Bo clutched both sword and sobbing child to himself as he ran as fast as his legs could carry him. There was very little room for thought left inside of his brain besides to get as far away from that thing as possible. Was it the sign of a bad student to leave their master behind? Perhaps, but he loyally followed Liu Xie's last order. Rui Yifu was running slightly ahead of him, almost a blur of grey and greenish cloth. The courtyard they had originally appeared in was somehow gone, replaced with a plain dusty hallway that stretched onwards. Behind them was a faint chorus of snarls that rose as they got closer.

Had they taken a turn somewhere? Bo glanced behind him and saw the area they had been escaping was replaced with something that looked vaguely like a melted bedroom.

The hall split in two and Rui Yifu came to a brief stop to point towards the leftwards hall then dashing into it. Bo followed him and watched as the wooden walls shuddered, rippling like water as they moved. Ahead he could see stone and wood tumbling, grinding slowly into a chamber with charred furniture. The moment Bo had hurled himself and Zhu'er inside, Rui Yifu turned around and slammed a burnt door shut. He smeared blood across it, the smudge wriggling like snakes into a curvy geometric pattern.

Bo set Zhu'er down carefully before he collapsed on the floor beside her, taking in great big gulps of air which did nothing to cool his burning lungs or steady his shivering legs. He felt like his legs were well cooked pork, meat about to slide off the bone any moment. He looked up at the ceiling where vein-like protrusions riddled its surface, then he glanced at the burnt furniture and another door nearby that seemed to be in a much better state.

Rui Yifu was wheezing, sliding down against the door and coughing. "Well... I don't know what to do now," he said.

"I don't know either," Bo said.

"..."

Bo scratched the back of his head and sat back up, pulling his knees up to his chest and sinking his hands into his hair. "FUCK!" He pushed the word out of his lungs. He smelled smoke again, burning flesh. Now he smelled sap too, sap, smoke, flesh. Suddenly a world that had begun to make sense again was once more in chaos. He was adrift and there was no boat nearby. What was he supposed to do? Liu Xie was gone. He looked around and felt his stomach drop. Liu Xie was gone. Li Chunning was missing, and the horrible Ji Ying was nowhere to be found. "...Rui, Rui... we gotta go back. Chunning's missing." He was not sure how he was going to find them, but he needed them back. Something he had lost once had come back to him, and now he had lost it again. The shared struggles, arguments, the journey... he thought they would last forever.

Rui Yifu's slit pupils moved sluggishly in his head, and Bo found that Rui's skin was taking on a slightly grey pallor. "Go back? Bo, there is no back. We could wander this palace forever and we might never find that courtyard for a thousand years."

"Why!?" Bo demanded, getting back up and staggering to Rui, "why not?"

"Bo, listen, weren't you watching as we were running? The palace was shifting around us," Rui Yifu pointed out. "This place is just as cursed as the rest of the land, but it's all far more obvious here."

"What's that seal for then?" Bo asked.

"To keep anything following us from coming in," Rui Yifu answered, then he pointed at the other door, "since the palace changes its layout, I don't think we should worry about anything coming from there for a bit but... but we can start moving again in a bit, after I catch my breath..."

Bo was quiet, looking to the unsealed door. Zhu'er was hiccuping, pale faced with small tears rolling down her cheeks. Bo reached out hesitantly to her, waiting for her to lash out. But she remained still. He scooted closer to her, placing an arm around her and hugging her tightly, far more tightly than he expected himself to. She gripped him, her tiny hands like twigs, snotty tears soaking the cloth. His own tears rolled down, falling into her hair. "I... I'm sorry, Zhu'er."

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"If I... if I can find a big enough source of water, I can probably get us out. I don't believe that thing would be able to seal off this area. Not yet at least," Rui Yifu mumbled.

"What is that thing?" Bo asked, wiping his face and trying to stuff down his tears, but his voice remained unsteady. "Why did... why did all that happen to boss?"

Rui Yifu got to his feet with a worrying grunt of pain, wobbling for a moment before he walked over to one of the burnt tables. He leaned on it, then sat on it and looked down at Bo and Zhu'er. He was quiet for a long time, long enough that Zhu'er stopped crying and simply sat still and quiet, hiding her face from the world in Bo's chest. "I think... that's the god of the white flame."

