( Realms and nooks and bloodied corners, and crannies where spider's webs gather and thicken in clusters, and snag like hanging nooses. This, time has taught, is Akhuras: a territory not hunted but haunted, where the living barely cling and only obstinance and heritage yet call the lands not demons' own.
Kingdoms fall. Cities bend the knee. Merchants sell flesh or themselves. Villages are enslaved to their persecutors or their superstitions. If Lan Wangji's step hardens and his back stiffens, it is for this: the quiet surety that they travel where no man should linger long. )
They walk countless and brazen. Men, beasts, women, children, demons. ( Each, encountered at various twists and contortions, skips and stumbles of their road. Two years, and he has known every hardship. ) Here, his face unknown.
no subject
A world their own.
( Realms and nooks and bloodied corners, and crannies where spider's webs gather and thicken in clusters, and snag like hanging nooses. This, time has taught, is Akhuras: a territory not hunted but haunted, where the living barely cling and only obstinance and heritage yet call the lands not demons' own.
Kingdoms fall. Cities bend the knee. Merchants sell flesh or themselves. Villages are enslaved to their persecutors or their superstitions. If Lan Wangji's step hardens and his back stiffens, it is for this: the quiet surety that they travel where no man should linger long. )
They walk countless and brazen. Men, beasts, women, children, demons. ( Each, encountered at various twists and contortions, skips and stumbles of their road. Two years, and he has known every hardship. ) Here, his face unknown.
( But he will show himself. They ever do. )