Jade Palace

The Jade Palace is a magnificent obsidian edifice featuring ancient structures carved into the main vent and walls of a magma chamber, suggesting that the volcano it crowns was once inhabited. The remnants of this habitation resemble an ancient city or complex, complete with defensive fortifications — not facing outward, but aimed toward the depths of the magma chamber, as if protecting against something within. The surrounding ruins are filled with ancient bones of powerful creatures that were seemingly discarded, possibly by the Jade Queen herself.^[3]

The Jade Palace is a vast and intricate structure, resembling a sprawling labyrinth of halls, chambers, stairwells, and corridors. Though not as large as Bastion—a stone city in its own right—it is still immense and complex. Its exterior has turned entirely black over time, but the interior walls remain pristine and white, resembling flawless jade. The palace's architecture is inconsistent in scale; some areas are designed for humans, while others are built for beings of towering size. Despite standing empty for thousands of years, the Jade Palace continues to emanate a subtle sense of elegant opulence and grandeur. Within its black walls lie stone gardens, countless statues, intricate reliefs, great pools of icy water, and even bubbling hot springs. The palace extends deep underground, its foundations opening into a vast network of ice caves hidden within a lonesome mountain.^[2]

The palace is divided into three primary zones.^[2]

• The smallest surrounds the Gateway and is accessible to the public.^[2]
• A larger area is carefully maintained and inhabited, exuding the warmth and beauty of a lived-in space.^[2]
• The largest section, by far, remains uninhabited—though regularly patrolled by Awakened soldiers, it is otherwise silent and empty, a grand and echoing reminder of the palace's vastness and mystery.^[2]

The palace contained three throne rooms. Two were located within the palace itself: one clearly designed for humans, majestic and regal, and another, far vaster and more cavernous, clearly intended for beings much larger in size. The third throne room lay hidden deep within the ice caves beneath the palace. This subterranean hall was built by Ki Song. However, there were several of the caves below had been polished and cultivated by the builders of Clan Song because Revel.^[4]

The Toy Room had been completely off-limits. It is a storage chamber filled with ancient toys such as dolls, toy knights, playsets, and strange oddities. Though many of the toys had decayed with time, a surprising number remained intact, some of them enchanted and potentially dangerous.^[5]

The Toy Room is located in a remote corner of the Jade Palace, on one of its lowest and most desolate floors. The access to it involves navigating secret passages, avoiding windows, and using hidden enchantments and the area leading to the Toy Room is creepy and dimly lit, with damaged sorcerous lights and a heavy iron door beautifully decorated but its surface looked dark and uninviting.^[6]

The Toy Room consists of a series of rooms filled with shelves, display cabinets, and trunks of various sizes. The room was once festive and lavish, but now it feels forlorn and eerie. Most toys are deteriorated or crumbled into dust, but some survived like the beautifully dressed dolls, silver knights with articulated joints, plushy magical creatures with beady eyes made of gems and various playthings. A notable centerpiece is a large dollhouse, a miniature version of Jade Palace, complete with tiny flowing water in the replica of the Gateway Hall. It was eerie and frightening because of all the dolls inside lying on the floor, dead, with their tiny clothes covering the intricately carved toy skeletons.^[6]

Main article: Dollhouse

The dollhouse is highly dangerous — touching it can turn a person into a doll. Revel, Seishan, and Beastmaster once disappeared for a week after triggering its magic. The dolls inside the dollhouse are actually former living beings, now skeletal remains. No one currently knows how to reverse the dollhouse's sorcery except for Ki Song.^[6]

The last room is a small, quiet space filled with shelves lined with ancient toys, centered around a low table surrounded by soft cushions. On the table rests a square jade board with hinges in the middle as if it could be folded into a case. Its surface is marked by a 7x7 grid, with most squares colored white, except for three vivid black ones at the bottom. Arranged across the board are intricately carved figurines, many resembling terrifying monsters, with the three black pieces surrounded by a dozen white ones. The board appears to be some form of chess.^[7]

The Component of the Jade Palace is the ability to terraform the surrounding lands. It was not originally created by the Component itself; rather, the volcanoes and their life-sustaining effects predated the Component, and the Nightmare Spell later formed a Component based on this inherent power.^[8]

The Jade Palace's Component allows it to gradually alter the environment — warming the land and enriching the soil with mystical volcanic ash. This results in a fertile region capable of supporting many harvests each year and offering refuge from the surrounding frozen wastelands. Properly managed, this land can become an agricultural and survival stronghold for humanity. However, this same power has a destructive potential: if misused, the ruler of the Jade Palace could poison the entire Tear River Basin and render it uninhabitable.^[8]

While a Transcendent cannot utilize the Component effectively due to the slow and gradual nature of the changes, someone of higher power like a Supreme can wield it with much greater impact.^[8]

The Gateway was housed in a great hall close to the main gate. The space was filled with the tranquil murmur of clear water, which cascaded down the white jade walls and flowed through elaborate channels cut into the jade floor. The Gateway itself was a beautiful sculpture with its vague silhouette obscured by the falling water.^[4]

Based on the decription of Jade Palace, it seemed to the Ravenheart, the Great Citadel of Clan Song. It was situated among snowy peaks and raging volcanoes. Snow and ash were alawys falling in the citadel. One had to cross an enormous stone bridge to reach it.^[1]

The Song sisters spent most of their childhood in the Jade Palace. Most of them had been anchored to the palace as Awakened after surviving the First Nightmare, and they would return each year for several months until the Spell called them. Although Seishan had spent less time in Ravenheart due to a decade spent on the Forgotten Shore, she and her sisters had lived in the palace long enough to know it intimately.^[9]

• The third district of Ravenheart was an obsidian glass palace that stood at the opposite end of the great bridge. The palace was where Queen Song and her clan lived and the Gateway to the waking world was located.^[10]
• Both Sunny and Kai cannot see through the walls of the Jade Palace.^[2]
• The vast network of ice caves once served as the hiding place for the Queen of Worms' army of dead puppets.^[2]
• The Jade Queen's bedchamber was the grandest and most luxurious room in the palace, boasting the best view.^[4]
• The Jade Palace held many secrets, including hidden passages, secret enchantments, and strange locations.^[9]
• It was mentioned in Chapter 2912 that Sunny retrieved the Dollhouse from the Jade Palace and later sealed in the underground hall of the Nameless Temple due to it being too dangerous to be left in a city as populous as Ravenheart — or any city where mundane humans lived.