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Luhan doesn’t know how he ended up here, on this lonely plain of brown grass, but he knows that he’s alone.

To one side, he can see the snow mountains as they peak and to the other, a wide, tranquil lake that reflects the blue sky and puffy white clouds. Somewhere in the distance, a dragon calls, and the mournful noise sends a kind of shudder down his spine.

He stands there for ever so long as the breeze rustles his thin frame, and it isn’t until dusk arrives that he moves at all, because he senses something in the air, something that makes him shiver. He doesn’t quite believe his eyes as night falls and the lake starts to glow softly, and then with an almost unbearable intensity that makes his eyes dilate. The golden brilliance settles around, and only then does he see the mountains have receded into the shadows, while the lake has blossomed into an explosion of laughter and spirits and things better not seen that come out only in the darkness, and there sits at the other end where there had previously been nothing a grand palace of red and gold, and uncountable other small building besides. As he watches in awe, a golden ship docks at his end of the lake with a small bump, and then the plank is put down as all sorts of ghosts and things are most definitely not human pile on. A hand taps his shoulder impatiently, and he jumps, startled. When he looks back, he can barely keep from screaming; it appears to be a black, white-masked spirit dressed in the captain’s uniform.

“Well? Are you getting on or not?”

And Luhan can only nod mutely as he takes a step on deck, hesitates, looks back at the only world he has known, and then sets his shoulders and steps on board. He knows he’s sealed his fate as soon as the plank is pushed back on board with a heavy thump, and, surrounded by ghouls and hissing creatures and otherworldly beings, he’s never felt more lonely.

But as he sails away to a golden night land in a ship full of fantastical creatures, he knows that whatever troubles may befall him, he is at the beginning of something new.

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