Bzz—

A tinnitus hum filled her ears; her vision smeared like wet glass. A heartbeat later, the fog lifted and things steadied.

She silently cursed the shabby gate Rafi had opened, a nettle-prick under her ribs. She stayed on the hillside where the spatial door had bloomed and looked toward the Moser Empire.

A queer pang rose, like cold dew on the heart. Below, the Moser Empire lay breathless, streets empty and ink-dark, a ghost city with open eyes.

She patted her cheeks with two small palms, like brushing cobwebs off a lantern. She set her mind: finish the task, then head back, before this place sours her heart.

She went on foot, no thunderous Great Leap, no tricks kicking up sparks. For once, the itch to show off didn’t bite, so she took the plain road.

The road was short, a gray ribbon over grass. After ten minutes or so, the city gate rose ahead like a stone jaw.

The men on the gate looked like they’d waited an age; even from below, Ling saw dark crescents under their eyes, like bruised moons.

—No sleep? Kept awake by the Daemon’s shadow?

Maybe. That’s what ordinary folk fear most, a night-long chill with no dawn in sight.

They aren’t like a king, who swims in reports and whispers; they get a single line, “All is well. Please rest easy,” a shell with no meat.

With no promise to hold, who can sleep through that dragging night, when the hours crawl like ants?

Soldiers have it slightly better, a thin candle against the dark. He knows: if a blond little girl comes back, the country still has a pulse.

That gives him one more reason to breathe than the people who know nothing.

So the instant he saw Ling return, he sprang up like a loosed spring. Both hands fumbled the gate’s gears; in his rush he smacked a lever, and his pinky must’ve stung like a wasp.

The gate yawned open, and Ling walked in, a small shadow moving through stone light.

She took a few steps, then looked back. The soldier leaned on the wall with eyes closed, either asleep at last or sorting his relief like stacked papers.

She faced forward again. King Alex had moved fast; from her silent entry to now, barely a breath, yet a car already slid to a stop before her.

By rights, her return should earn a smile, but the face King Alex poked from the window was a shut door, no smile to be found.

“Get in. Let’s go.”

Not cold, not warm—just flat words, skimming the surface like stones.

Ling didn’t fuss over it. She popped the door, slipped her small frame inside like a cat, and pulled it shut.

At the click of the door, the driver pressed the gas; all four tires rolled like millstones biting the road.

King Alex said nothing, and Ling didn’t mind; silence laid over them like felt, blessedly steady.

She turned to the window. Her gaze threaded the streets like a kite string, weaving in and out.

It matched what she’d seen from the slope: every street lay dead and gray, air stale as old ash.

Even the rare passerby wore a face like winter earth, walking aimlessly forward, as if the road’s end meant nothing at all.

Her eyes wandered without a plan, dragonflies skimming a pond just to feel the ripples.

Then, in the next blink, her sight shot through a side alley like an arrow, and fixed on an enormous tomb.

Angle was cruel; even through the alley she caught only a sliver of script—“Warriors slain by the Daemon. Tally: 12,552…”

There had to be more digits beyond her view—numbers that grow like weeds, never shrink.

Her gaze slid left. The count lost its grip, replaced by a figure that caught her like a hook.

Only a back was showing, yet Ling knew that back: Wang Xiaoming.

—Not staying in the Mystic Realm… came here to play?

But the bouquet at his side was pure white, petals holding morning dew like glass tears. No one comes to a graveyard to play, and she couldn’t lie to herself.

The moving car tugged her line of sight out of the alley, reeling it in like a net; with each yard, the scene thinned.

Before the huge tomb vanished, she used a Yokai’s sharp eyes and caught Wang Xiaoming’s profile, a bead of morning dew hanging on his cheek…

And then it was gone.

Even a Yokai’s eyes can’t pierce stone and angles; her sight was stopped by those old, unbending laws of light.

Her eyelids fluttered, and that nameless feeling from the hillside flooded back like a cold tide. Her red lips breathed three weightless words.

“Was I wrong?”

No one heard the question… or maybe someone did, but he chose not to answer Ling.

King Alex’s gaze slid off Ling’s profile and returned to the road, neat and clean, as if that glance had been an accident.

At the wheel, the driver flicked his eyes to the mirror, a silver pool above, then tugged his cap brim down to drown his gaze in shadow.

He must’ve caught a signal; his foot pressed harder on the gas, and the car surged faster like a hound loosed from its leash…