Some people ask me why I chose cultivate moon instead of sun given my homeland and heritage…but I never considered any other path. There’s no better way to stick it to the Darkened Moon and his Yokai than to reclaim the aura he so tainted. – Bai Lyn, Gold Cultivator from the Sun Prism Mountain.

* * *

My dreams brought me back to the Labyrinth. I walked in an endless night. No moon nor stars lit my way, and I couldn’t even see the ground upon which I walked. Everything was blackness, but I trudged onward.

Determination had always been my greatest strength. When my family had been torn apart, I vowed to become a cultivator. I found myself a sect to teach me and had taken the lessons in their scrolls and teachings to heart. Where the precepts could not provide answers, I marched out into the world and sought conclusions for myself. I never let knowledge bar my way to the heavens, and I never let the gatekeepers of the world stop me.

Trudging through the emptiness of lost realities, I focused on myself. I’d make it through. I always did. I just had to keep walking forward, and eventually the Path would bring me back to where I was meant to be.

“And what if they stand in your way again?” I flinched at the sound of the words, but I did not answer. Answering would require acknowledging she existed, that she’d ever existed, and I would not give her that kind of power over me.

Instead, I doggedly kept walking. The ground turned soft, and soon it clung to my feet. Each step sank deeper and deeper into thick and sticky mud.

“You can’t ignore me, Yoru.”

Watch me. I thought to myself.

As if responding to my challenge, more whispers joined the voice. They sang in my ears, their sweet lullaby of destruction and carnage sounding just as sweet as it had before.

Yet, still, I ignored them as best I could. They were a plague, a pox on my soul, a stain on my immaculate robes. I would not falter again. I would not…

The mud became thicker, and my feet sank deeper. I gritted my teeth and continued struggling onward.

“You know how to free yourself, Yoru,” said the voice. “It’s so simple. You remember how.”

“I remember lives lost,” I answered. As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized my mistake.

The voices pounced, growing to a deafening volume in my ears. I pressed my hands to my ears to block the sound, but they had already sunk their hooked claws into my consciousness.

Shadows danced just out of reach. I called on my qi, and a sword of purest moonlight appeared in my hand. The shadows hissed and shrieked at the very sight of the holy power. They danced further away, staying far from me.

But, the mud began to bubble and boil. I felt myself sinking. Frantically, I tried to run, pumping all the strength of my qi-enhanced muscles to free myself from the mud and find solid ground. Only, there was none. I floundered in the blackness, searching for a way to escape until the mud finally refused to release my feet.

I sprawled upon the ground, my hands sinking into the mud, next. My sword was extinguished as it sank beneath the surface, and the shadows returned. With them came more and more whispers, each one blending into the next until it was just a cacophony of noise instead of words.

The mud was up to my shoulders. Despite my thrashing, I could not get free. I turned my gaze upward, searching for the moon. There was none, and my head sank beneath the mud.

“You know what to do…”

The air in my lungs grew stale as I thrashed. I didn’t want to die here! All I wanted was to be free! I wouldn’t return to the clutches of my prison!

“YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!” I shouted, despite there being no air with which to speak. I rallied my qi and shifted it to the one thing that could save me.

The light of the full moon faded in my core, replaced by the power of dark, inky nothingness.

* * *

I sprang awake, on my feet and running before I could even register where I was. All that mattered was escaping the labyrinth. Nothing else took priority.

“Good morning, Master Tsuyuki,” a voice said, but shadows clouded my vision. “Are you well?” It was a trick. The labyrinth was fond of such things. I needed to escape.

I stumbled away from the shadow. I blinked, shaking my head, trying to clear my bleary eyes to see the world. It didn’t work, and my shin crashed into something solid. There was the sound of something breaking, but I didn’t let it bother me. The voices would follow me, even here. They would drag me back, and I…

Wait, drag me back? I was out? Was I out?

Before my thoughts could catch up with me, I was out a door, and the heat of the sun kissed my skin.

“Whoa, hey!” were the only sounds I caught before I clipped something…someone…solid. I was sent spinning. I desperately tried to recover but my feet slipped, and I fell.

There was a splash, and suddenly everything was cold and wet. The freezing water provided me with a moment of clarity, and the whispers faded from my ears.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Are you alright?” I looked up to see a shadow blocking the sun. It was Tenri. I looked around, squinting to see in the brilliant sun.

I was sitting in a koi pond, although the koi were nowhere to be seen. The flowers surrounding the edge were trampled and the dirt overturned from where my feet had slipped.

“I…I’m sorry,” I muttered. This wasn’t the least dignified situation I’d ever been in, but the fear and shame from my dream still clung to me. “I’ll replant the flowers and find a way to pay for any damages.”

“Lin, is Master Tsuyuki okay?” Hanako called from the door. “He ran out of his room and fled like he was being chased by a demon.”

Tenri offered a hand to me. “Are you well?” he repeated. I nodded and let him pull me to my feet.

“I am now,” I said. “It was just a bad dream.”

“He’s alright, Hanako,” Tenri relayed. “Nightmares affect us all.”

“Oh? Bring him in. Mother and I can interpret them,” she called. Tenri immediately paled. Though he didn’t say anything further, I could tell he was greatly concerned.

“I told Hanako who you really are,” he whispered. “She doesn’t believe me.”

“Is she a cultivator, too?” I asked. He shook his head.

