The winter was harsh and cold. Unforgiving to the poor travelers without natural coats of fur. More unforgiving to the residents in the impoverished land. Twenty years had passed and so much has changed. Too much to fit in twenty years, Liang thought yet here she was, witnessing and living through it all.

She trudged the knee-deep snow, making muffled crunches as she plowed the ice with her legs which she felt could be blue from all the cold. Night was approaching fast and since it was the ice season, night came earlier and lasted much longer. She was in a forest somewhere in the East, perhaps in Yofuchi or Kumokage but highly likely that she was in Fukamori which was ten times vaster than the two lands combined. She wasn’t certain. Ever since she traded the pigskin map for a night in an inn with five mugs of ale and a meal, she didn’t know where she had been or where she was headed.

Her personal beliefs dictated that it didn’t matter where to go if she didn’t know where she was going. And since she fled the Northern Dragonair Temple, she never knew where she was going. Anywhere with wine or anything to drink that could dull her senses. All these years, she vanquished evil spirits that followed her—ghosts, entities, even some ill-fated humans but the ones she couldn’t vanquish with her power were the most dangerous ones. They weren’t enigmas or specters—that would have been much easier. They were something darker that dwelled in the past and had the ability to visit her in the present. And not even the most powerful magic in the knowledge of old could banish them. Alcohol seemed to be the most effective weapon against them because whenever she drank, those figures momentarily stay away and she could sleep the nights in peace.

The wind blew against Liang’s face like a cutting blade. It was no less than solid ice sliding across her skin, making it ache and she pulled the edges of her hood to cover what more skin it could reach. She felt stiff from the cold and she couldn’t quite move freely. She grabbed the leather pouch from her harness and uncorked it. She drank the ale and felt it warm her throat, then her lungs and finally spread through her body. She felt slightly at ease but the cold overpowered her even more. She has to find an inn somewhere or a cave where she could light a fire if she wanted to survive the night. Or perhaps just die in the cold. Many times she thought of her death, asked it come to her but it never did. And she didn’t have the courage to end her life as well…not after what she’s been through. The world was in ruins but she was in no hurry to leave.

Darkness began approaching by the minute. The leafless trees with their skeletal branches began shifting form in the dark. As it became darker, the trees seemed to be coming alive. Liang began to feel sensations of being watched with eyes unknown. There weren’t any spirits nearby, not ones that were awake. The trees were dormant, their spirits asleep. Liang could feel their placidity radiating from them. But along with it, there was malice, eyes staring at her.

Whose eyes, she did not know. It could be a wolf’s eyes or a human’s eyes and both were equally terrifying. As long as it was a regular, four-legged wolf and not the ones born of the Godkissed spirit—the ones that walked on two legs and fashioned themselves with clothes. The Second Tragedy, Liang thought—birth of the Guren. She witnessed it happen firsthand, through the crack of the catacomb door…she watched it happen and she fled, twenty years behind her like an ugly shadow.

Liang stopped for a moment when the path she had been walking branched into two. She almost did not notice that there was another path leading to another way had it not been from the snow-covered wooden sign. The first sign, nailed above the other, read “Akako” in the common script and beneath it, the characters in Eastern dialect. Liang was from the North and as a result, the script remained a scribble to her eyes. The second sign, Liang did not bother to read at all.

She was in Fukamori, she realized when she read ‘Akako’ and didn’t hesitate to take this path. She avoided the second route with a mild distaste and a behemoth of fear. It was where they were born…the un-killable phantoms. She skidded through the snow until she made up the distant glow of the village and didn’t stop walking until she was on the entrance.

Akako was just a village yet it used to be a great one. All its glory owed to the panther god honored with a giant statue at the town center. There was a giant arch, Tori, it was called, on the entrance with two watchtowers on either side. There hung a bell on the gigantic Tori, at the center of it that was rung for festive celebrations and emergencies. Akako’s Great Keep was the second thing every traveler and villager could see after the Tori. It was governed by Inshi Yuji, father of Inshi Yuki, Liang’s former associate in the northern temple. Akako had three-storey houses made of wood and cement. Lanterns hung in intervals about every home and children ran happily everywhere playing. This was where Yuki lived. This was Akako.

Now, Liang came to something short of a lie of what she’s been told. The Tori of the village was nothing but two pillars, its base burned black but Liang could still see some parts of it where it used to be painted red. There were no watchtowers only what remained of it—piles of splintering wood left in its places for twenty years as if to serve as the watchmen’s shrine or become a mortal reminder of what befell the continent twenty years ago. Since there was no Tori, the first thing Liang had seen when she entered the village was the Great Keep. Its ruins. It had no roof and what only remained of it were its stone walls.

There were no more grandeur buildings, only ramshackle frames with hung tarps and giant rags to form small tents. Children were crying after their parents whose faces were so dreaded there was no more room for comfort or affection to their searching children. Liang arrived at an encampment, a mere collection of people living together beneath poverty, something much lower than that. And if she could find a tavern here, gods open their gates again.

