349.
I got a scar where all my urges bled
She followed him as they descended down the mountain, quietly mirroring his movement with her own. He moved with a certain ease that told Tayui he had either followed this path many times or had never forgotten it from the first time. As they travelled farther south, the landscape visibly changed and now most trees were charred, dying, or both. It was an eerie place that reminded her of Âmes de la Mort in Bleeding Souls: both had the smell of death and decay.
When they stopped, at first, Tayui could not discern why. The area looked the same as the rest of the burnt lands and there did not seem to be anything significant about this area. However, as she peered closer, she noticed that the remains of a body littered the area. There were only a few bones now, some jutting out awkwardly from the ground and others casually strewn about, as if someone hoped they might grow a new skeleton with their bone seeds. But it looked like there was not an entire skeleton here, and the thought that there was more of Haku Soul strewn about the lands was disconcerting at best.
Tayui moved closer, walking toward the centre of the clearing. It felt so surreal that she could not tell if she had stepped on a few bones along the way or not. When she reached the middle of the territory, she regarded the skull and dagger with a sneer. So this was where the monster had come to rest. She reached out with a paw and then took a swipe at the skull. She just missed it. She stepped closer, resting her paw on the skull. She tried to dig her claws in, to rip it or break it, but nothing happened. The skull was not as brittle as she would have thought, and clearly, she would not be able to break it just by flexing her paw. She retracted her foreleg, set it back on the ground and redistributed her weight as she stared at the skull. She could not break it.