The village appeared like a mirage through the heat shimmer of late afternoon. It comprised of a cluster of earthen buildings with tile roofs that caught the amber light, smoke rising lazy from chimneys and the distant sound of a water wheel creaking with rhythm.
Shen Yue's legs had stopped obeying her somewhere around the third li. Now she moved through pure stubbornness, one foot dragging after the other, her stolen body protesting every step. Hunger gnawed at her stomach with teeth sharper than anything she'd faced in the dungeon. When was the last time this body had eaten? She couldn't remember. The original Kaelen's memories were there but fragmented, it was like trying to recall a dream upon waking.
Behind her, Gu Tian was in worse shape. Chan'er had woken twice during their trek, each time insisting she could walk and each time collapsing after making barely twenty steps. Now she was unconscious again, dead weight in Gu Tian's arms and the older boy was stumbling like a drunk, his single eye fixed on the village ahead with the desperate focus of a drowning man spotting shore.
"How long? How long were we down there?" Shen Yue heard asked, her voice coming out hoarse and cracked.
Gu Tian didn't answer immediately. His breathing was ragged with each inhale he took a conscious effort. When he finally spoke, his words came between gasps. "Don't know. Felt like... hours? But when I came back... to find you both..." He adjusted Chan'er's weight, wincing. "Sun was setting. Now it's... Afternoon! " He squinted up at the sky, at the sun still high despite its western slant.
Shen Yue had no answer. Time in the dungeon must have been different from real world. She remembered every detail: the blue-lit chamber, the spring, the moment the artifact had burned its way into her flesh.
How long had any of it taken? Four hours? Six? It couldn't have been more. Yet Gu Tian had left them in the morning, and when he found them again it was near sunset. And now...
"Yue?" Gu Tian's voice pulled her back. He'd stopped walking and now was staring at her with his single eye narrowed. "You alright?"
"Am fine." She pushed off the stone marker, forced her legs to move. "Am just beat off."
He didn't believe her. She could see it in the way his jaw tightened, the way his gaze lingered on her face searching for... what? Signs of the boy he'd known? She wasn't sure what the original Kaelen had been like, not really. The memories were there but distant, like being observed through thick glass. Had Kaelen being behaving differently around him? What small mannerisms was she missing that would give her away?
They reached the village outskirts as the sun touched the tops of the western mountains. The first building they passed was a shrine; small and weathered, its red paint faded to the color of old blood. Paper talismans fluttered from the eaves, covered in characters Shen Yue found herself reading without thinking: Protection. Prosperity. May the harvest be bountiful. 'They must be common prayers and peasant magic.'
A woman was kneeling before the shrine arranging offerings of rice and dried flowers. She looked up as they approached and her expression shifted from mild curiosity to alarm in the space of a heartbeat.
"Oh gods!" she breathed, rising quickly. She was middle-aged, her face weathered by sun and work, her hands callused. But her eyes were kind. "You children... what happened?"
Shen Yue opened her mouth and found she didn't know what to say. What had happened? How did you explain a dungeon, a demon orb, possession of someone else's body?
"We got lost," Gu Tian said before she could spiral further. His voice was steady despite his exhaustion, the tone of someone used to lying to adults. "in the hills. There was a... a cave-in. Rocks fell. We've been trying to find our way back for..."
He trailed off and Shen Yue saw the same confusion cross his face that she felt. How long? How long had they been gone?
The woman's expression softened into something like pity. She approached Gu Tian, reaching out to brush dirt from Chan'er's face with gentle fingers. "Poor little sparrow. She's burning up with fever."
Was she? Shen Yue moved closer and yes, even from a foot away she could feel the heat radiating from Chan'er's small body.
When had that started? And more importantly, why could she sense it from so far away? Her senses had been... sharper, she realized. Ever since leaving the dungeon. She could hear the water wheel in the village center, could smell cooking fires and livestock and human sweat all layered and distinct. Could see the individual threads in the woman's worn tunic.
"Come," the woman said, making a decision. "My home is just there, the one with the blue shutters. We'll get food in you and a place to rest. The child needs medicine."
"We have no money," Shen Yue said, because that much she knew was true. The original Kaelen had been poor, street-poor, the kind of poverty where copper coins were treasures and full meals were memories.
The woman waved this away like shooing a fly. "Did I ask for money? Come, before you collapse in my shrine and offend the spirits."
She led them down a narrow lane between buildings, packed earth under their feet, chickens scattering before them. Villagers stared from doorways and windows curiously. Strangers in a small village always drew attention. These dirty, half-starved strangers drew even more so.
The woman's home was small but clean, two rooms separated by a faded curtain. She cleared space on a sleeping mat and Gu Tian laid Chan'er down with the careful reverence of placing something sacred. His hands were shaking that they'd stopped moving, now that there was safety, everything was catching up to him.
"Sit," the woman ordered them both, pointing at a low table.
She disappeared behind the curtain and returned with a clay pot of water, cups, a plate of steamed buns that looked like they'd been meant for her own dinner. Shen Yue's stomach clenched at the sight, saliva flooding her mouth. She reached for a bun and forced herself to eat slowly, even though her every instinct screamed to devour it whole.
Gu Tian had no such restraint. He ate like a starving dog, cramming food into his mouth with both hands, barely chewing. The woman watched with the expression of someone who'd seen this before, who knew what desperation looked like.