Gen opened his eyes after an unknown amount of time.
He moved slowly, shaking off a fine layer of snow that had settled over him. He stood up, stumbled slightly, and leaned against the rough bark of the pine tree for support. He blinked, disoriented.
In his mind, a quiet observation surfaced. *I feel… healed.* It wasn't just better. The deep, throbbing agony in his shoulder was gone. The searing line on his neck was a faint memory in his skin. He touched his chest, his neck. Slight, silvery scars remained, like old stories written in flesh, but the wounds themselves had closed without stiffness or pain. He felt whole. Rested. The bone-deep exhaustion that had pulled him under had vanished, replaced by a clear, steady hum of Qi.
Could it be the eggs?
Gen reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the two warm, smooth ovals. He pulled them out, holding them in his palms. They were quiet now, their earlier glow subsided, but they pulsed with a gentle, living heat. He smiled, a small, private thing.
"Master Yujin," he murmured to the silent, snowy clearing, "was a really interesting man." How could someone create something so complex, so clearly alive with purpose, and yet be unable to unlock its final mystery himself? It was a contradiction. A creator who couldn't complete his own creation.
Gen sighed, tucking the eggs safely away. This was pretty much the same with the Wheels of Destiny. No one could claim to have fully understood their depths until they touched **Xuedao**, and even then, who knew what lay beyond? What it really meant? The path was endless. The thought wasn't daunting anymore. It was just a fact, like the sky being grey.
He gathered his strength, what little of his tattered robes remained, and ascended into the sky. Now that he was safe—healed, hidden, and alone—he could focus. He could look for the Lost Triangle.
Still, he needed to be careful. Who knew how many other fanatics like that assassin were out there, wanting his head for who-knew-what reasons? The world had shrunk to a field of enemies, and he was a single, moving target.
He moved carefully in the following days, finding another coarse, hooded cape and robe in an abandoned trapper's shack to hide his face and frame. He became a shadow again, a faceless traveler.
Gen progressed deeper and deeper away from the main lands, away from the perpetual winter. Finding the Middle Desert wasn't hard. It was a clear line on the mental map the boy had given him. The cold simply ended, as if cut by a knife. One day, the air held a biting chill; the next, it was dry and still, and the snow gave way to hard-baked, orange earth, which soon crumbled into endless, rolling sand.
***
Some days, or perhaps a month later—time blurred under a constant, bronze sun—a lone figure could be seen moving into a screaming sandstorm.
He did not hunch against the stinging grains. He moved without visible resistance, a dark silhouette parting the raging, amber fog. It was as if he himself was a blade, and the storm had no edge sharp enough to catch on. **Jingdao** reinforced his skin against the abrasion; a subtle, constant application of **Shidow** pushed the densest curtains of sand aside just before they struck his eyes.
Gen raised his head, squinting. Behind him, through the ochre haze, he could vaguely see the cold, hard points of light that were the Damocles. He wasn't sure of much, but he could say he wasn't going in the wrong direction.
He soon smiled, a bitter twist of his chapped lips. This was the fifth time this week he'd told himself the same thing. And he had still not found the Lost Triangle Mountain.
Legends had it it was a place too hard to find on your own. Many had tried. Many had gotten lost in the Middle Desert, their bones adding to the dunes. For the few who found the Lost Triangle, no one knew what happened to them. They simply… didn't come back.
Had Lorel and the others really found it? What about Li Fen, and Kaito, and Ting? Since the Jade Palace, they had all scattered to the winds. Now Lorel, too, had gone on a similar path. Was she there with them? Was she safe? Was she waiting?
Gen had so many questions. So few answers.
The days continued to roll by, one indistinguishable from the next.
***
One day, Shelai came out from one of her numerous escapes. She materialized from the shimmering heat-haze beside him, her form cool and substantial against the desert's wrath. "Gen," she said, her voice a melody that cut through the wind's howl. "This time, you cannot say I have been wasting time."
Gen nodded without much feeling, not taking his eyes off the monotonous horizon as he kept walking. Shelai had lived her best life this past year. Loitering, seeing the crumbled world, just as she'd dreamed. Helping her had been easy. With time, she had become his lone companion. All his friends weren't there, but he at least had someone to talk to. Even if she was an ancient Milky Beast in the form of a painfully beautiful woman who treated existence like a grand, final vacation.
Shelai floated alongside him, her mature figure clinging to the air near his now-taller, broader frame. "Don't you want to hear the story?"
Gen nodded again, a non-answer, and changed direction slightly to skirt a towering dune.
If it had been the old Gen, he would have felt unbearably awkward with her so close, with her effortless grace and teasing smiles. But Gen had grown in all aspects these years. The simple, sunny boy was buried under layers of scar tissue and quiet resolve. He didn't really care anymore. She was Shelai. That was all.
Shelai, annoyed, flickered in front of him, blocking his path entirely. "How rude! I am talking to you, Gen Jiang! Can you not take a moment to listen?" She planted her hands on her hips. "I found the Lost Triangle."
Gen, about to ignore her for the hundredth time, suddenly slowed. He stopped walking. He took a closer look at her face.
Shelai's smile grew, triumphant. She crossed her arms over her chest. "However… I don't know if I remember correctly. It might be…"
Gen slapped his own forehead. "Okay. What do you want? I can't promise to give it, but I will try my best." He was getting impatient. After all, he had been searching that place for who-knew-how-long now. The location the little boy had given was a region, not a destination. It was helpful, but not enough. Shelai was different. She could travel further than him, unbound by fatigue. Perhaps she had indeed found something.
Shelai then drifted closer, until she was inches away. She reached up and placed her cool hands on either side of his face, framing it. "I want you to smile, Gen Jiang. What kind of ugly face is this? All tension and dust."
Gen, shaken by the sudden, gentle contact, flushed. A quick, embarrassed smile flashed across his features before he could stop it. He quickly grabbed her wrists and pushed her away, more flustered than angry. "Stop playing around! I don't have time for that!"
He pushed past her and kept moving, causing Shelai to laugh even more, the sound like clear water in the dry air, at his thoroughly embarrassed look. Gen tried his best to ignore her, to maintain his stern focus, but the smile—genuine, brief, and unexpected—did flash on his lips for an instant.
Under Shelai's teasing but genuine guidance, the duo did get closer with each passing day. She would point, "Less that way, more this way," or, "The sand tastes older here." She led him not by a map, but by the ancient instincts of a beast that had once ruled a domain.
Until one night.
The desert was quiet, the sky a vast dome of stars undimmed by any cloud or competing light. Gen was scanning the horizon, his eyes tired, when he saw it.
At a distance, it was so absurd it was impossible to miss.
A massive, sheer-sided mountain, its peak a perfect, dark triangle against the starry sky, rising from the heart of the flat, endless desert. It shouldn't have been there. It defied the landscape. It was the Lost Triangle.
A sound escaped Gen's dry throat—a scrape, a disbelieving breath. "We found it, Shelai."
Shelai nodded, her form shimmering beside him, her usual playfulness gone, replaced by a quiet solemnity. "We did find it."
Gen didn't think. He started running.
His boots kicked up plumes of sand. He pushed his **Jingdao**, his **Shidow**, every shred of energy he had left. He ran towards the mountain, a dark speck against an impossible monument. There it was. The last thing separating him from meeting his friends again. From answers. From not being alone.
Despite the exhaustion, the deep fatigue, the low energy that had been his constant companion for months, he ran. He ran with all he had, the silvery scars on his chest and neck glowing faintly with the strain, his eyes fixed on the triangular shadow that held everything he was looking for.