A strong gust of wind blows past Raya and Kita as they walk beneath the darkening sky. The stars beading the darkened edges, like the inside of a snow globe being covered for storage.

Their attention is shifted to the myst. Kita instinctively tries to deduce where the myst will be coming from, but the brick wall of her knowledge stops her in the process.

"Where's it coming from?" Kita asks Raya.

"It'll blow from the South," Raya answers.

"How do you know that?"

"Thunderstorms often accompany the myst,"

"So the winds suggest a thunderstorm?"

"Sure," Raya responds before pointing to the sky- in the same direction the wind came from.

Kita turns around to look up at dark, distant clouds with strobes of lightning casting menacing, white flashes on the shadowy surface below.

"So you use your eyes?" Kita shrugs, realizing the technique is not all that impressive.

"Sure, but that only works when it's too late. We won't be escaping the myst's path,"

"How do the cities escape it?"

"I'm not certain. A combination of weather analysis and the alignment of the stars,"

Kita's eyebrow raises, "How the hell would the alignment of the stars determine where the myst flows?"

"I'm no observer. I don't understand the ways of the beads in the sky," Raya chuckles.

Kita wouldn't consider herself 'unintelligent' but she knows she's not the brightest flame in the fire. Using the stars to guide the motion of a 'sandstorm' is a truly unintelligent design.

"So how long do we have?" Kita asks.

"Not long. I see a good place for shelter,"

Raya points ahead of her, at the base of a mountain with a small cave entrance at its base. Small lights radiate from deep inside the cave as the surrounding fog of the impending myst slowly starts to limit their vision.

"Ah, I'd love to camp in a cave with strangers all around me," Kita sighs, and Raya just laughs- Thinking Kita's joking, but she wasn't.

No, those people are probably poor and smelly. Ugh, she'd rather sleep in the myst than deal with the pungent smell her mind is imagining much too vividly.

"Can't we just camp out here," Kita groans.

"Are you worried they'll steal the coin you no longer have?" Raya's sarcasm has Kita rolling her eyes.

"Not all of us had servants to bring beautiful men and women to the bedroom in our castle, your Heiness,"

Raya chuckles, "Our tipi isn't strong enough. The myst is quite forceful,"

"Have you ever seen anyone get consumed by the myst?" Kita finds herself curious about watching someone die in such a horrific way. Maybe she could cast a spell that does something similar.

"I have," Raya responds, to Kita's surprise. "It's quite gruesome,"

"Oh yeah? Was it a friend of yours? Family maybe?" Kita chuckles, "Some of your citizens?"

"No…"

"Who then?"

"You," Raya responds, passing a smug smile to Kita.

"Seriously?" Kita asks in awe.

"Indeed," Raya responds. "I couldn't get to you in time, but when the myst passed. I found your… mangled body in the dirt,"

"How'd I get caught in it?"

"You didn't want to sleep in a cave with people 'lesser' than yourself, and opted to challenge the myst,"

"Haha, very funny," Kita replies, thinking Raya is messing with her.

"That's the true story," Raya chuckles.

"Huh…" Kita grunts, surprisingly unsurprised that she'd have done something so stupid. "What'd it do to me?"

"It melted away most of your skin and muscle. So much of it had deteriorated by the morning, I could see the beat of your heart through the gaps in your ribcage. Your body used over three hundred souls to stay alive throughout a single night,"

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"Woah, that's pretty gross," Kita chuckles.

"It was," Raya laughs.

Ahead of Kita, the cave entrance peaks at the same size as one of those villain office doors. It tunnels deep into the cave. The walls tighten as they travel further in, following with light as they shuffle sideways through the cracks.

As Kita pokes her head out the final portion of the slender hallway. She stumbles out into a gargantuan sight. From her elevated position, she witnesses the largest cave she's ever seen- as far as she knows. Much wider than the canyon, an entire city expands amongst an isolated biome of glowing rivers and tipis scattered amongst this seemingly subsurface world.

At the cave's ceiling, dozens of large, circular tents hang suspended on chains as though they're the eggs of some gargantuan beast. All interconnected with walkways. Their only connection to the ground are long, steel wires that lead up to platforms amongst the orb-shaped homes. She can see a figure in the distance, smaller than the tip of her finger, scaling up one of these wires rapidly. With some sort of connection at their waist.

