The corridor spiraled like a coiled dragon, rooms uncountable like stars, the castle’s insides blurred like breath on glass, and all up and down dissolved into fog. Loyin remembered finding her brother, yet when she came to in that labyrinth of stone, her sense of direction had already drowned like a leaf in dark water.
She pushed open a door, and three doors bloomed before her like black flowers. Four walls, each inlaid with doors, their faces lacquered pitch-black like night ponds without a moon. As always, Loyin opened the left one, and the same scene stared back like mirrors facing mirrors, an empty room, four walls seeded with blackened doors.
Endless doors, endless rooms—her eyes drifted like a lost boat on a tide of wood and iron. “Brother…” Her voice was a small bird beating its wings against a sealed window.
The childish cry rang in the emptiness like a bell in winter air, cold and uncanny, and silence pressed down like snow on a grave. For the first time in this eerie castle, Loyin tasted fear like iron on the tongue; for the first time, helplessness spread over her face like a shadow crossing the sun.
“Brother… where are you?” Her breath trembled like a candle flame in a draft.
She tore open door after door, frantic as a moth against lantern glass, the ache of solitude gnawing like frost on bone, a feeling she hated like thorns in her palm. From memories inherited from that collective called Original Sin, prison walls rose up again like black cliffs; hope flickered when three doors faced her, then went out with a hiss when each one opened into three more. Hope birthing despair, despair breeding madness—this trap was a spiderweb spun by her “father,” its silk invisible and merciless.
“Father, I was wrong, I won’t fight with my sister again… mm… I don’t want to be locked here…” Tears slipped like pearls from a broken string as she kept wrenching open the doors before her. One more room, one more door, the same horizon forever, like walking the edge of the sea that never ends.
Ghost-blue lamps guttered like will-o’-the-wisps, dim then bright, and after who knew how many doors, the sameness finally cracked like ice underfoot. Behind the next door lay a narrow corridor, a spine of stone that spiraled upward like a serpent climbing the air.
She stood on the corridor, dazed as a deer on a cliff ledge, and stared. Stairs—countless stone stairs—crisscrossed the air like a net of gray rivers. Across the void, doors swarmed like beehives, each with a narrow corridor like a thread, and at every thread’s end waited a stair, some climbing like ivy, some falling like rain.
It was strange, uncanny; she believed her feet trod the underfloor like roots in soil. Yet when she lifted her gaze, doors hung upside down like bats, corridors and stairs inverted like a flipped painting. Up and down parted like lovers and no longer knew each other’s names.
Inside the rooms she’d had at least three paths like straws to clutch. Here, faced with a thicket of doors and stairs as dense as reeds, she didn’t know where to place her foot.
Confused, helpless—her heart sank like a stone in deep water.
Suddenly, dazzling light tore the world like a blade slashing silk. She stared up at the ceiling, breath coming clear as mountain air. “So it was a dream…” With her eyes open, thoughts aligned like beads on a string instead of drifting like mist.
“You’re awake—whew, you scared me half to death.” The voice landed like warm rain on thirsty earth.
Loyin turned her head, and Ouyang’s palm brushed her cheek like a hearth’s heat, worry pooling in his eyes like dark ink.
“Brother…” She flung herself into Ouyang’s arms like a wounded fawn finding shelter, sobbing and hiccuping, grief knocking like rain against tiles. The cold mask she’d worn before him melted like frost at dawn; she was just a child now, burying herself in the one harbor that calmed her sea.
Her sobs dwindled like waves after the storm, and at last she lay quiet in Ouyang’s arms, small and still as a sleeping cat. Nabelia slipped over like a shadow of silk and whispered to Ouyang, her voice soft as a reed flute. “Lord Ouyang, who is she?”
“My sister, Loyin. From now on, she’s the little princess of this city, got it?” It was already the second day; when Loyin fell unconscious, Ouyang had panicked like a man who lost the moon and hurried to summon those two heavyweights. Dongze had said there was no big problem, yet Ouyang kept vigil all night like a lamp that refused to go out.
Nabelia wondered where this sister had come from, the question rising like steam, but she swallowed it because Ouyang’s mood looked like overcast skies.
While Ouyang and Nabelia spoke, Loyin stirred like a sparrow in a nest and poked out her small head. Guilt shaded her face like dusk. “Brother, I… I’m sorry. I didn’t get the Dark Trinity Artifacts. That little sprite just wouldn’t give them to me…”
It made sense; Ouyang had seen that sprite, a thorny rose if there ever was one, not the type to bend to words. Worse, the Boundless Sea was her home field, a tide that obeyed her pull; how could Loyin hope to beat her there?
“She the one who hurt you?” His voice was steady, a hand on a shaken jar.
