Nao-Zai's eyes snapped open. When had he closed them? He looked around, blinking the sleep off his eyes. So far, nothing was out of the ordinary. They were still in the Western Governor's guest palace where at least a dozen Xuijae guards were posted at every entry point. Unlike Nao-Zai who had nodded off unwittingly for a few minutes, these people stood without fail to protect their prince who was behind the wooden door.

He cleared his throat and rubbed his face, scanning the soldier's faces to see if they noticed he was getting relaxed. None of them had an expression that betrayed their thoughts. Huh. They're trained well in the Imperial Palace, it seems.

Perhaps it's the tea a servant offered them earlier. The steaming blue concoction was one of the best brews Nao-Zai had had for the longest time. Blue jasmine was truly to die for. It could also be the whistling sounds the wind outside made and the rustle of leaves brushing against the palace's eaves that lulled him into a quick stupor. Or it could be because he hadn't had a good night's rest since they entered the old Shencai territory and the tense atmosphere telling him anything could go wrong wasn't really helping.

Nao-Zai stood up from his seat beside the prince's door. Unlike the royal, guards and servants were slotted in the wide common room enclosed by flimsy doors laden with thin parchment. Teal flowers accented with black, wave-like brush strokes decorated the room, letting anyone inside feel like they're inside a deep forest. A basin filled with lit incense sticks stood in the center of the room, its fragrant scent wafting all around like they're in a temple. Considering this was the empire of the gods, it's safe to think these people really thought they're supposed to be sleeping in temples.

He craned his ear towards the prince's quarters. So far, it was still. Kai-Se must be sound asleep at this hour. A quick look at the moon burning silver in the sky outside the wide windows confirmed that. A few hours from now, the servants would wake him up and prepare him for another arduous journey to cross into the central provinces.

Then, Nao-Zai froze. Perhaps, it's...too quiet. He strode closer to the door and listened in. No rustling of fabric characteristic of a person turning in his sleep every now and then. Nothing. That meant...

Nao-Zai threw the door open, startling the nearest soldiers around him. What greeted him was the emptiest room he had encountered. Chaos erupted as metal-tipped boots rushed towards the open door and regarded the cause of concern.

A string of curses flitted out of Nao-Zai's lips, some included in it were the nastiest ones invented in the entire Izeryeo dialect. That prince. If Nao-Zai found him, he'd make sure to give him the lecture of the century or bore him out of his mind with guidelines or....something.

Where would Kai-Se go in the middle of foreign territory? Moreover, how did he get out without anyone noticing?

"Shall I alert the Governor's guards?" Wen-Shao trotted to Nao-Zai's side, took one look at the empty room, and turned to him waiting for orders.

As much as Nao-Zai wanted to, he shook his head. There's no use involving the host for their failure to keep their own prince in check. Besides, if word got out that the Xuijae prince went missing inside the Western Governor's palace, it would reflect poorly on Dansarun and sprout all the kinds of headaches Nao-Zai didn't have the energy nor the honor to think about. If there's anyone who would take the fall for this one, it's him and the rest of the soldiers under his command. Maybe the clueless servants too, if the Emperor was feeling generous.

That's why Nao-Zai had to find Kai-Se. And fast.

"Keep it quiet until I get back with the prince," Nao-Zai instructed the gathered men around him. "Handle the fort here. Make it seem like nothing's wrong. I'll go out on my own and track him down. He couldn't have gotten far."

At least, that was Nao-Zai's hope against all odds. For all he knew, the prince had ended up in the black markets as a Shencai delicacy.

He burst out of the guest villa, startling a slew of the Governor's servants waiting at the yard for anything they might need. He gave the most innocent smile he could, tucked his hands behind him, and slowed his pace. "Just getting some air," he said.

When he reached the villa's arched gate and into the main compound with the moat, he felt the eyes pinned on his back vanish. Then, he broke into a run. His footsteps thumped against the mossy cobblestones as he tore past the bridge over the expansive moat. The wind ruffled the leaves, adding to the cacophony of worries and thoughts swirling in his head and pounding in his ears. He cleared the entire compound after a few minutes of running and came up the tall, wooden gates painted red and teal.

