Crack. Wei Wuxian's head rises, turns, as he half turns as well. "Here?"
In this land, shadowed and horrified, a terror of its own deep in soil desperate for anything but the wasteland it became, not barren, growing longer and longer in the whispering grasses of its defeats. A thin harvest, leaving bones cleaving to flesh, nothing between.
"Once life ruled here," he says, and he gestures with his hand, steps forward toward the stone of his rest, toward the entrance out onto the dilapidated courtyard, and its fallow fallen fields. "Once Yiling wasn't a place where the dead drove themselves to madness in their own bitter company. King of that, yes, and warden."
Wards that activate, that bind. Seals that attract, not just repel. Compasses that spun to track down resentment and the shadowed pits of things which were evil for a lack of good, which were greedy with no regard for anything but their own satiation.
He was king, here, and his throne stripped bare, and only the ghosts to haunt it after, turning over loose stones, looking, always looking.
He smiles, circumvents the bones of a bird that had thought, perhaps, the failed lotus pond was a temporary haven. Deadly mistakes, if one is not wise to the way of the world's movement. Even when one is.
"Lan Zhan, shall we play in the courtyard?" Music to soothe, to push on souls.
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In this land, shadowed and horrified, a terror of its own deep in soil desperate for anything but the wasteland it became, not barren, growing longer and longer in the whispering grasses of its defeats. A thin harvest, leaving bones cleaving to flesh, nothing between.
"Once life ruled here," he says, and he gestures with his hand, steps forward toward the stone of his rest, toward the entrance out onto the dilapidated courtyard, and its fallow fallen fields. "Once Yiling wasn't a place where the dead drove themselves to madness in their own bitter company. King of that, yes, and warden."
Wards that activate, that bind. Seals that attract, not just repel. Compasses that spun to track down resentment and the shadowed pits of things which were evil for a lack of good, which were greedy with no regard for anything but their own satiation.
He was king, here, and his throne stripped bare, and only the ghosts to haunt it after, turning over loose stones, looking, always looking.
He smiles, circumvents the bones of a bird that had thought, perhaps, the failed lotus pond was a temporary haven. Deadly mistakes, if one is not wise to the way of the world's movement. Even when one is.
"Lan Zhan, shall we play in the courtyard?" Music to soothe, to push on souls.