“No…” Loyin looked around, looked up at the ceiling as if it might fall, unease crawling like ants under her skin. “It was my sister. I fought her, and then I had no strength left for that sprite. I didn’t think my sister would show up in the Boundless Sea…”
“Uh…” Ouyang scratched his cheek, a small cloud crossing his eyes; he hadn’t expected that truth at all. So Loyin had marched into the Boundless Sea full of fire, bumped into Sin, and with their tempers, words were few and fists spoke first, talk later like tea after the fight. He could almost see it: the two of them turning heaven and earth upside down over that endless water, while a sly little sprite watched from the reeds like a fox enjoying the show.
While he pictured it, Loyin suddenly clung to him hard, fear blooming on her face like frost-flowers. “Bro, I’m scared…”
Scared? This little terror who feared neither sky nor earth now said “scared,” the word thin as paper. He soothed her like coaxing a child, voice a warm blanket, and listened until the thread of her speaking led him out of the maze.
The castle in her dream—the one with no exit—was Ouyang’s castle itself, a shadow cast like an eclipse. It was only a dream, but it left a bruise on the heart; she held Ouyang like a lifeline and wouldn’t let him drift a step.
“Lord Ouyang, perhaps… take the little princess to the outer domain for some fresh air,” Nabelia suggested, words falling like gentle snow. “If the castle in her dream frightens her, then let her rest away from it for a time.”
Her suggestion clicked into place like a key finding its lock.
“Then, Loyin, shall we go out for a walk?” His tone was light, like opening a window.
“Mm. Wherever Brother goes, I go,” she said, her promise soft as a ribbon.
Ouyang felt she clung more now than before, but the clinging was pure as spring water. Before, she had goals like stones in a pocket; now she simply wanted to be near him. He held the small girl in black gothic dress, and she weighed nothing, like carrying a night breeze.
This time Ouyang didn’t leave the inner domain through the main gate, not with a heart to soothe and no wish to draw a crowd. He picked a stretch of wall, and with one finger he traced a door like a brush painting a character; in moments, a passage opened like a mouth in stone.
“Mr. Ouyang, you’re heading to the outer domain too? May I use this passage?” A clear voice rang like glass. “When I use the regular way out, people stare, and it feels… awkward.” The speaker was Kanofia. Ouyang had settled her in the inner domain, both for her safety and her true identity wrapped like a blade in cloth. He still hadn’t decided how to face the Ancestor of Blood Night; better to build goodwill while her soul was not yet whole, like planting a tree before the storm.
“Then let’s go together. I don’t like being watched either; this kind of passage is best,” he said, stepping through the doorway like crossing a veil. Loyin, in his arms, glanced deeply at Kanofia like a quiet lake taking in a silhouette. Then she turned and wound Ouyang’s hair around her fingers like twining ivy, playing with a small, secret joy.
“Loyin, don’t. Quit playing with my hair,” Ouyang said, his voice a smile. “Yours is longer—play with your own.” To Kanofia’s ear, there was no scolding in it, only a deep, soft indulgence like sunlight on late afternoon stone.
Once they reached the outer side, the passage on the wall sealed itself like a healed wound. Ouyang didn’t know the outer domain well, so he wandered with Loyin, eyes open to his own city like a gardener surveying new beds. “Mr. Ouyang, do you mind if I tag along?” Kanofia asked, her steps light as feathers. “In this strange place, you’re the only familiar face I have.”
Ouyang had no idea what medicine Kanofia kept in her gourd, but he’d been fretting over how to deepen ties; if she walked to his door, why not welcome her like rain in a dry season?
“No problem. Miss Kanofia, you’ve been here days, and I haven’t shown you the Demon King’s City—that’s on me,” he said, the words sincere as clear water. With most people he’d have been aloof as stone, but Kanofia was an exception; first the bond, then the rest.
The outer domain wasn’t much livelier than the inner, two bowls from the same pot. The inner’s empty streets made you wonder if anyone breathed there, like houses holding their breath. The outer streets had a few living creatures bouncing through like sparrows in winter hedges. For a normal city, it was far from enough; the Demon King’s City needed more life, more smoke from cooking fires.
At a plaza he stopped, taking a long look at his own statue like a craftsman judging his work. The plaza wasn’t grand, just marble underfoot like still water and a single statue in the center, simple and plain as a clean slate. In the middle, a hooded figure loomed, wings folded forward like arms opening to embrace his people.
Before the statue, a family of four prayed with hands together, devout as reeds bowing in wind. Ouyang saw motes of light drifting from every corner of the city like fireflies, and from beyond the walls others came, until each point slipped into the statue like dew into soil.
When Angus and his family finished their prayer, they turned, and the boy spotted Ouyang. The child waved, bright as a flag in sun. “Big brother, you live in this city too?” Back then Ouyang had stayed not far from the Jade Rabbit; the boy remembered him, even if they had never traded words, a face like a lantern in memory.
The boy’s wave jogged Angus and his wife as well, recognition rising like a warm gust. They didn’t know his name or his origins, but in a foreign city, a familiar face was a fire in a cold room.
“Big brother, you know Mr. Jade Rabbit, right?” The boy hopped from Angus’s arms like a pebble skipping water and tugged Ouyang’s sleeve, eyes shining. “That day I saw you walking together, so you must be close with it, right?”