“A long time ago, the Zhao family supposedly had a few star artists who could see the future, and my mother comes from a line of fortune tellers,” he answered. “No serious cultivation between them, but plenty of headaches nonetheless.”

I shrugged. “My sister read tea leaves, so I’m used to it.” We walked toward the door, but I stopped before entering. “Might I trouble you for a towel?” my long hair was soaked.

Tenri nodded and entered the building first. Hanako was quick to bring a spare change of clothes as well, and soon I had dried and dressed again. Chiho complained about the state of my hair, so I quickly tied it up and the hairpin settled itself in. Only after everything was settled did I return to the central living room near the kitchen. A bowl of rice waited for me along with Tenri, Hanako, and two elderly individuals who must have been Tenri’s parents.

“Come now, tell us of your dream,” Hanako insisted. I looked to Tenri, who just nodded, so I did as I was told. I described the voices that haunted me, and the mud that tried to drown me.

As soon as I was done, Tenri’s mother reached out with lightning reflexes and snatched my hand. She drew it closer and began examining it closely.

“You have a great darkness in your past,” the elder woman said. “But, your future is not yet written in stone.”

I hoped not. My entire cultivation path was built around the idea of choosing my future among the possible realities. Fate and I disagreed on many occasions.

“The way I see it,” Hanako said. “The voices are not your problem.”

“They’re not?”

She nodded. “The mud is. The voices may be entirely independent, even if your mind links them together.” Hanako sipped her tea deeply as she contemplated what I’d said. “The power they tell of is already a part of you, otherwise your past would not be so dark as Mother says. Which means the answer is simple.” I raised an eyebrow.

“How do you figure that?”

“Just don’t fall in the mud.”

Wow. Don’t fall in the mud. How helpful. Of course, it would be rude to say such things to my hosts, and I was already on thin ice with Tenri on account of being a legend from people’s nightmares. Instead of speaking, I chose to eat instead.

As the first bite passed my lips, I stopped, savoring the simple rice. How long had it been since I’d eaten? As an Ascendent, I had grown beyond mortal needs, so nobody had bothered to put any food in my prison. Since the labyrinth itself was meant to torment me for all eternity, it hadn’t bothered to provide me any either.

That rice was the sweetest, most wholesome, most filling thing I’d ever tasted. Before I knew it, I’d scarfed down the rest of the bowl and set it and my chopsticks to the side.

“Thank you for the meal,” I said politely. As I finished, Tenri’s father began to chuckle.

“He’s got a cultivator’s appetite alright!” His laugh was hearty. “Don’t let go of this one, Lin. He’ll bring good fortune to our town for sure!”

I had no idea how he could be so certain, but without risking questions regarding the rather gory details of my past, I couldn’t ask. Instead, I simply asked for another helping, which Hanako provided with a smile.

Just as I was finishing the second bowl, a gong rang through the town. Tenri sighed and stood.

“Well, wish me well,” he said, adjusting a new set of glasses on his nose. I stood, as well, unsure of what I was supposed to do next.

“Where are you going?”

He blinked at me. “To work. I’m the administrator of the village.” Now it was my turn to blink in shock. They had a cultivator doing administrative work in a middle of nowhere fishing town? If this were a large city with thousands of cultivators, I might understand, but here? That was such a waste of promising young talent! He should be out fighting spirit beasts and protecting the land from monsters, or, at the very least, focusing on his own cultivation.

Maybe it would be easier to keep him safe than I thought. A desk job certainly would keep him out of harm’s way…but the entire notion was simply ridiculous.

“Why are you the administrator?”

“Because it’s the law?” he said. “Every town in the Moon-Soaked Shore has to be governed by a cultivator, so that the laws have real power behind them. If none are present, then one will be provided by the Governor. I do this so that Saikan can stay free of their influence.”

That was, frankly, the silliest law I’d ever heard. Laws should be followed because they’re just, not because the one dispensing justice is powerful. Positions given only to the powerful were a recipe for corruption and abuse of power, both of which were things I hated.

Oh, to be an Ascendent with the power to change that on a whim…I might not have my powers now, but that didn’t mean I had to like this pitiful excuse for a reality I’d found myself in.

However, I was not an Ascendent anymore. Moreover, I was pretending not to be a Lunar Artist, meaning I couldn’t just wave my hand and rewrite reality…not that I could do so at Bronze, anyway.

“I see. Is there anything I might do to assist you?” I asked. If that was the role expected of a cultivator in this place, then, at least, it wouldn’t be a terrible place to start…if a dull one…while I got my bearings and fixed up the Tenri house koi pond.

“Actually, there are several jobs I could use a cultivator’s help with,” Tenri answered.

He was about to explain further when his wife interrupted him. “Such as the Ancestral Tree on my cousin’s farm? Or the two-tailed fox that’s harrying her animals?”

“Or the crabs trying to snatch fishermen straight off their boats,” Tenri snapped. “Or perhaps even the shade haunting the lighthouse? I have many jobs and not enough hands to do them!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at their bickering, though I tried to stifle it as soon as I could. “Well, I’m not a strong swimmer, but I think I can help with some beasts and ghosts.”

“Even doing that much would have me recite the Ten Celestial Blessings in your name, friend.”

And, with that, Tenri put on his shoes and stepped from the house. I quickly followed. It might be nice to receive the blessings of friends instead of the curses of my enemies for a change.