Voidlight Rising (A Xianxia Cultivation Adventure)

Dreams are the gateway to the spirit, spoken to you through the stars. Study them. Interpret their meaning. They will lead you to know what you fear and what you desire more than anything in the world. -Tsuyuki Chouko, teaching a group of Heaven's Blade Disciples

I woke on a hard, stone floor. Cold water dripped on my head. Worse than the cold were my chains, which seemed to burn my skin with their frozen links. I blinked blurry traces of moon qi out of my eyes and tried to sit up.

My chains tightened further, and I gasped as they bit into my wrists and pinned my shoulders back at a terrible angle.

"Enjoying yourself?" Jinshi's voice was above me, and an instant later, a boot was against my shoulder. He shoved me roughly, rolling me over, which only put pressure on my protesting shoulders.

"It's just a dream," I told myself, already scanning the cold cavern for signs that this reality wasn't entirely real. To my surprise, the dream had put me in a familiar cave, the one where I'd first met Lin. The grand door to the Labyrinth stood looming with its white jade moons and blood-colored rubies practically pulsing with its power. A greed for my soul seemed to tug at me, even as I lay wrapped in chains, and it chilled me far more than the chains ever could.

"Oh, it's more than a dream, my little escapee," said the Labyrinth Guardian. It crouched next to me, still wearing Jinshi's face. "It's a welcome home party before you starve to death on the street."

"I just need to break free." Panic began welling up in my chest, but I forced it back. I didn't have the energy to deal with both the Labyrinth's machinations and my own emotions.

"You won't though," it argued. "You can't. I took over that silly array of yours. It might not be the Labyrinth, but I suppose it'll do."

"That's not within your power."

"I contained you, the greatest Ascendent of your time, for thirty thousand years," the Labyrinth sneered. "Do you really think you're a good judge of what I'm capable of?"

Without warning, a hand latched onto my chains, and I found myself hurled against that terrible door. I coughed, feeling the Labyrinth's pull on my core and my qi, even with Lin's anchor holding me on this side.

It's not real, it's not real. Just find an escape. There has to be one! I told myself. The answer was in the details. The cracks in the walls, maybe they weren't quite right, and I could use that small wrinkle in a fabricated reality to break it.

"How real is it going to be when your friend dies, hmm?" mused the Guardian. "You know he was bit by one of Reili's servants. How long do you figure he'll last?"

"He'll be fine!"

"So, you said before, but if he's trapped in a dream of his own, do you think he can resist the venom? How long before the only thing keeping out of my grasp withers from the void eating away at his blood?" The Labyrinth smiled cruelly. "Yes, Yoru. I do believe we'll be truly reunited soon. Look forward to it."

"No, I just need to-"

My protest was cut short by a blade swiping across my cheek. The Labyrinth Guardian tapped the flat of the blade against my skin.

"No, I don't think you have a choice in this, Yoru," it said shortly. "Now, let's reminisce, shall we? While we wait for your failure to protect your friend to finally bear fruit? It's only a matter of time."

The Labyrinth Guardian's cold laughter echoed around the cavern, and my chains tightened to the point where I couldn't breathe. It was all I could do to close my eyes and hope that somehow, one of the others would break free first, because I was thoroughly trapped.

Xinya looked around the empty street. There were no serpents chasing them, and none of those creepy Watchers bearing down on them, but that didn't change the fact that she knew they had to keep moving. But, what was she supposed to do about this?

Yoru warned that the dream trap would isolate each one of them in a reality created to ensnare them, but when Xinya stepped onto the glowing array, nothing had happened. She was still on the street in Half-Moon Manor with the silver roses growing next to the stone street. Nearby, both Lin and Yoru had collapsed, and though Lin was sleeping quite peacefully, Yoru definitely wasn't. He twitched and muttered unintelligibly in his sleep, which scared Xinya more than anything else.

Was she really unaffected? Or was she on the ground, too, experiencing a dream that just coincidentally looked just like the reality she knew to be true. How would she even know the difference?

Yoru taught her lots of things about moon qi. To a moon artist, reality was not as fixed as it seemed. Yet, when it changed, there were always signs to the observant individual. For example, Xinya had one technique which altered reality. She used it to pick and choose the aspects of lightning which were real and which ones weren't, thus changing its properties. One bolt from the little girl could be extra bright but lack any electric bite to it. Another might burn but not shock. Yet, in every case, a keen observer, like Yoru, could pick out the difference in shade and speed and know the alteration before it ever struck him.

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In all of Yoru's stories of the Labyrinth, he always said that it was all about the details, knowing if something was real or not. If the wall cracks didn't line up or someone was wearing the wrong color, there was a chance it wasn't real.

Xinya looked around. Everything looked the same as it did a few minutes ago. The roses were still silver, the street was still paved. Yoru and Lin both wore the exact same clothes they'd been wearing before she stepped on the platform. The only difference was that the green veins on Lin's skin were slowly fading to gray, and blood was starting to ooze from the punctures in his left boot. Whatever was happening there didn't seem out of the ordinary, even if it was a rather alarming situation.