"What?"

"There's a story I remember hearing as a child in my first incarnation. That humans have been made several times, and each time they had been flawed in some manner and brought to ruin," Rui Yifu rubbed his temples as he spoke, "ah, it's been so long honestly I forgot most of the details. Hm, Ao did say the thing comes from moonlight, and my teacher did say the grave ash of the prior worlds was locked within the moon. To 'smother the virulence of the ancestral flame'. I always thought it was a poetic flourish to describe how the sudden death of millions would lead to a surfeit of unrestrained white flame but..."

"I... I was on the moon," Zhu'er mumbled.

Rui Yifu's focus turned to her, and Bo gently managed to extract her face from his chest. "What do you mean, darling?" Rui Yifu asked gently.

Zhu'er's little hands were picking at a thread in her clothes, she chewed her lips. "Uhm... I was dreaming. And I was in a place with lots of ash, and the sky was all black," she furrowed her brow. "Uhm... uhm... well, there were... big tall houses!"

"Towers?" Rui Yifu suggested. "Do you mean towers?"

She nodded. "They were all dusty and quiet inside. There were some dead people in there but they looked very dry looking. Like jerky."

Bo immediately blotted that imagery from his mind, "what happened in there?"

Zhu'er's eyes went from him to Rui Yifu, then down to the ground. "I read a story in there."

"You read a story in your dream?" Rui Yifu rephrased her words, speaking gently yet with exhaustion edging his voice.

"Mmhm, it said that there were... very sad people. They gave their sadness to everyone until there was no one left to share it with. So they asked for someone to help them and... and, something came, and they did something and made the gods upset. The thing they talked to betrayed them."

"Oh! That... maybe the thing was Baichan?" Bo suggested, his mind running a few steps behind his words as he spoke. "Because, because that no-face lady said she had been betrayed right? Because Wang Huaqing-" he noticed Rui Yifu's brow twitch but continued onwards, "-they were, they were working together right? But... why did he attack Boss? And what happened to Boss? His arm was gone and his leg exploded..." the imagery was still fresh in his mind. The thick red sap drenching white cloth.

"Bo, do you know who the Headless God is?" Rui Yifu asked.

He shrugged, "scary guy in charge of curses and dead things right?" Bo immediately realized that was not the answer Rui Yifu was looking for. "Really, that's all I know about him."

"Liu Xie is the Headless God," Rui Yifu said, "I think after he got attacked at the Free City, perhaps he got infected? That's the only thing that makes sense. He got infected and it allowed Baichan to take him over. Or maybe..."

"Or maybe what?"

Rui Yifu rested his head in the palm of his hand, "maybe a bodiless god finally regained its form."

Bo was no scholar and frankly half of what Rui Yifu had been speaking sounded like utter nonsense to him. But it was something to hold onto. It gave a reason for what happened even if it was still incomprehensible to him. He looked down at the sword that had been flung to him and slowly closed his hand around the sheath. He thought about pulling it free, to look at what was left to him yet the cruel hilt discouraged him. Strange and spine-like, as though torn from some ancient creature, and wrapped tightly with old hempen strips. Nothing about it looked grand or mighty or any other word he could think of to apply to swords.

It was a sword made to look ugly.

Zhu'er muttered something, so low and so thickly accented that Bo could not understand it. "What was that?" He asked.

"Mmghgffhh..."

"I can't understand you, little sister."

"...He said you're an idiot." She spoke slightly louder, but her voice still sounded quiet and subdued.

"Who? Liu Xie?"

She nodded.

Bo looked down at the sword again.

"Swords are only for idiots."

He took that phrase and engraved it in bright shiny words in his heart, jumping back to his feet. He clutched the sword's hilt tightly, feeling his brain flare with a headache that only made him more certain in his choices, a flaring that bloomed into disjointed shapes and directions that he did not understand. "Yeah! I'm an idiot then! I'm going to be the biggest idiot in the world Zhu'er! We're gonna save Boss!"

"I'm happy you've decided to carry on by becoming completely delusional," Rui Yifu got up from the table. "But we still need to get out of here."

"Ah, yeah, that," Bo deflated a little bit, taking Zhu'er's hand. "Do you have any ideas?"

Rui Yifu nodded, "follow me."