( He watches with brow furrowed, doesn't flinch at Lan Zhan's actions, for all part of him remembers burning underhand himself, which is odd: not one of his standard memories of pain that he has forgotten, but something borrowed. The rabbit-child clutching at him, partly tucked into his robes, and the soft hiss of a gasping inhalation, as the small one turns, rabbit-like nose twitching, ears long and shivering, the whole of his small body taunt.

Focussed on the chamber they'd escaped, and the husk waiting, thirsty, waiting to be filled.

He shifts his grip on the rabbit-child, whispers nonsense of reassurance he isn't cognoscente enough to remember what is in the saying even after the moment of its speaking. Thinks of their son, watched by a woman down the mountain, and the quakes, and the burning, and the flame. Of water, hot and quenching, cold and claiming, tepid and target of a dozen different ailments, swept and sundered. )

The altar. The waters flow above the altar, too.

( He looks to Lan Zhan, expression set. The child, rabbit and boy, stares down the hall too, as the sounds of the restless dead ebb and swirl as whispers and shadows, plucking at their periphery. Wash away, fill the emptiness, sooth the flesh that'd been made of nothing but ash from bone. )

We're going to have to do a lot of running if we bring down that, but... we might be able to shatter the altar, to reach down below.

( The unasked question: which, when both rely on Lan Zhan's strength paired with any talisman Wei Wuxian himself has made. The mechanics, and the brutality of strength, to sunder a ceiling, an altar, or perhaps the thickened walls of the same chamber. Only two perhaps fast enough to spare them from the overwhelming need of the wraiths that filled that chamber, thirst endless as the seas were vast. )

There rests the heart of darkness.