The sky above was a deep void that radiated an aura of somnolence if Idony looked into it for too long, as though she could just lay down on the soft white dust below and fall into a peaceful sleep. So she did not gaze upwards into it, walking forward to kick up dust and ash around her feet. Even though the sky had no light, she could still see the rolling white dunes just fine. Even farther she could make out strange structures jutting out from dunes. Some stood tall and straight while others sagged or leaned drunkenly. Idony could not remember how she ended up in such a strange place, but she also did not find herself particularly afraid either. It was simple curiosity that kept her moving though. What would she find if she kept walking?

The buildings so far away were slowly getting closer but she still could not make out any details of them. They were old featureless bones that called out to her soundlessly and she heeded their plaintive cry.

But it was a very long way to walk.

Idony looked back down at her feet to see how her neat little boots with the carefully stitched flowery design continued to stir up dust and ash in little clouds that drifted away on an unfelt wind to rejoin dunes farther away.

When she looked back up she found herself in front of a white stone and wood tower that seemed to have suddenly dropped down from the strange sky while she had been watching her feet. The door was only an arm's length above the uneven ground, a splintering of dried wood still clung below it. She crept up towards the door slowly, glancing over her back at the endless rolling white dunes before looking back to the door itself. It was also made of wood, pockmarked and eaten away by age. She reached up and placed a hand against it, the door easily swinging open with a dry creak to a sparse looking room which held nothing but a spiraling staircase that went upwards. Idony raised her leg up high to stamp it on the floor within, pushing down on it to bring the rest of her body inside, planting both of her hands down to keep herself from tumbling.

Once inside of the room she took a few minutes to pace around it, trying to find anything interesting. There were a few cracks in the wall where the ash from outside had drifted in, there were the interesting rings her footsteps made in it, and then there were the stairs made of smooth stone. They spiraled slowly upwards to another floor. Idony did another circle around the tower floor, then began to ascend the steps. Each one brought with it a faint echo that was soon swallowed by silence.

When she reached the next floor she paused in silent bewilderment as a protrusion of halls stretched out like the legs of a spider around her. In the distance was a muffled crackling noise only barely audible. The halls themselves were odd as well, made of smooth grey stone that were featureless but for an occasional dark stain. Idony hummed and hawed for a moment before choosing a random hallway to go into. Despite a quick step she was not getting anywhere particularly quickly in the hallway, which seemed to only have a slight curve to it and not much else.

A dark thing was in her path. It was laying on the ground and she slowly shuffled closer with one foot already turned in case she needed to run. Her heart crawled around in her chest as she realized what it was.

A body.

The body had been there perhaps forever, its skin was dried, clasped close to its bones and its fingers worn to stumps. It was laying face down on the ground, one arm reaching outwards.

Idony decided she had enough exploring and that she wanted to go find Liu Xie and the others. She bolted away from the body as fast as she could, hurtling down the hall in a mass of flailing arms and tangling red hair. She ran until she finally reached the chamber all halls originated from and raced to where she remembered the descending steps were only to find a flat floor. Idony yelled, stomping on the ground, then jumping up and down hoping that it would break under her feet. But nothing changed besides her knees hurting. She slumped downwards and felt her lungs tighten as she choked on tears, a flood of fear threatening to abruptly overwhelm her.

Lakes.

She remembered something about lakes.

What was it?

So long as she focused on that she found she could ward away the tears.

The lake. A cold lake. A lake surrounded by trees, somewhere far and freezing.

A chill filled the air and a foot stepped into view, icy water dripping down.

"You!" He said.

"You!" She returned, pointing up at him and grateful just to have someone else around, even if it was the pig-thief-friend.

He was soaking wet, ice crystals falling off his messy unbrushed hair and a centipede-looking-bug scuttering down from his empty eye socket. He crossed his arms, his head turning one way then another before his brows furrowed. "Where are we?"

"I don't know! I took a nap and now I'm here!" She said, before gesturing to the halls. She had forgotten which one she had come from. "But-but-but there's a body! There's a body!"

He shrugged, "this seems like a place that would have bodies. It's full of white flame."

"I don't understand," Idony mumbled.

"Uh. So, everything's got a little bit of white flame in 'em, and some places have a lot of white flame and it's-" he stopped, "no! Why am I explaining this to you? I'm here for a reason right?"

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She nodded, getting back up to her feet. "Yeah I was scared!" She said. "And there was a hole here," she pointed to the floor beneath their feet. "But it's gone now."

The boy's face was still thoughtful as he glanced over the multiple possible hallways they could take. He then took her hand and began pulling her towards one. "Okay, I think I understand now."

"Understand what?" She asked, trying to pull her hand free from his cold clammy and very damp one.

"I think you're in a dreaming state at the moment, and something sucked up your soul!"

Her mouth fell open in shock. She used her free hand to poke and prod at her body, expecting to find a hole or some intangibility but instead she only found perfectly solid flesh. "What does that mean?"

"Uh, Zhu'er, I dunno if you know this but," he stopped in his step to look at her. "You're kind of dead."

Having no idea how to grasp what he said, she shook her head. "No, I'm right here right?"

