Augustine had pictured the dead gathering under a sky like smeared ink, clouds layered like tar, a land forever drowned in shadow. After three days, he knew he was wrong.

The City of the Dead had daylight like poured gold, and stalls with steaming things both corpses and the living could eat like winter stew under a lantern.

Daylight felt wrong to him, like skeletons bustling under a harsh sun that burned like a brazier. White Cat said the “sun” was just light, a lamp the city hung on the vault.

He tilted his face to the blaze, heat needling like midsummer noon on stone. Doubt pricked him. This didn’t feel like any lamp. It felt like the sun.

Three days inside taught him scales and distances like maps unfolding. The City of the Dead was vast, a bowl-spun small world hidden inside a wall.

It had been founded early, White Cat said, so its dead were still few, and beyond lay an ash-colored waste, clean as bone, without a blade of green.

White Cat told him the city’s borders grew like tide creeping over sand. It already matched a small kingdom, a banner spread across a continent.

“As a passage that threads all worlds,” White Cat purred, tail like a brush flicking ink, “this size is nothing. Live long enough and even gods lose the horizon.”

White Cat kept dropping scraps of truth like fishbones. They felt too big for him, like stars you couldn’t pocket. Three days earlier, he’d met the city lord.

To Augustine, that man was a twilight that wouldn’t fully set, dusk worn like a cloak. The rot he felt wasn’t flesh, but soul, old wood soft under fingernails.

White Cat had crouched on his head the whole time like a well-behaved shrine cat, whiskers still. The city lord heard he and Caro fled the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts.

He told them to wait for another, then form a squad like flint and steel, a spark thrown against the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts.

So Augustine spent three days on streets where headless walkers drifted like lanterns, intestines trailed like ropes, and bodies wore blood like storm-slashed bark.

He didn’t learn much, but his courage swelled like a drum. In his academy’s test of nerve, he’d take the crown, leaving even tutors pale as wax.

Even those tutors were adults with neat desks, not people who dealt with the dead, not people who saw a tide of corpses morning to night.

Lost in his own thoughts like leaves in an eddy, Augustine leaned against a tree, watching strange beings flow past like a lantern parade.

His senses dulled to gray, like rain soaking paper. In any trial of nerve, he’d win. Even steel-eyed mentors hadn’t seen this many dead.

A black-robed figure drifted down like soot falling, torch hissing like a snake. “Hey, you, living one up front. The city lord wants you back, fast.”

Augustine opened his mouth to ask, but the black-robed man jabbed his torch at two little dogs nestled together like twined vines. His voice cracked like ice.

“You two! Daring to flaunt affection under the Heretic Inquisition’s nose? Beast or not, it’s a crime!” His words flew like stones at a window.

He charged, torch bobbing like a comet. The pups bolted like autumn leaves on a gust. One brushed its cheek against the other, love soft as fur.

That set the man ablaze inside. He waved the torch like a banner. “Brothers! These two are showing off! Get out here and block them!”

Chaos erupted like hornets. Black-robed figures with torches poured from doorways like smoke. They chased the pups, and the crowd toppled like stalks in wind.

When the chase blew past, bodies lay sprawled like cut reeds. Some had lost an arm, bone pale as driftwood. Augustine ran in, heart thudding like a drum.

He tried to help. The “injured” man pushed him away like a door swinging shut, stooped, picked up his arm, and pressed it back like clay to clay.

“Seriously? Don’t fuss,” the man said, calm as cold water. “You’ve never seen this?” His hand knit to his shoulder like ice sealing a crack.

White Cat clutched its belly and laughed like bells spilling. “Ahahaha! The cat lord can’t. In this place of the dead, unless you break its rules, you won’t die.”

“An arm falls? Press it back and it heals like wounds in rain. Even diced like stew meat, they revive fast. You’re worrying over empty shadow!”