Nao-Zai braced his knees to let his chest heave in order to catch his breath. He looked up to see a guard bearing the Western Governor's seal on his uniform approach. "Does His Highness need something?" the guard asked.

He shook his head. "He just sent me on an errand," he jerked his chin at the gates. "He is known to do this so it's no problem."

The guard had a sympathetic look as he turned to the men manning the gates and gave a stern nod. Nao-Zai ducked his head in wordless thanks as he slipped through the meager opening made for him before tackling the streets, the gates shutting behind him with a deep thunk.

His boots slapped the very streets that once bloomed with festivity. Now, in the dead of night, with just a line of dimly-lit lanterns and the silver rays of the moon guiding his way past the convoluted and winding streets, the city looked lifeless. Then again, that's the least of his concern as of the moment.

Houses sped by him, each one bearing a teal plaque nailed against their door frames bearing a character similar to the Xuijae script. Judging from what Nao-Zai translated it to, Shencai and Dansarun seemed to be using the script a little differently. He turned a blind corner and came across the part of the city the parade earlier today hadn't touched.

The streets narrowed as Nao-Zai went deeper into it. The walls of the houses sported more and more cracks, the concrete stone they're made of telling him they've stood in this ground for far longer than him. He cleared the narrow street and came towards the lip of a huge river flowing through arched gates of the city from the west and the east. Boats Nao-Zai had never seen before, docked in wooden stilts attached from where cement ended and the water started, their colorful sails reminding him of the festival flags he witnessed once in Chaebeon. Has there always been a river here? Amazing.

A cloud of chatter rang in his ears. He turned east to find a small crowd gathered around something by the edge of the road flanking the river. Nao-Zai knitted his eyebrows and strode towards them. They're one of the weirdest bunch he had seen since coming to Dansarun. Most of them were dressed in simple trousers and tunics but most of them were barefoot. The similarities to human children ended there. Instead of brown to beige skin, these children sported blue, green, oink, and even fur-coated ones. Tusks, hooves, and fangs glistened against the meager lantern light from the boats in the river. Eyes both slitted and glowing in the dark focused on a single figure in the middle of the crowd: a piper.

That's weird. What's a piper doing in the middle of the city? Nao-Zai mingled in the rim of the crowd and with the children's parents accompanying them, it was easy to stay hidden so as not to startle the storyteller.

"Then, Hu-Tiao took the enchanted peach and shook and shook until seeds as shiny as gold fell out," the piper's voice echoed through the children's giggles and snorts. From behind, Nao-Zai could only see sparks and flashes of light. He knitted his eyebrows. Could it be...?

"Hu-Tiao thought to himself: there must be something in these golden seeds as peaches do not usually have them," the storyteller continued. "So he shook and shook the peach as he walked through the dark forest filled with spiky bamboos and hungry wolves until he was certain the seeds that fall follow some sort of order."

A chorus of oohs and aahs echoed from the children as another flashes of light and the sound of paper folding in a pace not humanly possible. Yeah. Nao-Zai was certain of it now. It's a piper who could use magic. Before he knew it, he had shouldered his way towards the front of the line of parents watching over their kids listening to the story and came across the same piper he saw in Izeryeo before he went to Dangrao to answer his summons.

The piper wore the same triangular hat, the mask covering his face and muffling his voice, and the pronged sandals. As before, the girl with black hair and glowing, purple eyes was there behind him, holding a lantern steady. She was looking at the crowd with a passive expression that was neither a frown or a smile and her eyes only ever watched the piper's back.

"Eventually, Hu-Taio reached a palace made of gold," the piper continued, raising his hand to command the golden parchment in front of him to fold into the shape of a castle complete with flags and walls. "He realized that the seeds and the palace were made of the same gold and thought to himself that maybe this is the place where the magical peach was urging him to go."

"Then, from out of nowhere, a great big dragon leaped out of the palace and confronted Hu-Tiao," the piper flexed his fingers and another parchment, this time, a bright red one, folded into a dragon and slammed into the ground with a weak force of wind coupled with balls of light flashing orange. The children gasped and some covered their eyes.

