The boy buried his face between his knees. He struggled to suppress it, every sinew and bone in his body straining, but broken, hoarse sobs still escaped.
The cave was utterly quiet. There were only the boundless mountains and the patter of cold rain. In the countless millennia since their birth, they had weathered rain like this, chilling heaven and earth through and through, innumerable times.
And so, as the wind that had wandered for ten thousand years brushed into the cave, a clear, soft, lilting melody slowly rose amid the oppressive weight of silence.
It was lighter than the cold rain pattering through the autumn mountains, gentler than the tenderest words in the world. As it blew into his ears, it was like wind that had been polished smooth.
It blew straight into the boy's heart, soothing the wounds that had split open, bracing the agonizing collapse, stroking a mind on the verge of breaking until it grew quiet.
Pei Ye raised his head in a daze. The woman in white sat leaning beside the cave's edge, the curtain of rain blurring her face, the breeze stirring her hair. Her head was bowed, her pale hands holding a jadeite-like flute across her lips. The farther hand was already covered in fine cracks.
She played quietly with lowered eyes. Dark mountains, white mist, cold rain, the goddess's softly rising flute, the boy's grief-laden eyes-not a single thing in this scene was out of place.
Pei Ye listened, spellbound, as though a window had been knocked open in the deepest, most oppressive darkness. The flute gradually drew his cold, sunken spirit upward again. It was so sorrowful and beautiful, like the bright moon waxing and waning for a thousand years, like a tale of a desolate farewell forever; more still, like