His next words were slower, but noticeably clearer, the rasping lessening slightly. "You're looking for answers," he said, his gaze now fixed intently on Dao Wei's face. "Everyone is here. They just don't know it. You want to know what this is... what Aratta was." The flicker of awareness in his eyes sharpened into something like desperate clarity. "They won't teach you in the mines," he continued, his voice gaining a fragile strength. "History here is buried deeper than any ore vein. But there's an old truth... a whisper the Queens try to silence. The Khatan rules from the Black Pearl Throne... but she fears something. Something ancient, something male."
Dao Wei leaned in slightly, his calm focus unwavering, absorbing every word.
"They say a Khan... a man... was once her equal," the miner whispered, the memory seeming to burn behind his eyes. "A sovereign born under black skies... with power to match the Queens. He vanished. Or was... removed." The word was heavy with unspoken violence. "But there's a whisper among the old ones," he lifted a trembling, blackened hand slightly, as if sharing a profound secret. "If he returns... the sky will break again. The balance... will shatter."
The man managed another weak chuckle, this one wetter, a dark red froth bubbling from his lips. "They won't let him live, stranger," he finished, his voice fading rapidly. "If he returns... it means the old blood flows again. The lineage they tried to drown... it lives."
Dao Wei stood slowly, his movements as controlled and unhurried as ever. The silence that descended was heavy, broken only by the distant sounds of the market and the miner's final, rattling breaths.
The miner's head slumped forward, his body stilling. He was dead before he hit the earth, his eyes wide and fixed on nothing.
Dao Wei did not look back at the body. He had gotten the information and processed the grim transmission. This desolate market, this harsh land ruled by Queens, this world of silenced histories, it wasn't just a place to navigate or survive. Aratta had layers, sorrow baked into its very stones, a bitter truth whispered by the dying. He wasn't merely beginning a new path here; he might be unknowingly retracing the ghost of something the world had desperately tried to erase. The calm exterior remained, but beneath it, the wheels of calculation and understanding turned, mapping a new, dangerous landscape defined by ancient power, hidden bloodlines, and the potential for a sky-breaking return.
Ashen Village's outskirts settled into the embrace of evening like a weary beast curling into its den. From the stooped roofs, thin plumes of smoke straightened and then frayed in the cooling air, carrying the humble scent of burning wood mingled with dinner. Small fires, mere hearts of glowing embers, had kindled beneath dented iron cauldrons, their contents steaming with the day's meager harvest. Old women, their faces etched with the lines of sun and sorrow, emerged from their doorways, carefully hanging lanterns of dyed paper. The shapes were not delicate flowers or bright birds, but stylized, strong forms of hawks and wolves, spirits meant to ward off the harsher realities of the mountain. The air, now blessedly cooler after the day's harsh sun, was thick with the aroma of cooked grain, a coarse, earthy smell, and the faintly bitter, medicinal tang of boiled stonewort, a resilient mountain plant that filled empty bellies when little else would. Poor the village was, undeniably. Its poverty clung to the patched roofs and the worn fabric of clothes. But it was also warm, alive with a low, persistent hum: the cadence of laughter muffled by walls, the sharp, quick burst of a quiet curse over a dropped tool, the rhythmic shuffle of old wooden sandals moving along packed dirt paths. It refused to lie down and die.
Within the small house shared by the twins, Qing Yao and Qing Chen, the atmosphere was different, quieter, yet holding a similar warmth. Dao Wei sat by the single, small window, his gaze drifting over the scene outside with an unreadable stillness. The walls of the house were indeed cracked, spiderweb patterns snaking through the dried clay, crudely patched in places with cloth pressed into the mud. The roof sagged visibly, weighted by thick, ancient vine creepers that bore no fruit but offered a fragile layer of insulation. Yet inside, the space felt intensely lived-in, marked by the quiet persistence of its inhabitants. Charms, woven from dried grasses and small stones, hung above the low doorway. A woven mat on the floor, worn smooth in patches, had been repaired so many times the new stitches were a map of its history. On a rough-hewn shelf, little carvings of mountain beasts, a stout-legged ram, a coiled serpent, a bird with outstretched wings, rested, silent witnesses to time. Qing Chen's work, clearly. The boy's hands were rarely still.