Amusement awas thick in the piper's voice as he brought a figure of a boy closer to the dragons with another wave of his hand. "The dragon said to Hu-Tiao: Who goes there? And Little Hu-Tiao tells the dragon his name and how he found a magic peach whose seeds brought him to the palace," the piper said. "And crimson tears fell down the dragon's eyes. 'I've been waiting for someone to find the peach since forever', the dragon said."

The children leaned forward as one, engrossed in the story of the boy, his magical peach, and the red dragon. Nao-Zai made the unfortunate mistake of turning to the person next to him and came across a huge ivory tusk jutting out from a furry snout similar to a boar he saw back home. Instead, the boar head was attached to a burly (but furry) human body clad in a simplified version of a fenhai. And he (it?) didn't look too happy.

In fact, when Nao-Zai scanned the faces of the children, he could only see wonder and awe at the piper's story. But when he turned his attention towards the parents of the same race as their children, all he could see were expressions of apprehension, fear, and tension. It's either they didn't like the story or they gleaned something else from it. Something that might be dangerous.

"It turns out, the dragon was once a prince cursed to live alone forever and the only person who would ever find him would be someone who had the magical peach in their possession and brave enough to follow where their seeds pointed to," the piper continued. "With Hu-Tiao finally breaking the curse, he and the dragon spent a long time together inside the golden castle until the end of their days."

The piper rose from his cross-legged sitting position and dusted his trousers. "Thank you for listening," he ducked his head in a bow, touching the edge of his hat to bring its rim lower. Nao-Zai was about to turn away to head off with the rest of the crowd when he realized something. Thank you for listening. That sentence blurred over and over again in his ears. It's...familiar.

But where did he hear it?

He shook his head. What was he even doing out here listening to pipers? He has to find the prince. Kai-Se could already be in danger and Nao-Zai got distracted by a strange storyteller who could use magic and has a strange girl with him. Nao-Zai whipped towards the piper's direction once more only to find empty air in his place as if he had never been there before.

That's...weird.

In the end, Nao-Zai spent a few more hours scouring the streets near the Western Governor's palace and found no sign of Kai-Se. It looked like he had no choice but to alert the Governor. Nao-Zai couldn't go back to Xuijae with a missing prince and get out unscathed. If he has to get the Governor's help, he would.

By the time he got back to the villa, he scanned the soldier's face who greeted him from the moment he ducked inside the palace, irritated and sweaty. Wen-Shao gave him a brief nod before leading him towards the prince's room. When Nao-Zai slid the door open, there Kai-Se was, getting pampered with the servants in his royal clothes.

Anger boiled in Nao-Zai's gut. He shut the door in Wen-Shao's face as he barged into the quarters, shedding any sense of decency and royal protocol out of his system. "Where were you?" he hissed, scaring away a few of the servants into pinning the undershirt to complete the first layer of Kai-Se's fenhai. "I told you to never go out on your own! What if something happened to you out there? I could have paid the price with my head."

Kai-Se turned to face him, his eyes looking more tired than ever. Well, if he had been taking long walks in the dead of night, that's what's bound to happen to him. "But I'm fine. Nothing happened," he said, fixing his own clothes with faster efficiency than three servants combined. "You can rest easy, soldier. I know what I'm doing."

Nao-Zai opened his mouth to speak, to reason out, or maybe throw the infinite roster of guidelines back at the prince but Kai-Se beat him to it. "I don't appreciate you talking that way to me," he said. "Know your place and protect me only when I require it. I will leave at my own discretion and I will always return. I just..." he sighed. "Need some air."

The coldness dripping from the prince's tone was new. In fact, it was something Nao-Zai had never heard before it took a while before he realized the prince had just scolded him for acting way out of line. He pursed his lips and ducked his head. "O-of course, Your Highness," he said. "My apologies for acting this way. I am just concerned for your well-being as it is my job. This won't happen."

When Kai-Se finished donning the rest of his regalia, he stepped out of the room, flanked by the hunkered servants and went out of the room without a word.

Well, at least a quarter of Nao-Zai's problems were solved. But in doing so, it seemed to have brought two more quarters of issues he needed to keep an eye on before things spiraled out of his control.

What a day.