She walked in the village, earning curious gazes from hollow eyes. The war had ended twenty years ago when the conqueror Zhaohu defeated all forces in the land yet its remnants remained fresh as though it ended just moments ago. No emperor predicted Zhaohu’s strategy. That was their downfall. The emperors were so busy lavishing themselves and fortifying keeps that they have forgotten protecting the pillars that made them stand—the exorcists’ temples.

When Emperor Zhaohu took sovereignty, the humans suffered. They were denied every right to own and thrive. Slavery was instigated and human blood was spilled as often as wine in extravagant celebrations. Twenty years and the Guren already reproduced enough to outnumber the decreasing population of humans. Where the humans suffered famine, the Guren feasted like kings. Humans degraded to livestock ever since. Should a mother birth a godkissed infant, the emperor’s collectors—a pack of horse-riding wolves always in ten—take them and bring them to the palace for a gruesome fate.

Liang stopped at the town center looking for an establishment that was well enough to be called a tavern. The giant statue of the panther god loomed above her. Its form was of a four-legged panther. Landcrawler, it was called as all of the other animals that resembled the Guren. A two-legged panther be the Guren and a four-legged one be the landcrawler.

The sculpture was made of bronze, blackened over the years it was unkempt. The panther’s teeth were bare, eyes scrunched to the center as it stared far ahead. The people of Fukamori were known to be meticulous folks. Everything they owned, they maintained ritualistically. But now they were so broken that they had merely become the remnants of a great past. Liang knew better than to touch the statue but there was something over her, curiosity perhaps that was taking control of her body.

She reached over to the base of the statue, to the grimed paw, slowly and reluctantly. The moment her palm touched the cold metal, she felt nothing. No energy, no presence. It was either the panther god retreated back to heaven or died in battle with the other village deities.

Liang turned away and caught sight of a small building with yellow lamps. She immediately knew that it was a tavern from the aroma that warmed her nostrils. There was the ale and there was the food. Heading toward it, she was stopped on her second step when a stranger approached her.

“I can see that you’re not from around here,” he said. The man was old. He had a curved back that drew his chest in and his shoulders low. He had hair of dirty white growing only on the sides of his head, leaving his crown bald. He appeared frail because of the short bamboo cane he used to support his weight but Liang knew as much to never underestimate the easterners.

Liang heaved a breath and let it out in a thick, icy smoke. “Is it that obvious, old one?”

“Bah!” the man waved his hand at Liang and took careful steps toward her. “I was born here, child, and I could tell all the faces that belong here even those lost in the battlegrounds. I know an Akakonin when I see one.”

“And am I not?”

The man pulled a toothless smile, one eye growing larger than the other as he looked at Liang as though as he might have known something.

“You could be a southerner—Haeguk? No, your eyes are too round. You could pass as a Ma’aloni, but your features are too soft—your skin too light and you’re certainly not from Aagjamin in the west. That leaves us north. A dragon?”

Liang swallowed. “A lizard,” she lied. This had been a fashion for the four kingdoms naming the northern exorcists dragons and its people—lizards. It had been an insult to the natives of the north that did not practice exorcism but Liang branded herself as one if it meant remaining invisible. “The dragons were long wiped out along with the others.”

“So only the lizards remain?” the man raised a brow at Liang, leaning half his body toward her. “Dragons are born every day, my child, perhaps every other day with so few of us left but they are born…”

There was something missing in the man’s statement. Something that every living human knew and he seemed to wait for Liang to say it. “…and taken?” Liang’s tone rose.

“And taken.” The man bobbed his head up and down slowly as if just agreeing on a casual confirmation. “The dragons are eaten before they could breathe fire or grow larger than the emperor’s plate,” the man spoke in tongues but Liang followed well. He began leading her away from the tavern and Liang unknowingly followed as if there was something important she had to know from the old man.

“Let us assume that a few dragons grew well and powerful, none of them would know how to wield all that power and thus, become utterly useless, wouldn’t you agree, child?”

Liang nodded. “So long as they grow and be kept out of the Tiger’s eyes, they could live and die in peace.”

“Peace?” the old man repeated loudly as if that was the only thing that he heard from Liang’s statement.

“Tell me, dragon, is there peace in this kingdom or in the other four?” the man’s tone remained as calm as before but had a certain sharpness to it that cut through Liang.

“I am no dragon—”

“Spare me the lie, child,” the man interjected. “You’re smart to have hidden what you are but there is no longer use of lying to me.”

Liang didn’t notice the change from around her. At one moment, they were by the panther god’s statue and in the next they were near a picket fence of dried bamboo and vines trying to slip through a gap that seemed to fit the man perfectly. Liang had to bend down and suck in a lungful of icy air to squeeze herself through and that’s when she resumed their conversation.

“What makes you think I am a dragon?”

“Not all godkissed children are sent to temples. Some grow up to be farmers like women and me.”

For a moment, Liang was surprised but it did not last long and around this point, Liang saw it fit no longer that she pretend to be a humble traveler. “The era of man is over. We are but its embers slowly dying in this snow.”

“Not embers, my child. Seeds. What’s left of us are seeds that would sprout, grow and nurture other seeds.”