But, if there were no details out of place, then how could Xinya know for sure that she wasn't trapped in the dream like the other two?

Does it even matter? She thought to herself. If she was in the dream, then there was nothing she could do to free herself. If she wasn't…then maybe she was the only one who could help Lin and Yoru.

She didn't bother to hide the grin that crept onto her face. For the first time, she could do something that neither of her uncles could do. She could save them instead of them saving her!

Looking at her uncles, she decided that Yoru was the better choice to save first. After all, he was the expert in reality traps. Besides, hearing his whimpers and half-muttered words made her feel bad for him. She didn't know what kinds of torment he was experiencing at the hands of his own trap, but she was fairly sure she didn't want to. The faster Yoru could get back on his feet and get back to being his strong and arrogant self, the better everyone would be.

Xinya approached the artist. Chiho trilled softly in his hair, trying to calm him, but he didn't seem to hear it. She knelt down, wrapped her hands in his chains before grabbing one of his arms and pulling with all her might.

She'd never tell him, but Yoru was heavy. He was a full-grown man, and she was only eleven. Even with the strength of a bronze, she struggled. Slowly, painfully slowly given the moon artist's whimpers and the poison likely spreading through their companion's body, Xinya pulled him to the far side of the array and to a set of grand stairs that led up to a very important-looking building. The array couldn't have spread that far, so she set him down on the stairs.

"Hey, Yoru!" she called. He didn't answer. She shook his shoulder. "Yoru! Yoru wake up!" She scowled when she still got no response. Figuring that only drastic solutions would draw him from the qi-induced slumber that trapped him, she called on her qi. Lightning surged into him, and he jerked.

"No, Lin! Poison, and…" he spluttered. Then, he blinked at the little girl, as if trying to understand her standing before him. "How…what did you do?"

"I shocked you." He must really have been more out of it than she thought.

He rolled his eyes. "I caught that part. How did you break out of the dream maze?"

"What? Like it's hard?" She shrugged. "I might still be in it. Nothing changed when I stepped on it."

Yoru narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing her in the way he often did when he was faced with something that went against his view of the world. Then, he sighed.

"What about Lin?"

"I was going to drag him over next. Stay here." Even if it was a small one, a small thrill went through Xinya at giving her elder an instruction that he couldn't logically refuse. After all, she was immune to the array. He was not. That it was his array in the first place made it all the more satisfying to her.

Lin was even paler than the last time she saw him. The bark-like veins on his skin were nearly all gray now. Xinya didn't waste any time. After taking his glasses off and slipping them into her sash for safe-keeping, she took Lin by the arm and began dragging him away. He was lighter than Yoru, likely thanks to the fact that he didn't carry several dozen feet of chains draped around his person, but he still wasn't light as far as the eleven-year-old was concerned. As soon as he was off the array, Yoru stood from the stairs and carried him the rest of the way.

"Shock him, quickly," he instructed softly. "In the dream, his adaptation isn't needed, so its failing, even when he needs it most to fight off that bite."

Xinya nodded, placed both hands on Lin's shoulders, and shocked him. Unlike Yoru, Lin didn't wake all at once. Instead, he shifted, as if he were just waking from a normal sleep.

"Yoru…what's…the song?" he murmured. Xinya exchanged a look with her uncle before they shrugged at one another.

"I don't know what he's talking about," Yoru answered.

"Eh? Where," Lin rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Where am I?" Xinya handed his glasses back, and he slipped them back on. He sighed. "Ah. It's dark again."

"Have a nice dream?" teased Yoru as he pulled off Lin's left boot. "It must have been, if I was in it."

Lin's cheeks flushed red, and he looked away. "I…don't…I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't worry about it," the moon artist continued. "I'm just glad that one of us got the normal results of that technique. It's supposed to trap you in the deepest, most fervent wish of your soul. Joy is harder to defeat than fear."

Lin's blush deepened further, but Yoru didn't comment on it. Instead, he just went about examining the bite on Lin's ankle and instructing him to restart his adaptation to slow the spread. It was lucky that Lin was a wood artist with a focus on mitigating the effects of foreign qi. Otherwise, the bite would probably have killed him instantly. As it was, he was in for a rather unpleasant night, but he'd probably recover.

Meanwhile, Xinya continued to wonder why she hadn't been affected by the array. Maybe she was too weak to trigger it, or maybe there was something else going on. Whatever it was, it was consistent, since she'd walked over it twice to drag her uncles to safety.

"We shouldn't linger," Yoru continued, putting Lin's arm over his shoulder to help him stand. "We can rest in the guardhouse between the front and rear palaces, but there's one last place we have to get through first, and if I remember anything, the Throne Room may well be the worst of them all."