---

Another dream, strange and terrifying.

Yueshi woke with a start, heart pounding in his thin chest. He didn't understand what was going on, or anything about this strange place where death did not seem permanent. It was all a twisted, bad dream he could not wake from, and he could only assume it was from some terrible karma in a past life.

He stood and shook out his fur, eyes fixed on the ground. He could see the fissures, and he could feel the echoes of the earth's tremors beneath his paws, or so he imagined.

Let it be just a dream, he thought as he lifted his head.

Morning made the images in his mind less frightening, less real, and he made his way onward with no particular place in mind. He was aimless, he had been aimless. A cursed man better off away from everyone for angry ghosts clung to him to make sure he suffered. That's what he'd been told, wasn’t it?

But the angriest ghosts of all seemed to have split the land.

The sea of suffering is boundless, he thought as the light of blue flames reflected in his eyes. He turned and looked over his shoulder, but he knew the phrase was not so literal.