians recalibrated, I traced catwalks to an access door, picked locks with mandolin string. Inside the Kiln chamber, stench of ozone and fear swirled. Magnolia’s eyes met mine—question, hope, resignation in one glance.

I sliced bonds. Her whisper grated—throat scorched—but words were clear:

“Take these.” She pressed the last shard—egg-small, flawless—into my palm. “Sing for me when I fall.”

No time to barter meaning. Alarms screamed; Gao’s guards poured in. I dragged Magnolia through service tunnels, my lungs burning Shard-tainted air. Behind us Gao bellowed edicts invoking Legion statutes—an old, outlawed code giving a magistrate right to wield demon sigils for “civic order.”

We burst onto rooftop amid monsoon gusts. Lightning spidered. Below, the Bund glowed sickly jade: Mirror Kiln’s vents spewing unfiltered essence. Citizens on wharves coughed glass blood.

Gao emerged, arrayed in ceremonial breastplate inlaid with Anúŋg Ité—the Two-Faced Woman demoness of cruel fate. At his side Red-Fang Zhen twirled chain-whip crackling shardic sparks.

“Return state property,” Gao droned, eyes twin emerald furnaces. “Your deaths will be painless.”

Magnolia strode forward, head high. “I am not property. I am Magnolia Zhang-Xiu, Daughter of the River Throne.” She turned, smiled through pain. “And princes defend their people.”

She inhaled—the sky hushed—and sang.

No lullaby now. This was dirge and requiem, love letter and battle-cry interwoven. Her voice ignited the shard in my fist; it prismed white arcs across rooftop, slicing machinery. Glass melted to tears. Gao’s demon sigils shriveled like scorched parchment.

Red-Fang swung whip—Magnolia met it with a single upward note. The chain disintegrated to silver dust; Zhen staggered off ledge, swallowed by storm.

Gao shrieked incantation. Two-Faced Woman’s visage blossomed behind him—one countenance beauty, the other rot. She lunged spectral claws through Gao into Magnolia, entwining their souls. Magnolia’s song broke, guttered to choking sobs. Flesh along her arms calcified emerald.

I rushed, shard-blade blooming from my grip—Magnolia’s gift had reshaped itself to weapon. I severed phantom umbilicus between demon and girl. Shockwave flung us all.

I rose amid debris. Gao crawled, chest cratered but living. Demon visage wavered behind him, starved of anchor. Magnolia lay near tower edge, crystal blooming through her torso like blossoms of ice.

“Sing,” she rasped.

I cannot sing. My bar songs are crow croaks. But I knelt and plucked a minor pentatonic on broken mandolin I carried for luck. Notes mournful, imperfect.

She smiled. “Good.”

Gao lumbered toward us, scalpel raised. Magnolia closed eyes, whispered a melody like wind in bamboo chimes. The shard-blade in my hand vibrated, brightened until shapes dissolved. When vision cleared, I knelt alone. Gao, Magnolia, demon—all gone. Only a scent of magnolia petals drifting seaward.

Lightning struck Copper-Bone Tower. Kiln glass fissured; vats overflowed, green fire cascading into river. From that night the Yangtze shimmered luminous under moonlight—some call it beauty; most call it curse.

Authorities blamed terrorist sabotage. Black Lotus denies involvement; Captain Shou Liang hunts “foreign agitators.” Yet slum mothers light incense to the Street Princess of Magnolias whose final song purged plague—miracle or myth, since reports of green cough dwindled after the fire.

Sometimes, packing away mandolin at night markets, I hear children chanting a new rhyme:

Magnolia, Magnolia, crown of glass and bone, Sing us home, sing us home.

And I carry her last shard, now inert, on string around my neck—reminder that a beggar girl could humble demon and magistrate with nothing but voice and will. Tragedy, some whisper. But a tragedy that cracked a tyrant’s tower and sowed hope in gutter hearts.

Shanghai forgets swiftly. Steel foundations already rise where Copper-Bone fell. Yet whenever monsoon thunder rolls, factories hush, and stevedores lift faces to rain scented faintly of magnolia. They say if you listen hard between thunderbeats, you’ll catch the ghost-song of a princess who chose her people over any throne.

That, dear reader, is worth remembering.