Bo's heart felt a little bit at ease.

The splotch of land they stood in was covered in bright cheery wild flowers with a soft sweet scent, the river's bend burbled away by them and white feathered hummingbirds darted around among the blooms. The river bend was rather shallow as well, the deepest part he could see only went up a third of his calf. Somehow despite everything they had just gone through, in this little area Bo could not help but feel the tension in his shoulders melt. He put Zhu'er down on the ground and watched her wobble around the flowers for a little bit before he turned to Shuang Que.

Shuang Que was sitting behind them, idly picking at the flowers. The flesh on his hands had split, revealing a strange black misty mess swarming with barely visible insects beneath that invoked a deep sense of revulsion in Bo. His face was still the swirly mass of darkness but it turned upwards to look at Bo. "...This is as far as I go," he said in that fading voice.

Bo sighed and glanced back at the flowers around them, the clear river, the birds. Then he looked up to the clear blue sky. The entire place felt a little unreal. That something so peaceful and calm should not exist in such a place. "...It's a nice place to part at though."

"Yeah," Shuang Que agreed.

"Here," Zhu'er had managed to walk up quietly to them without either of them noticing, giving Bo a bit of a startle that he hoped she did not notice. She was holding a blue colored rock vaguely shaped like a crescent moon, and another black rock that Bo thought looked a little like a chicken. She handing the chicken-shaped rock to Bo, and then the other rock to Shuang Que.

"What are these for?" Bo asked.

"Boys don't like flowers so I looked for rocks instead," she said.

"Ah," Bo blinked and was unsure what else to say to that.

Shuang Que held his rock in his withering hand, "thank you very much." He said, the words sounded as though he was unfamiliar with them.

"We're friends, right?" Zhu'er shrugged, "so, I wanted to give you something! Since you're going away right?"

"Mm."

Bo looked at Idony who stared very intently at Shuang Que, then at Shuang Que. His form seemed to be slumping slightly, like he was struggling to keep himself sitting upright. "Hey Zhu'er, can you see if there's a rooster shaped rock around real fast?" Bo asked, "I don't want my hen rock to get lonely."

"What?" Zhu'er looked confused but after a second she shrugged and went back to the flowers, getting onto her hands and knees to shift through the rocks below.

"You know what to do, right?" Shuang Que asked in a low voice. "Just keep going north. Soon you're going to reach a red forest, you'll need to go through that and you'll be able to see the mountain then."

"Red.... forest...?" Bo did not like how ominious that sounded.

Shuang Que nodded, "yes. It's stuck in perpetual autumn. It's part of the strangeness of this place."

"Ah."

"I also have something to ask you," Shuang Que said, turning his head towards Zhu'er. He spoke very softly, "...don't let her see."

Bo's mouth opened slightly, then he closed it and nodded. He felt that she already knew on some level, but if Shuang Que did not want her to see then he would do his best to prevent it. "Thanks, by the way."

Shuang Que rested the disintegrating nubs of his hands in his lap, insects scuttling away. "........You should start going now."

Bo turned away from him and scooped Zhu'er back up into his arms, "alright. No time to waste, lets get going little sister."

"Hey! I didn't find the rock yet!" She complained.

"You can look somewhere else then," he stepped into the water and shivered in the cold, but kept walking, splashing through in a few steps to the other side.

"I didn't get to say good bye to Shuang Que either!"

He did not say anything to that. There was nothing he could say. He could not bring himself to look at Zhu'er. He kept walking instead, wet cloth gradually drying out as his legs moved forward almost outside of his own power. He had to keep going north. That was the most important thing right now. There was a wet spot forming on his clothes from where Zhu'er's face pressed into it. He kept going. To go northwards to the mountain. The fact that he did not know what the mountain even looked like was barely a concern. All mountains looked the same to him, only varying in size and scope. Finding the right peak was going to be an issue for future Bo to deal with.

As the sun began to sink downwards, a lake of fire seemed to spring forward in the distance. But on closer inspection and realizing there was no smoke he realized it was in fact trees. Thousands and thousands of red, gold, and orange leaves that shivered in the light wind that crested over them. The breeze brought the faint scent of decaying leaves to his nose and he nearly sneezed.

He continued walking until they had reached the treeline, peering past the first trunks he could see... more trees. There was yellowing moss growing on some of them, shaggy looking underbrush that small animals flitted through that he could not quite make out the shapes of. Leaf piles dotted the floor in some places, and collapsed trunks laid half-rotted in other spots, but deeper inside he could not see due to the increasing density of the trees. He could not tell how big the forest was but he had a feeling that his ankles were going to experience quite a few interesting twists.

