"Remember that the easiest way to sneak past the ming-dwang is to not be seen," Kaname said, tightening her hold on Kai-Se's hand. The darkness was still as thick as ever—a fact that wouldn't change anytime soon. He still found it hard to navigate the cell so if they would have any chance of escaping today, he'd have to attach himself to Kaname like an annoying barnacle.

Now, as they stuck against the wall, using it to find their way towards the door, Kai-Se's mind ran through the plan, or rather, the lack of it. Kaname was tight-lipped as ever, batting away any chances to explain to Kai-Se what it was they're escaping prison for. Of course, the end goal was still to revive An-Ri, just so she could overthrow Amatesu and bring Shaoryeong back into order, but the road to that goal...that one was a bit hazy.

Kai-Se, himself, could work with that. He's not as rigid as the old man inside Nao-Zai. But this was a new territory for him, with fundamental laws he didn't quite understand and places he hadn't ever laid eyes on before. When he was unfamiliar with his surroundings, he would be prone to making mistakes, and when he made one in a place such as this, fate wouldn't be so forgiving.

This was Shaoryeong. Contrary to what the myths introduced as the land of splendor and wonder, what he found at the other side of the gate was an empire of cruelty and tyranny. And inside a place like this, one small misstep and it'd be over. Not just for him, but for Kaname too.

That's why he needed a plan. At least, he'd have a few things to hold on to whenever things get messy.

As it was, Kaname's lips were sealed shut, and as they crept along the walls, waiting for a ming-dwang to open the prison door, Kai-Se felt the frustration well inside him. He opened his mouth to ask the god once more, only to be yanked forward. The sudden rush of his body being out of balance and his control threw his thoughts into a scattered loop.

The metallic hinges shrieked as the ming-dwang padded into the darkness. Kaname's steps got faster, her bare feet slapping the cold stone floor without much of a scratch. Kai-Se was strung along, his own boots doing its best to remain imperceptible. It was hard. Impossible, even.

His shoulder brushed against the wall, eliciting a painful rustle and thud. He bit down on his tongue to avoid crying out by instinct. Kaname ducked low, pressing herself against the wall. It prompted Kai-Se to do the same. A whiff of sweat mixed with blood and unwashed clothes wafted into the darkness. The ming-dwang strode inside the cell.

Kaname squeezed Kai-Se's hands tighter, almost making his knuckles crack together. He clamped his jaw shut to swallow the whimper rising from his throat. Together, they edged closer and closer to the stream of light shining from the corridor. In that small pocket, the ming-dwang would be sure to see them, so they needed to do it while its back was to the door. Kai-Se gulped against the lump bobbing inside his throat. His heart pounded against his chest in erratic beats. Just a little more...

"Now!" Kaname hissed.

Before Kai-Se could ask what she meant by that, his world whirled so fast his eyes crossed inside his skull. Then, without even letting him regain his bearings, Kaname's hand clasped around his wrist forced him to run after her, to keep up with her frantic pace. A sharp throb speared into his temples as the sudden change of brightness in his surroundings blotted most of his vision.

He wanted to tell Kaname to slow down, to have him rest for a moment, but who was he kidding if he hoped for that? This was Shaoryeong. One mistake could hurt a lot of people, including himself, no matter how muted his senses were in this place. How many times did he have to remind himself?

They ran, their feet never quite hitting the ground for more than a second. The wind tore Kai-Se's hair off his forehead and drove Kaname's long locks back, slapping his cheeks and stinging his eyes in the process. Now in the bright light of the outside world, he had confirmed it was more of a light lavender shade more than gray. This was also the first time he saw Kaname out in the open. He realized she only stood up to his shoulders and he wasn't that tall. How would she compare should she stand next to...say, Nao-Zai?

None of that would matter if they didn't make it out of this corridor first. Kai-Se craned his neck, studying the details of the walls, the ceiling, and the lanterns blazing in their yellow-orange light. The building where the prison was located looked more like a separate palace than a place where people suffer. Together with Kaname, they whizzed past familiar windows, overlooking the unchanging red sky, pillars with peeling green paint, and grailed, wooden walls swatched with crimson.