Qing Chen himself sat on the repaired mat, a lump of damp, gray clay clutched in his small hands. He hummed a tuneless melody, sometimes pausing to murmur to the clay itself as his fingers shaped it into something that vaguely resembled a three-legged bull, its head too large, its legs comically short. Qing Yao moved silently between the small hearth and the rough wooden table, stirring a pot of wild mushroom porridge over the dying coals. Her movements were economical, practiced.
Neither sibling asked Dao Wei many questions. It wasn't resentment or fear, but something else, perhaps an understanding of his nature that transcended words, or perhaps a simple, ingrained caution born of living on the fringes. It was as if an unspoken rule hung in the air: observe, provide, but do not pry. Still, their eyes did linger on him. Qing Chen would glance up from his clay, his young face holding open curiosity. Qing Yao's gaze, when she thought he wasn't looking, was sharper, more cautious, assessing. Dao Wei met none of these glances directly, yet his presence filled the small space, not with dominance, but with an undeniable gravity that drew their attention without conscious effort on his part. He was simply... there.
When the porridge was ready, Qing Yao ladled it into three rough-hewn wooden bowls. They ate without ceremony, the scraping of spoons the only sound for a moment. Dao Wei ate sparingly, each mouthful consumed with a quiet deliberation that suggested he was still not entirely accustomed to the coarse texture and simple flavors of Arattan food. He said little, his voice, when he used it, was a low, smooth rumble that carried an unusual resonance. But he listened. Closely. Every word spoken, every sigh exhaled, every shift in the twins' posture seemed to register with him.
They sat near the low fire after the meal, the last of the steam from the coarse porridge fading into the cold mountain air. Qing Chen poked at the embers with a stick, then looked up, as if remembering something important.
"Do you know what they call Kar'ta?" he asked suddenly, not really waiting for an answer. "The belly of the Khatan's Eye. That's what the miners say."
Qing Yao, who was rinsing bowls with a small gourd of water, paused. "You've been listening to Old Ruo again."
Qing Chen grinned. "He's the only one who's been down far enough to hear things. He says the tunnels go so deep that sometimes, when your pick hits the wall, it doesn't ring like stone. It… sings."
"Sings?" Dao Wei echoed.
Qing Chen nodded eagerly. "Like wind through a broken flute. Long and sad. They say it's the ghosts of people who never made it back out. The mountain keeps them."
Qing Yao shivered. "Don't tell stories like that at night."
"It's not a story," Qing Chen insisted. "The ore veins move too. They're not fixed. They slide and curl under the weight of the rock, like rivers you can't see. That's why tunnels collapse. The mountain shifts its bones."
"And above all that," he continued, eyes bright with the image in his mind, "are the towers. Black glass, carved straight out of obsidian. When the sun hits them, they shine like scales. That's where the nobles live, far from the dust. You can see the queen's banners from there, black and red, hanging from every cliff and gate. They say you can't walk anywhere in the upper city without seeing them."
Qing Yao set the bowls aside and joined them. "And the men?" she asked quietly.
Qing Chen's voice lowered, taking on a strange seriousness. "Men don't walk freely there. Not unless they've given something up. Either they become palace eunuchs… or they swear oaths that can't be broken. The kind that binds your life, not just your words."
Silence lingered for a moment, broken only by the crackle of the fire.
Then Qing Chen sighed and gestured toward the dark slope beyond the huts. "But this is Ashen Village. We're not in the belly of anything grand. We're just at the mountain's foot, where all the scraps fall."
Qing Yao smiled faintly. "Scraps that still keep us alive."
"Barely," he said. "The women here are different from the nobles. They don't shine. They're hard like old bone. Most of them were born to miners who never struck it rich. Some raise goats on the cliffs. Some climb for herbs. Some make gravelwine so strong it burns your throat for an hour."
"And some," Qing Yao added softly, "work the fringe pits."
Qing Chen nodded. "The broken tunnels. The places everyone else abandoned. Hoping to find a shard small enough that the tax collectors won't care."