Liang found it odd that twenty years of ruin has not shaped this old man into becoming like her and all the rest. The kingdoms of humans were dead, what’s left of it was dying and from its carcasses, the Guren feasts like scavengers. No human wanted to live, Liang thought, and are probably just waiting to die of sickness or starvation whichever comes first. The children born were no longer from seeds of love and hope to build a family but mere accidents from copulation that meant to distract people from the hell around them.

“Look around you, old man. The trees are dead. The gods have left us. We are alone.”

The man stopped walking and Liang caught up with him in a few steps. He looked around with slits of eyes opening as wide as they could and settled at Liang. “Around me, I see trees that would blossom in spring. I see you who have followed me here so that does not make us alone.”

Liang sighed and for a moment, she really did look like a dragon that blew smoke from its mouth. “My patience is near its end on your eastern tongue. You know well what I meant.”

“And you know well what I meant.” He began walking again.

This time, Liang ought to turn back but when the old man kept on moving, almost vanishing from Liang’s sight in the opaque winter fog, Liang paced hastily to be on the old man’s trail once again. They exchanged no words as they trudged the pathless forest, only relying on the old man’s familiarity of the woods. They walk for long minutes and much longer after that and when they walked for an hour, Liang wanted to ask where they were headed but was too high on her pride to say anything.

On their second hour walking, Liang began to feel a warm breeze caress her face. She looked far ahead of the old man but saw no light that might have been a fire and she doubted that a mere pyre could send warm air that felt like summer. Oh how she longed for the season. It had been forever since she felt the sun kiss her skin.

The environment around them gradually began to shift form as they forwarded. The snow which they had been trudging became softer and thinner. Soon, Liang was walking on muddy dirt from where the snow had melted. It had been dark all the way in the forest but they had no trouble with the path as the moon lit their way, though not very bright but just enough to make out figures in the gray. Now, Liang was beginning to make out orange glows in the distance. The man kept his silence as Liang kept her stubbornness until they reached the richer part of their destination where the trees were rustling with leaves and the land was carpeted by grass. There was a faint whooshing that could be a river or a waterfalls and they didn’t stop walking until they reached a grove.

The man spoke first. “Akako’s treasure—Masu’s Grove.”

Liang was astonished with how such a small place could make her feel like she was in a different country. The grove was illuminated by orange lanterns tied on the trunks of brown trees. The whooshing from earlier was actually from a small waterfalls splashing down on a pond surrounded by white rocks dabbed with moss. There were Kois swimming in the clear waters of the pond and a small creek as an outlet of the water leading back to the frozen kingdom behind them.

There were tents, about six on the vacant area each glowing from lamps inside. Out of the tents came running small children which surrounded the old man as they greeted him in their native tongues, gibberish to Liang.

From the adjacent tent, came out older looking children. Some of them might be near twenty and they greeted the old man with less enthusiasm than the younger ones. Liang could tell they were asking about her even if she couldn’t understand their language. Their curious eyes alone were enough to tell her.

The old man said something to the children in the Eastern dialect and all at once, the children huddling around him parted to give way to Liang toward the tent.

“Come now, child,” the old man waved and Liang followed.

From outside, the tent seemed small but within, it had a long table where bottles of ink and rolled parchment were scattered on the wooden surface. Stiff brushes where the ink had dried were collected inside a small cup, placed upright. At the edge of the room were blankets and pillows nested over a straw bedding. There was a white lantern hanging from the center of the tent, masking everything a slight tint of orange from the fire burning inside.

The old man was already sitting on one end of the table with two cups before him. He filled it with wine and slid the second cup toward Liang.

“This was what you originally came here for, no?” the man said.

Liang sat across him and on touching the wine, she did not hesitate to drain it with one pour. Thereafter, she extended the small cup toward the old man, asking for more.

“I haven’t got your name by the way…” the old man said.

“Neither have I,” Liang replied.

“We are going to be waiting for someone,” the man said, “and it is best if we know each other when he arrives. I am Yachi Imo.”

“Liang.” She tapped her cup on the wooden table, impatient for the next serving of wine.

“Liang?” Yachi repeated as he poured her a cup-full. “Like the eight Liang of Long Zhou?”

Liang nodded up and down as she gulped the cup of wine and extended it again for more. “Liang like the winter cold no more, no less. And I will be leaving soon.”

“Please…” Yachi begged, “I’m desperate to have you stay. At least exchange a few words with the head.”

“If there’s one dragon, there is another. I’m not the one you need,” Liang said. Her hand was extended, asking for more wine but Yachi poured her no more. Though she had less than what she anticipated, she forced herself to stand. She was resolute just moments ago but her decision wavered. There is no more war. There is nothing to fight in. The few cups of wine knocked some sense in to her head, made her question her whole point of following Yachi to this encampment of orphans.

“This secret is safe with me. I shall carry it to the grave. My best wishes to your intentions.”

“May your wishes be worth the eight Liang,” Yachi remarked. And Liang felt it hit her like an insult.

She bowed her head and exited the tent. She looked over her shoulder, having second thoughts if her decision was right and then she remembered that she was alive until now because of the same decision she made twenty years ago.