With a painful squeak, Kaname pulled him to the right, ultimately ending up in a wide room peppered with towering, red pillars. It would've been grand, if only he could see where the line of pillars ended. He kept expecting to see a throne or at least a raised dais for one. His mind picked on the idea that there was some other thing in this room other than just the horizontal lines of red alternating with the darkness of the planks supporting the ceiling.

But there was none. It was just the pillars. And them.

"Why didn't we lock the guard in the cell?" Kai-Se asked, wrenching his hand from Kaname's grip. This time, thankfully, the god obliged. He massaged his throbbing wrist now lined with irritated skin. "We could have bought ourselves more time."

Kaname didn't pause, didn't even look back at him. She just continued walking. "If we do, then it will call for more. It will be seen as an act of defiance against their authority so they will have the permission to kill us on sight. Not only will we have a bajillion of them after us, they will also be out for the kill. I don't know about you, but that's not a good way to go."

Kai-Se rubbed his chin. Yeah, that didn't sound like the best way out of all the ways they could die without honor in this place. "But aren't they already allowed to kill us now that we've escaped?" he wondered. He really should stop asking these kinds of questions. It's not helping anyone, much less, him.

"Escape isn't a challenge of authority," Kaname said. "It's just the desire to be somewhere better."

Silence intensified between them as soon as they passed what Kai-Se idly counted as the fifty-first pillar. Now that there wasn't any constant pain pounding at the back of his head, his strange penchant in noticing and remembering odd things was slowly coming back. "Okay, but where are you taking me?" He widened his pace just to catch up to the god. It's a brisk walk—one that he would have died of ten minutes ago—but so far, he was able to keep up. Shaoryeong did have its wonders, that much he couldn't deny. "Why does this place never have anything else?"

Kaname shrugged. "It's a hall of punishment," she said. "Of course, it's going to find a way to punish anyone who wanders into its embrace."

"You mean it isn't just a set of pillars stretching on to forever for you?" Kai-Se knitted his eyebrows and looked at the ceiling while doing a quick turn without breaking his stride.

The god snorted. "There's tapestries for me," she said. "That's an upgrade, right?"

Kai-Se blinked. He always considered himself to be somewhat of a joker but even he couldn't find anything funny in this situation. Perhaps Kaname was more able to see the fun side of things than him. For that, he'd gladly concede.

Then, Kaname stopped, making Kai-Se almost run into her. He held himself back at the right time just before he barreled straight through the tiny god. "We're here," she announced, staring up at a red pillar that's identical to the hundreds before it and the infinite ones up ahead.

Kai-Se frowned, bracing his hips with his hands. "Hate to break it to you but, um...it's a pillar."

"Tell me, then," Kaname pressed her hand against her chosen pillar with a smile. "Who's here for half a millennia?"

Before Kai-Se could reply, the air hummed with strange energy around Kaname. Gusts of wind rose from the floor, driving her hair to flutter around her head. She closed her eyes just as an ethereal light enveloped her body, making her brown skin glow. When she opened her eyes, they were bright orange. "Reveal," she said, a strange timbre coating her voice which wasn't there before. It made the word reverberate into the empty and endless hall around them, sending shivers down Kai-Se's spine.

Then, the light faded as quickly as it appeared and Kaname was back to her non-glowy self. She turned to him, her expression a mix of urgency and panic. "It won't be too long before they find us," she said, taking hold of his wrist again. She sure liked doing that. "Let's hurry."

Kai-Se opened his mouth to ask, protest, or, really, to say something, but he was yanked forward once again. Together, they left the huge corridor of red pillars and delved into this darker, narrower, and scarier hallway which seemed to have sprung from between the pillars. How had Kaname known where exactly it lay? Oh, right. She's been here forever.

He made the mistake of looking at what he assumed to be the walls. Instead of a plain, painted surface, he was greeted with rows upon rows of niches punched straight through the space. Inside each niche were small figurines of people. They weren't the carvings of spirits and mythical creatures Kai-Se had seen being traded in the streets of the towns in Dangrao. They didn't have serene expressions. Their faces were frozen mid-scream, contorted into shapes of pure terror. It looked like pain might have been involved.

