"S-shit! This seems the wrong path!"
Kage Ou's heart skipped a beat when no easy path came his way—only a high waterfall cascading from the mountain. He held Lìngxi closer to himself as they began to fall.
'I'll fly away from this mess by my sword's help.'
He was about to summon his owl-shaped sword, looking up with wide eyes—but his sword fell lifeless faster than they were falling. Some creatures—dark, shadowed things—gripped it by their fangs.
"What the?! How did my sword end up like this?!" Kage Ou didn't know where to throw his frustration.
"I did it. Any problem?" Kirihito grinned like a devil while watching them fall, standing perfectly on the back of a giant fish.
"You—!" Even Kage Ou had no curse sharp enough to throw at this demon.
'I should focus on diving down properly…'
The space between them and the water grew smaller and smaller until they crashed into the surface with a loud splash.
Thankfully, they were not in the high-risk area of the poisonous water.
Kage Ou took a deep breath before the water swallowed him. The inside was deep blue, icy cold, with waves pushing from opposite directions and sharp ice bars floating around.
The most dangerous fact: this water was not letting Kage Ou float upward—it was pulling him down.
Desperate bubbles escaped from his mouth. He moved his free arm and legs, trying to go up—at least to take a breath. Both of their long black and snow-white hair floated around them like seaweed.
'This water is dangerous even now. I'm no longer thankful.'
His head started to spin. His vision blurred—yet the speed of his descent did not stop.
'No, no. I cannot faint just from some water. I have to find a way. This thing cannot win whatever game it's playing.'
He forced his eyes to stay open and held his remaining breath a little longer. The water seemed to have swallowed a giant statue—impossible in its detail, carved with the likeness of someone divine.
But unlike others, this one looked kind and gentle—not cold. A heavy, old, large chain wrapped around part of it. Wrists? Legs? He couldn't guess the pose, since the size was much larger.
'Could this be an abandoned statue of one of the four gods?'
His eyes widened when a part of the statue appeared right in front of him—but he could not stop himself from crashing toward it.
'One of us will probably get hit by it!'
He uselessly tried again—only to fail. But at the last moment, he held the back of Lìngxi's head to keep him secured while he himself was left unguarded.
His jaw tightened when his head hit the stone. He felt his skull shift. The water around him turned a little red from his blood. But he was thankful that Lìngxi was not hurt.
The spot where they landed seemed to be the open palms of the statue—which were also chained. They did not sink deeper because of the block. But the pull downward was still strong. He felt his hair floating in the water, yet being dragged downward—the opposite of what water should do. Like a magnet.
Kage Ou did not notice it properly at first, but something shifted. He was sure he had felt the statue move.
Move?
He coughed into the water, his head pounding in pain. But strangely, now he could breathe inside the water too. He felt like he was only a soul roaming through the depths without his body. He sat up, blinking in the deepest confusion of his entire life.
Lìngxi lay unconscious on the stone, like any siren sleeping underwater.
'This is terribly wrong… or some dream I was never supposed to have. How can water be a place where humans can breathe?'
He felt another tremor from the statue. He quickly braced himself for whatever was coming, keeping Lìngxi secured against him again.
Then the most unexpected thing happened—the hands of the statue began to move. The water pressure rushed around them as if a storm was breaking.
He was about to be blown away from the statue's palms. He searched for something to hold onto, whatever the statue was about to do.
At that moment, his sword came back—somehow saved—and tightly shrunk into the stone of the statue, giving him something to grip.
'Good bird.'
Kage Ou immediately held the handle tightly, kept Lìngxi once more by his waist, tight against himself, and struggled to stay on the narrow carve of the statue's hand. He tried not to focus on the dizziness.
The statue moved more actively and rose upward—like someone awakening from a long sleep they were never supposed to have.
Kage Ou's teeth felt like they were about to fly away from the speed and the way water was pressing against him to fall backward. He never let go of the sword hilt, even using his teeth over an old rope around one of the statue's fingers to grip harder.
'This can be the only way to go up from this water.'
The water at the spot where the statue was located swirled like a tornado, growing deeper and darker.
"It's probably awake by now. Heh." Kirihito smirked while standing at the riverbank, fanning himself with his hand fan. "The rest is up to you~ my work is done here. I should go have some different type of fun now."
With that, Kirihito disappeared into Bàyàkūyà, leaving them like this.
---
On the other side, the statue rose from the water, standing tall. Kage Ou—soaked and heavy with water clinging to his robes and Lìngxi's—looked down.
The height was almost the same as the mountain they had fallen from. The statue's pose was now clear. The long, straight, gentle curves of its hair fell down like royalty. The sleeves of the robe were larger than any human could wear. The middle of the chest had a large diamond-shaped hole, as if something was missing from there. A soft smile rested on its lips. Its eyes had been carved empty, with water falling from them like tears. The palms trembled as they tried to remove the chains.
'Which god's statue is this? When was this even made… this big? Why is it chained?'
Kage Ou stared at it from top to bottom until he felt a violent shift from the statue.
It suddenly moved its arm too hard, making kage ou gasped in surprise.
It made Kage Ou and the unconscious Lìngxi into the thin air. Its empty eye sockets glowed crimson red—like demonic energy awakening.