"This isn't as small as you made it seem," Kita responds. Staring into the naturally illuminated glows of purple and sapphire, coupled with the accenting glow of orange lights scattered in homes and pathways throughout the city.

"It's grown a lot since I was last here," Raya says, with an expression as perplexed as Kita's.

"When was that?" Kita chuckles," When they'd just found it?"

"... Yeah," Raya stammers.

Kita raises both her eyebrows as she whistles in shock, "Alright then, Grandma,"

Raya chuckles, rolling her eyes to look at Kita, "You're older than I am,"

At the far end of the city, a large stairway leads up to a marketplace, occupying a low, but large platform of what was probably once a gigantic boulder. With streams of people walking towards it.

"Food," Kita commands, seeing the marketplace.

"I'll set up the tipi," Rays adds. "Bring something back for me,"

"Where you thinking of setting up?"

"Over there," Raya points at a lesser occupied part of the common area. Beside the glowing lake.

"Alright," Kita nods, then heads down the pathway that leads to the marketplace.

•°•°•°•

Kita slouches over as she makes it up the last step to the marketplace, huffing heavily thanks to her poor stamina. When she raises her head she is greeted by an expansive marketplace. Stalls and stands with food and different ornaments on sale, alongside tipi's selling clothes, weapons, and all the goodies Kita could imagine. It'll be tough for Kita not to spend all of this coin.

Maybe I should have been the one to set up the tent.

She slowly walks past the plethora of stalls selling all sorts of useful items- Making her contemplate a future in which she settles down and decorates a really cute tipi with all of this useless crap she could collect. Figurines and hanging sculptures made of polished stone. With glowing liquid from the lake, flowing in all directions through the stone.

And…

Kita steps up to the table of a stall that catches her attention. And gently places her hands on a… bird. A polished dark stone accents with a purple liquid glow, flowing among its spread wings. It's shaped like that obnoxious one she'd met.

Rayn.

"Many dream of soaring the skies," Says a young, dark-skinned man with short white dreadlocks. He has an amalgamation of turquoise and white robes draped across his body.

"I'm not the dreaming type," Kita responds.

"You gaze at this piece with the eyes of one," He smiles.

"Did you make it?" She asks.

"I did," He nods.

She lifts the piece closer to her face. Casting a soft purple light into her nose as she watches this liquid flow amongst the fine details and patterns of the sculptures.

"What is that stuff?" She asks. "It flows thicker than water,"

"Most believe it stems from the depths of the cave," He lifts a larger one of his sculptures. "It does hydrate us. Some believe it does more,"

"More being…"

"We call it, Vhifet. The next life source. We see it as our world's message to us. One of future abundance. A world better than the one of the old humans. If one is to drink Vhifet, their soul will rejoin our world when the time is right, and they will be chosen to experience the era of Vhifet."

"Hmm," Kita mumbles, in an interested way. "The last thing I would want is to come back here,"

"You're not of faith?" He asks.

"The way of gods is not my concern," She responds.

"I do not mean faith in god. Do you have faith in a good future?"

"I'm not so sure I'll have one," She drops her eye contact. Taken aback by the numbness of her missing soul. Incompleteness trickles through her like an itch she cannot reach. "All that exists is now,"

"Yes, but you are not designed to only perceive now. You need not work for your future but you must believe in it,"

Kita glances up at the guy. He's got a way with words. If Kita was any more downtrodden, she'd have been converted right on the spot. Drinking the slime water and whatever other weird ritual they probably have to get a taste of that faith. But, no faith will get her soul back. To her knowledge, most faiths require their participants to have souls anyway. She's not exactly suited for the lifestyle. The religious system is rigged against the soulless.

"How much for this?" Kita asks, holding up the little Rayn statue. Trying to ignore the idiotic ramblings of her mind.

"Twenty-one coin," He smiles.

"Is a meal included? She asks, raising an eyebrow at the price.

The man laughs, raising his hand to his chest as his head leans back. "Since we had a lovely conversation, I can give it to you for Fifteen,"

Kita chuckles at the man's animated behaviour. "Alright, Fifteen it is,"

She swings her backpack around to her front and reaches in to grab some coin out of a pouch.

"Here you go," She says, taking her hand out from the bag and reaching out to him with fifteen coin in her hand. "Fifteen coin,"

The man reaches his hand out to collect the coin. And in doing so, his fingers collide with Kita's. Inducing a sudden lapse in Kita's vision. She can't see anything, or even feel her body anymore.

There is only darkness.