Dreams of the soul run deeper than the dreams of the mind.

  -From the teachings of the Starlight Spirit Sect.

  Lin and Hua Zhen hid in the shadows. Disciples sprinted across the compound towards the smoking hole Xinya had left in the side of their base. In all the chaos, no one noticed the two Wood artists, one dead and one alive, as they waited for the opportune moment to strike.

  “At least the outskirts are relatively clean,” Hua Zhen muttered, looking around at the crimson camellia blossoms that had grown over the more gruesome elements of the estate’s décor. The walkways were still marbled with dried red, but at least the flowers were nicer to look at.

  “They do take good care of the blossoms,” Lin noted.

  The shade nodded his head in agreement. Once again, Lin felt a certain shame that he didn’t know the shade better. In the last five years, Hua Zhen had stuck like glue to Yoru’s side. He was the ever-loyal retainer, willing to do anything his master asked of him. Yet, the strict professionalism the shade maintained made it difficult to get to know him. Lin wasn’t sure if that was simply because he didn’t remember as much of his past as he let on, or if he truly believed it was his duty to remain firmly in Yoru’s shadow, providing whatever was needed of him.

  Not for the first time, Lin wondered how much of the shade was even left. When a creature died, strong emotions or a strong cultivation base could keep their soul tethered to the living world as a shade. Hua Zhen’s death had no shortage of strong emotions, given that he’d been murdered in cold blood by a close friend, and at the moment of his death, he’d been a Gemstone artist, only a single step away from ascendency. He had all the makings of a very strong shade, but time seemed to have robbed him of much of that strength. How much had succumbed to the rigors of time? Or was he more like the camellia flowers around them: full and vibrant until they fell from the vine all at once?

  It was rude to ask. Most shades didn’t like talking about their lives, especially those who remembered little. Rather than risk insulting one of their greatest allies by accident, Lin simply filed the information away and resolved to continue his observation.

  “The herd seems to be thinning,” Hua Zhen noted. “A few more minutes of our allies keeping their attention, and we should be clear.”

  “We shouldn’t wait too long,” Lin noted. “Yoru’s request will tip off the masters. If they’re smart, they’ll check here first.” He nodded to the tall red gates that marked the entrance to the shrine.

  Presumably, the artifact was held within, even though Lin and Hua Zhen didn’t even know what it was or what it looked like. However, of all the treasures held by a prominent sect, only one as volatile as their quarry would be kept in a shrine such as this. The others would be safe in a vault, tended to by disciples, instead of given a place where the resentment within could be contained.

  “Do you have the box?” his shade companion asked.

  Lin nodded and patted his satchel. Both the fabric and the box within were lined with containment arrays set up by Ishida Sumiko and Iza Kirana. With these, Lin believed that they could safely transport the artifact, at least as far as getting back to the Fourteenth Armillary District. Once there, they could assess it and determine what may be needed before using it to stabilize the master defense arrays in Half-Moon Manor.

  “Let’s go then.”

  Lin and Hua Zhen ducked between the quiet space between the camellia blossoms and the building. Shadows kept them from sight as they crept quietly past panicked disciples and slightly less panicked masters. With careful eyes, they wove through the estate, through the garden, across a walkway, and around a large bush. Within moments, the shrine gate towered over them. They looked both ways, ensuring none from the Blood Stalking Demon Sect was looking, and climbed the stairs.

  “The flowers are even more beautiful up here,” Hua Zhen noted softly, running his ghostly hand across one of the blossoms.

  “They really are.”

  However, as beautiful as the flowers were, something prickled against the back of Lin’s neck. They were being watched. By whom and from where, he didn’t know, and no matter how much his eyes scanned the horizon, no watchers revealed themselves.

  He reached the top of the hill, another gate marking the beginning of the shrine grounds itself. Lin hadn’t been to many shrines. Few creatures and objects within the Moon-Soaked Shore were revered enough to warrant such grandeur. The few spirit beasts who dwelled there were content with road-side altars, and none of the Four Spirits of the Shore were known to like people enough to accept offerings for protection. They were monsters to be purged rather than worshipped and appeased.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  However, he had been to a shrine like this when he was young. The shrine belonged to a shy water spirit guarding a river on the road between Pemai and Saikan. Lin’s grandfather had brokered the peace between the spirit and the nearby peoples, and a small family of shrine keepers had been assigned to keep the place tidy and the spirit appeased. Small buildings surrounding a polished stone fountain stood amidst sun-speckled ground and tall trees. A small haze of incense lingered in the air that day before the morning wind blew it away, a small portent of the shrine’s ultimate fate. After his grandfather’s passing, the Lunar Hunt burned that shrine to the ground.

  This shrine, however, was much smaller. There were no small buildings to house the keepers. Instead, a crimson array gleamed with qi with a gazebo at its center. Talismans and chimes hung from the eaves, while camellias climbed the supports with an almost wild fervor.

  Lin was not fooled, though. Someone tended this shrine. The stones were clean, save for the channels of bloody qi that made up the array, and the camellias were carefully trimmed away from the walkways.