He hesitated, then his tone shifted, lighter. "But it's not all like that. You heard Lian this morning, didn't you? Singing by the well. Her voice carries all the way to the ridge."
Dao Wei inclined his head. "I did."
"And Old Jian," Qing Chen went on, warming to the subject. "The one with one eye. He sharpens knives and tells ghost stories to scare the little ones. They pretend to be brave, but they always sit closer to the fire."
Qing Yao chuckled. "He enjoys that too much."
"And in the square," Qing Chen said, smiling now, "the two grandmothers. They gamble with painted bones and laugh so loud you'd think they were girls again."
His voice softened. "This place is poor. Forgotten. But it's stubborn. It doesn't know how to give up."
Dao Wei watched the boy as he spoke, then shifted his gaze to Qing Yao, who was quietly folding cloth by the firelight. He said nothing, but his attention did not waver, as if he were committing every word, every small detail of this harsh yet living world, to memory.
After the simple meal was done, the dishes washed with cold water and placed back on the shelf, Dao Wei rose. It was not a declaration of departure, merely a quiet movement, but the twins watched him. He stepped outside the small house.
The change was immediate and profound. The warmth of the hut vanished, replaced by the sharp, clean bite of the mountain wind. It rose through the valley floor, a low, mournful sound that seemed to carry on its current the distant, deep moan of immense iron gates closing high up in Kar'ta proper. King or Queen, noble or pauper, the mountain held sway, and its rhythm included the sealing of gates against the night. The mountain itself loomed in the distance, a colossal, dark shape against the twilight, its surface glowing softly in places like the back of a slumbering beast. Lightning-like streaks of spiritual ore traced intricate patterns beneath its stony skin, silver veins like frozen rivers, bursts of deep blue, faint washes of vibrant green. They were too far to touch, shimmering lines of power, almost too beautiful to believe they existed within that harsh rock.
Above him, hanging low and impossibly large, were the two red moons. The first, Arda, was blood-bright, an unsettling, sharp-edged orb dominating the sky. The second, the minor moon Keshen, hung slightly apart, smaller, dimmer, a deep, muted crimson. It was said to be the eye of an old god, one who watched over the forgotten places, the lost people.
Dao Wei's eyes narrowed slightly as he watched them. Something about their light, the deep, ancient red, stirred the ruins inside him. It wasn't memory, his past was a fractured landscape he couldn't fully access here. It wasn't pain, though there was still a hollowness that echoed within. It was stillness. A heavy, profound weight. The same kind of weight that settled over the world, and within one's own soul, in the moments just before a sword was drawn, or a final, irrevocable step was taken.
He walked further out, away from the scattered points of torchlight marking the village huts. The land sloped down slightly here, a narrow ridge overlooking the slagstone valley below, a desolate expanse of broken rock and waste from the mines. There was a ruined shack here, little more than a collapsed roof and a few standing walls, overgrown with thick, blood-colored moss. It had been a miner's rest-station once, abandoned long ago when the vein played out or the miner died. It was here, in this place of quiet decay, that Dao Wei stopped. He sat down cross-legged on a relatively flat stone beneath the full, unsettling light of the two red moons, and closed his eyes.
Dao Wei began breathing, inhaling the cold, sharp air, and exhaling slowly.
And again.
Each breath was not just a physical act, but a fight. A quiet, internal battle against the profound emptiness within. His core, the dantian where cultivation power should gather and swirl, felt barren, an echo chamber of nullity. His divine essence, the very core of what he had been, was locked somewhere beyond his reach, lost to him like a sealed palace drowned beneath a dark, fathomless ocean. Where once power had surged, now there was only a void. No Nyx, no Mythril, no echo of Skyfall, nor Tian. Even the abyssal darkness that had once clung to him, a constant, ominous companion, now only flickered faintly in the furthest, most unreachable corners of his mind, like a dying ember.
He was only Dao Wei. The breath drawn in the desolate quiet, standing between broken lives and an uncertain future.
Again.
Slowly and deeply. Letting the inhales fill the emptiness, and the exhales carry away the frustration.