White Cat wheezed with laughter, tail thumping like a drum. “If it were a beauty, sure, hormones boiling like summer brew. But a guy? You’re fussing for nothing!”

The reminder hit Augustine like cold wind. Right, this was the dead’s world, a place where endings stitched themselves like needlework.

Face dark as storm-cloud slate, he headed for the city lord’s residence, sick of oddities piled like skulls. He’d had enough of this theater.

Bang—someone leaped from a high tower like a falling star and crunched onto the street. The skull burst like a pomegranate, blood and brains marbled together.

As Augustine’s breath caught like a trapped bird, the blood shrank back, a tide reversed, sliding into the cracked skull like water seeking its bowl.

The man sprang up, lively as a cricket after rain. “Gods, that thrill never fades,” he crowed, grinning like a slit gourd. “High falls beat everything.”

“You should try,” he said, eyes bright as blades. “One jump, and you’ll crave the second. It’s better than men and women rolling on a warm mat.”

“You look like you’ve never tasted a woman,” he teased, voice syrup-thick. “That instant of falling hooks you, a river you won’t climb out of.”

What nonsense? Panic jolted Augustine like lightning. While the weirdo rambled like a broken flute, Augustine turned and ran, legs pumping like deer in brush.

“Hey, little brother, don’t go,” the voice called, trailing like smoke. “Forget women. Take the high way, like me—” The words faded into the street’s hum.

Sweat the size of beans sprang from Augustine’s brow, cold as dew. Terrifying. Too terrifying. “This cursed place keeps throwing freaks at me. Enough!”

He’d met more than one of that kind, cravings twisting like vines. He was alive. A high fall would end him like a snuffed candle.

White Cat explained it later, voice lazy as sunlight. They’d sensed he was living, so they came to lure him, hooks glinting like fishers at dusk.

White Cat’s laughter never stopped, rippling like stream water, from the moment they entered the City of the Dead. Everywhere Augustine went, oddities bloomed like fungus.

Ahead, Nightmare Knights patrolled with helms like moonless iron. That was the city lord’s compound, a shadowed court behind blades and ashes.

They remembered Augustine like a familiar scent, and let him pass, gates opening like eyelids. He stepped into the city lord’s hall.

The reception hall was wide as a river mouth. Two people waited inside, and a rabbit sat like a polished jade bead on a cushion.

“Kid, you’re Augustine?” the man said, voice like wind over grass. “Nice. You carry White Elf blood. Rare as morning frost. I’m Ouyang.”

“From today on,” Ouyang added, grin flashing like steel, “I’m captain of the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts hunting squad.” He reached up and pinched Augustine’s cheek.

“Such a handsome boy,” he cooed, playful as a cat with string. “If the ‘Cross-dress Mountain Range’ among the Twelve Artifacts erodes you, you’ll be a cute little beauty.”

The words hit Augustine like a cold splash. He stepped back, heart jittering like a trapped moth. On his head, White Cat bristled, goosebumps rising like hail.

“Oh? Bai?” Ouyang’s eyes narrowed, gleam quick as a knife. “You’re here too.” His hands rubbed together like flint. He hadn’t forgotten that little dragon “killed” him twice.

Bai’s face held no fear, only a crease of puzzlement like a wrinkle in silk. Maybe she wondered why Ouyang wasn’t dead, or something else entirely.

The Jade Rabbit couldn’t stand it. It tugged Ouyang’s sleeve like a reed pulling at wind. “Lord Ouyang, business. We’re here for business.”

Business. The word rang like a bell. Ouyang straightened, a priest before an altar. With Collin, his faithful believer, watching, he had to look proper.

He coughed once, sharp as a cracked leaf. “Kid,” he said to Augustine, tone steady as stone, “I hear you escaped the power of ‘Saya’s Song’ in the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts.”

He glanced up and down, eyes weighing like scales. “Your bones look extraordinary, your crown glows like dawn—cough. I’ve decided to pull you into our strike team.”