  “Something’s not right,” he murmured to Hua Zhen as he reached the top step.

  The shade cast a glance side to side. “Why is this space clean when nowhere else on the estate is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A voice, quiet and gentle, spoke from behind them. “The wind blows calmly. Creatures below take their ease. Dreaming softest dreams.”

  The would-be thieves whirled around, only to find a woman, dressed in a dress matching the pink camellias around her. A parasol rested over her shoulder, as if she were taking a peaceful stroll through the gardens.

  Lin had only enough time to call adaptive qi from his core before his vision blurred. The sweet scent of flowers filled his nose, forcing his limbs to relax. Even his qi yearned to lay quiet in his core.

  Can’t…fall…asleep, he thought, trying his best to fight the soothing qi. The world tilted, and he found himself on the ground, staring at his hand as emerald veins of qi crawled entirely too slowly across his skin.

  The wind did, indeed, blow calmly. It carried the scent of blooming lotuses to Lin’s nose. It rocked the boat in which he lay, staring up at peaceful skies and cotton clouds. It rustled the leaves in the trees, and the song of the canopy very nearly lulled him to sleep.

  “Hey! Sleepy head!”

  The voice made Lin’s heart soar with joy, and he sat up in the boat to see Yoru standing on the nearby dock. His grass green robes were pristine, as always, with tiny moons embroidered into the sleeves and a white jade tassel hanging from his sash.

  Yoru never wears green, nagged a thought in the back of his mind. He shooed it away.

  “I wasn’t sleeping!” he called back. “I was enjoying the sky.”

  Yoru raised an eyebrow. “And you needed the lake for that, because?”

  “Hop over, and I’ll show you.”

  “No thanks,” he answered with a shrug, folding his arms into his sleeves and looking away. “I’m perfectly content on dry land.”

  “Dry land, right.” Lin snickered quietly, not bothering to hide it before his Sworn Brother. It was common knowledge that Yoru couldn’t swim. He’d never bothered to learn in his youth.

  Except he can swim. I taught him to, this thought nagged even harder, returning as soon as Lin tried to dismiss it.

  The prickly moon artist sniffed. “I assure you, regardless of what you’re thinking, this has nothing to do with my alleged inability to swim. I simply don’t wish to get my hair wet.”

  “But the sun is warm! It wouldn’t take long to dry.” The words came from Lin’s mouth, but they were distant. They tasted wrong on his tongue, sounded wrong in his ears. It was as if they were someone else’s words entirely.

  There is no sun in the Black City, and we haven’t left in years. Confusion reigned in Lin’s mind as conflict tore at his heart. Part of him wanted nothing more than to stay in that peaceful scene, but the other part fired off warnings like fireworks at New Year. Yoru never wears green. He wears blue and silver.

  Why was that such a sticking point? What did it matter if he wore one color versus another? This one suited him fine, as it was the same color as a luna moth.

  Not the moths of the Black City, Lin realized with a start. The moths from which Yoru derived one of his more public titles, that of the Moon Moth, had gorged themselves on Voidlight for millennia, evolving to have glowing blue wings rather than turquoise ones.

  Lin had only seen Yoru wear green three times before: the day they met, at the Moonfall Festival, and in a dream created by an ancient trap in Half-Moon Manor. Two of those had been the same set of robes, and Lin remembered clearly the tension in Yoru’s shoulders as he wore them. They meant something to him, and though Lin had never had cause to ask about it, he knew appearances meant the world to the moon artist. He wouldn’t be so comfortable in them now, as the version standing on the dock was.

  “Sun or no sun, I’m not getting my hair wet. It would take valuable qi to dry it.” Fake Yoru ran a hand through his hair, flipping its long black length behind him and sending sparkles of silver moonlight dancing through the air.

  This is wrong. This is a dream. It has to be! Lin called forth his qi. Whatever affected him, he had to break free of its clutches.

  “Oh, sure, because the Avatar of the Moon isn’t a limitless font of qi,” said the voice coming from Lin’s own mouth. The more he listened to it, the more foreign it sounded—the same, yet completely different all at once.

  “Believe it or not, I do have a limit,” Yoru said with a laugh he couldn’t contain.

  Seeing him so cheerful, Lin had to struggle to maintain his resolve. The light in his eyes made him seem so young compared to the haunted version Lin knew. The Yoru of the real world, his Yoru, held darkness behind his eyes. The scars of his past and the ghosts of his madness were always lingering just out of sight. That darkness gracefully aged him, giving him an otherworldly feel, that of the immortal who’d seen too much. By comparison, this Yoru looked like a child.

  This is wrong, this is not real! Lin practically screamed the words in his head, desperately summoning forth as much qi as he could muster into adapting to the technique that gripped him so tightly.

  Jade lines raced up his arms, forming the bark-like patterns that had kept Lin safe since he reached Iron. Then, a sudden CRACK resounded around him, and the peaceful dream world shattered like glass.