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you can't be dead," he continued as he went back to pulling her along with quick strides. "I'm dead, but I still have a body and everything. Some spirits take forever to form a proper body, but since I was still attached to my corpse, I didn't need to. I just ate it and reformed a new one." The hallway they were walking down did not appear to be endless like the first one, instead it opened up into a strange tall corridor, where the ceiling was only barely visible and the floor had been replaced with wooden slats over a short drop full of crumbling twisted things. "You're kind of similar I think, but you've still got a human spirit. I don't know how you were staying attached to your body, but maybe something pulled you out? Maybe it was... hmmm."

"Maybe what?" She asked as they walked over the surprisingly sturdy slats.

"I'm getting to that. So I think I know where we are," he said as he found a cut out section in the wall that opened into a smaller hallway.

Idony was beginning to feel somewhat exasperated. "Where?!"

"The moon, I think," he said. "Or inside it. There was this Old Snake I talked to a few times. He had a lot of stories, and in one of them he mentioned that there's a thing on the moon that'll suck up weak spirits which is why you shouldn't sleep under moonlight until you can eat a human. So maybe that's what happened to you."

"But I'm not dead! And I can't eat people, that's wrong!" She protested. "Pig-thief-"

"I have a name," he sniffed. "It's a good one! I picked it out myself!"

Idony had forgotten that he had no name and waited for him to tell her. He stood, also waiting until he realized she was not going verbally request his name.

"Alright, fine. My name is Shuang Que."

"Oh, that's nice." She said politely.

His face showed a mixture of emotions before he took a deep breath and they walked into a room where three more dried bodies lay. One was sitting in a corner against a wall, curled up into a little ball with its shriveled arms wrapped around its legs. The other was slumped chest first against a stone door that had the carving of a gnarled mass of roots around an eye. Its hands still had almost all of its fingers, but dark faded streaks followed where it had likely clawed at the stone. The third one was laying facing the wall where a heavily faded a mass of words had been left on it. To Idony they all appeared as strange squiggles and yet her brain could pick out the words in them.

"Can you read that too?" She asked, pointing at it.

"Read what?" He looked where she pointed and stared for a moment before shaking his head. "No, what does it say?"

It was a dirge, a final testament. A dozen other things Idony did not know the words of. Like how they read out the life of her mother before they hurried her body into the barrow.

It was a story of a people who were suffering. Who lessened their misery by sharing it with others. No one knew where the misery came from. But it was there and it ate at them. It ate until there was no one left to share it with, and there had been so many people to share it with.

But then a person came, emerging from the white flame of the moon's light. They had offered an end to suffering, to grant their wish.

There was more but Shuang Que was looking impatient.

"Uh," Idony was not even sure how she could read the writing and took a bit to focus on threading the message into something she could speak. "Uh, it says uhm..." after another 'uhm' she decided to simply sum up what was on it. "It said that there were a lot of people during a very bad time. They found a person who would save them who came from white fire and uh, they had built a lot of towers. But they were betrayed and they didn't know it. Then the gods got really angry and the people realized something bad had happened, and the gods could not hear them anymore. They ran to their towers and kept apologizing but they all died anyway because the person was following them."

It was a story about an older land, she thought. Maybe the towers were all that was left of it.

Shuang Que looked incredulous at her long summation, "is that really what it says?"

"That's what I saw."

"What?"

She shrugged. "It was in my head."

Shuang Que sighed and went over to the body that laid against the wall, slowly moving it aside. An arm snapped off like a twig and he hurriedly pushed it back against the body.

"I don't think that helps."

"Shut up!"

They both pushed open the door into another much bigger room, which was still rather sparse like everywhere else so far in the 'tower'. The ceiling was so far upwards Idony could not even see it, but a shaft of pure and gentle white light shined down on the smooth stone floor to the center where a large pool of water sat, illuminated by the light so brightly it seemed to be a small moon.

Immediately Idony wanted to leave, she turned around to find the door had vanished. When she looked back she saw that something was forming in the light, a vaguely humanoid figure, shriveled and nearly insubstantial. She did not want to see it. She did not want to be close it. Something screamed this thing was terribly wrong and terribly alone and it would grab her and then she would never see her mother or Liu Xie or anyone else ever again.

"UH! HEY! Zhu'er!" Shuang Que yelled. Idony did not know when she had started screaming but now she could not stop. "REMEMBER HOW YOU SAID YOU WERE ASLEEP?"

"YES?" She managed to shriek out.

A horrific pain exploded in her head, the light vanishing into darkness as she felt herself tumbling downwards.

She forced her eyes open while flailing all of her limbs in the phantom fall, striking someone who immediately toppled backwards and sent her tumbling over as she shrieked in panic. Before any of the grasping hands could get her she had already gotten back to her feet and slapped two of them away before she felt two strong hands clamp down on her arms and heft her upwards.

Idony looked around to find Li Chunning unconscious on the ground with Rui Yifu trying to rouse him, Bo shaking the limp form too, and Ji Ying helpfully gently kicking his side. Liu Xie was holding her with a look of concern and right behind him were two incomprehensibly huge dragons, one of which looked especially monstrous with half of its body burnt down to the bone. Her brain, full of fear and her heart full of terror nearly dragged her back down into unconsciousness, but the memory of the thing was still strong. A searing brand in her mind. So instead Idony settled for going limp and wheezing.

"Sorry about that," Liu Xie said.