"I'm tired," Zhu'er mumbled weakly suddenly.

Bo looked down at the little girl in his arms, "ah? Okay, we can rest here for a bit." He said, leaning against one thick tree trunk and slumping downwards. He kept Zhu'er in his lap while his hand rested on his boss's sword. He was not sure if he could even use it if anything snuck up but having it in hand made him feel a little better. "You can take a nap and I'll wake you up in a bit, okay?"

"Okay."

He closed his eyes and sighed, opening them to look up at the boughs of a yellow leafed willow. His lap was missing a child-sized weight and the sword was gone. Panic immediately sprung to life in his chest and he jumped to his feet, nearly toppling over a stone bench right in front of him as he tried getting his bearings. Where did Zhu'er go?

Bo looked around and saw tall walls, and in front of him a well wore and wide street. His heart stopped as he peeked through the curtain of leaves.

Liu Xie was standing there.

His panic turned to confused joy, "Boss!" He called out.

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But Liu Xie did not respond. He was not even looking at him. Instead he was looking at something else that the canopy of leaves around Bo obscured. Bo walked around the bench in front of him, brushing aside the leaves. A few feet away on the other side of the street was a large caravan of foreigners. Their wagons were all packed up and hitched to very stout looking oxen with white and brown spots. People were chattering around it in a foreign language as the last few things were brought out from a strange large stone building nearby.

Standing away from the caravan was a young woman. She was short but stout looking in a thick woolen dress, her red hair was tied back with a simple strap. There was a scar on her face that stretched from the left side corner of her mouth to her chin, yet the face itself was round and kindly looking. It was also scrunched up in despair.

He knew this woman. He had seen her before, on the wall in Liu Xie's house.

"I'm sorry," her accent was thick. Almost incomprehensible with the shaking in it.

"Don't be," the tone Liu Xie took was something Bo had never heard before. He watched Liu Xie move closer to her, holding out his hand. "...Please, stay with me."

"I can't," she shook her head. "My father is getting sicker, I can't leave him. He wants to... he wants-"

"To go back home, to be with your mother," Liu Xie finished. "I know."

Eona's tears fell ungracefully, her face was flushing and she wrung her hands, "I can't let him die alone, Liu Xie. I can't do that."

"I'm not asking you to do that," he said, his own voice trembling, "I just want you to stay with me..."

Eona shook her head, "I'm just... I'm just a mortal, Xie. I'm not even anything of particular importance. We don't always get what we want, no matter how badly we want it."

Bo walked closer, until he was right beside Liu Xie. The other man still had not noticed him, so he reached out. His hand passed harmlessly through him and he stepped back. He was dreaming? Or was this a memory of Liu Xie's? But how did he get here, he wondered. He furrowed his brow in thought, was it because of the sword? If it was, why this memory in specific?

"Don't... don't start talking like that, Eona. Don't go into this stuff about how you think you're not important, or how I should find someone more fitting," Liu Xie's voice now held irritation. The sort of frustrated irritation that came when cycling back to an old argument, but it was full of despair as well. "If I wanted someone else, I would have them. I don't. I've only ever wanted you. Doesn't that mean anything to you? Has everything I've said and done been ignored because you think I'm taking you as a passing fancy?"

"I'm sorry-"

Liu Xie took a deep breath and sighed, shaking his head and his face softened. "Don't apologize. I'm the one who should be apologizing... I... Eona, I just-"

Eona suddenly straightened up, balling her hands up, "I'll come back. In ten years, I'll come back. No matter what." She declared, her face resolute. "It'll feel like an instant to you, so don't be sad. We'll see each other again."

"If you don't come back in ten years, I'll come find you then," he said. He held out his hand again and she looked down at it. So instead he grabbed her hands and held them tightly. Bo was very sure what they were going to do next and felt it would be rude to watch so he turned around and found a pale beautiful man sitting on the bench, white hair spilling downwards and covering its stone surface.

"She never came back," the man said in Liu Xie's voice.

Bo stepped back from the apparition, "you...?"

"She never came back," he repeated. "She died. So when I came to the snowy hell she had died in, I had come to find Idony. You see, I made a deal that if I brought her back to the First Palace, I would be reunited with her." Then the face split into a strange grin. "But my deal came with caveats. I couldn't reclaim my body unless it was weakened to a certain point."

It was Baichan.

This was Baichan.

"In the moment of reunification, I took my body back... but the body threw my daughter at you."