"This..." Kai-Se attempted to articulate his thoughts but all of them turned into breathless gasps out of his mouth.

Kaname didn't reply. She just flashed him a passive stare, like all this didn't bother a shred of her conscience. Kai-Se was about to point that out when something familiar whizzed by his periphery. It was enough to make him pull against Kaname's hold, stalling her in her tracks as well.

Despite the glowering coming from Kaname's direction, Kai-Se squinted at the figurine in one particular niche. Like the others he passed, this one was in a similar state. He forced himself to look closer, to study it more. The figurine looked like it's made from unbaked but rigid clay. There were some sort of ridges below the eyes, indicating it's either a scar or something else...

Spectacles.

In this time in Dansarun, there was only one god who wore them.

Nishi. The god of the wind.

"Hold on," Kai-Se tried speaking again. Kaname glanced at him before turning back to the figurines. "When you said Amatesu imprisons them, this is what you mean?"

Kaname's expression hardened as a dark cloud passed across her eyes. He also noticed her eyes were a bright shade of green—something Kai-Se had never known to be common among mortals. "This is the fate that awaits Amatesu's creations," she said, confirming what Kai-Se didn't want to hear.

"Can they feel anything while being stuck like this?" Kai-Se moved to touch Nishi's figurine but stopped halfway. It'd be weird if he suddenly began treating the god like a toy.

Kaname rolled her shoulders. "I haven't been stuck as one but I hear stories," she said. "They can sense everything that's going around them, including us. But the real punishment was that they couldn't do anything about it. They're frozen while the rest of the world moves around them. It's...one form of punishment to the mind and the soul."

Kai-Se could imagine why. It's not like he had some experience of the sort, but he felt the frustration of seeing others live the life he would have wanted and wondering why he couldn't. Just like the gods in this hall, he had been trapped, forced to live a certain way he wouldn't ever thrive in. Like a lifeless figurine, he was just as helpless as they all were.

If Kai-Se had been in Nishi's and the other gods' shoes, he would have desired for a different world too. He would have done all he could to escape this cruelty, this...hell. He couldn't blame them for doing all the things the gods had never experienced once they emerged into the mortal realm.

A sickening feeling swirled in Kai-Se's gut. He stood on his tiptoes, trying to see through the other, higher niches. There were just so many. Like the pillars stretching forward, the racks climbed higher and higher without ever stopping. Were the gods he sent through the gate all here? Had Amatesu punished all of them?

Kai-Se twiddled his fingers, his mind whirring with a hundred different thoughts at once. Was this the fate he had sentenced the gods in? It's...

Kaname inhaled, a sudden noise against the stillness of the hall. Before she could open her mouth, the sound of heavy footsteps erupted from the lip of the corridor. Kaname cursed, turning back to the niches. "This is going to be a frenzy," she said to no one, to Kai-Se, maybe. "Hold tight."

Kai-Se stepped forward, hands lunging for Kaname's. Too late. Energy hummed in blinding light, slapping his eyeballs into blotting out the rest of his vision. "Kaname, what—"

He didn't get to finish as the weight of pure magic slammed against him, throwing him backwards. His soles skidded across the polished, patterned floors in dragging squeaks. What was Kaname doing?

When the light subsided, confused chatter replaced it in hordes. Kai-Se rubbed his eyes to realize he had ended up a few paces away from Kaname. Then, his gaze landed on the mess of colorful robes and various, tinkling regalia.

The gods were alive. And they were moving, albeit a little stiff and mechanical.

"Everyone!" Kaname's voice floated across the hall, startling the gods to attention. "We need to lock this hall. Incapacitate the ming-dwang but never kill them. I have something to tell you later. Go!"

Then, before Kai-Se's eyes, the horde of richly-dressed gods armed with an assortment of weapons and magical talent clashed with the onslaught of four-armed creatures with painted blue skin and grotesque, rectangular faces.

It was chaos, indeed.