The houses suddenly burst into ruinous flames, the smell of charred bodies filling the air. Bo spun around on his heel to find himself surrounded by a burning village, the red autumnal leaves being consumed by hungry flames. Men on horseback rode through, chasing screaming villagers towards burning houses or the nearby river where archers fired amber wreathed arrows into the waters that churned with bodies. His body jerked away from one horse as it rode by and as he moved he spotted two older girls pulling a smaller boy behind him.

Even after all this time, he still recognized his sisters' faces.

"No..." he whispered.

"You remember this," Baichan said softly. "This was the day where your life burnt to cinders."

"Stop this," Bo whispered as his knees quaked under him. He could see them, they had gone behind a house and were hurriedly pulling away the rotting mess from a shallow hole in the ground. "I don't want to see this-"

"You don't want to suffer," Baichan's voice was at his ear, warm and soothing. "No one wants to suffer."

The little boy was pushed down into the hole and quickly covered by a mass of rotting offal, broken pottery, worms, and other scraps. He knew what was coming next.

"I don't want anyone to suffer, Bo," Baichan spoke. "I'm trying to stop that. I want my daughter back, I know you believe you're doing what is best for her but-"

Several of the riders had noticed the girls, pointing towards them excitedly.

"-she needs to come back to me."

He wanted to tell them to run. That there was still time. But all they could do was hold each other as the riders bore down on them. They would not move. He had seen this a thousand times in his dreams. They never moved. Their screams were always the same. The tears that flowed down his face fell unbidden as they always did. Even in his dreams he could not save them. The echoes had eaten him up from the inside, gnawing at his heart like a great weight of guilt. What could he have done?

"Why?" He asked.

"Hm? Why what?"

Bo looked at Baichan, "why do you need her back?"

"Because I'm her father," Baichan answered with amusement, "a family should be together, shouldn't it?"

"That's not what I meant," Bo winced as the screaming started, balling his hands into fists. "I meant, why should I bring her back? If you're... if you're strong you should be able to get her back by yourself, right? So something... something is keeping you from coming yourself."

"Clever boy!" Baichan clapped like he was speaking to a moderately intelligent dog. "Yes, you are right. The other three activated a certain array using the moon. I cannot leave the First Palace just yet. But the array has nothing to do with whether Idony is with me or not-"

"I think you're lying," Bo cut him off.

"No, I'm not," Baichan shook his head. "I don't like to lie. I need the Gates of the Heavens to open for the wedding, Bo, and Idony of course needs to be present for that. Then we can all be a family, and scenes like this..." he gestured behind Bo who refused to look. "Will soon be a thing only in nightmares and memories."

Bo stared at Baichan, who smiled with merciful compassion written all over his face. "You know, I... I dream a lot about this day," Bo admitted quietly. "In my dreams, it's always the same. I've never been able to change it." He wondered, did Liu Xie dream? Did he keep remembering that day in autumn where a promise was made? Did it hurt? He could see it now. The burning houses fell away to the street again. Liu Xie was alone, staring in the direction she had gone, red tears falling down his face.

Liu Xie reached out again, then collapsed to his knees and screamed into the ground in such grief that Bo felt his own heart break.

"I know."

There was nothing either of them could ever do to change the past.

Lady Gu had been right, he thought.

"But this is the first time I've ever seen it like this. Watching myself. You being here. It's different now, but also the same, my dream. I would wake up crying, hoping for something better, or that I'd wake up at home. But sometimes I'd dream something else, like of working on a farm or going down the countryside. It wasn't always... it wasn't always this..." Without those memories, would he even still be in the same situation? Bo looked upwards to the memory of the sky. It was still painful, but he had chosen to remember it anyway, they were his sisters. The street faded again to a river near the village, the sound of familiar laughter. The trees swaying in the summer wind. Those times would never return it was true, but they never left him either.

Baichan nodded. "You've suffered so much Bo, even in your dreams you cannot escape your sorrows, can you?"

"What I'm saying is," he took a deep breath and looked directly into Baichan's eyes. They were pitch black, with only the most distant suggestion of light deep within them. He found nothing of compassion or pity in them. "This is my dream, and you're not part of it."

He rammed his fist into Baichan's face, feeling it crack like pottery as the being's eyes widened in shock.

Bo opened his eyes, feeling the crust of sleep still clinging to them. He could see an angled reflection of himself, still tired, and followed it up to the hilt of a long blade, the armored limb holding it, and then to the helmeted head further above. Bo glanced about urgently for Zhu'er, who he found slumped halfway on the ground, snoring. Bo then looked back up at the tall armored figure, a cloth with painted on horse with a horn was wrapped around its shoulders. Suddenly he was really missing Shuang Que.

"I am Tirunesh of the Archera Knights, state your name," a deep feminine voice intoned, faintly pressing the tip of the sword to his throat.