By the third day, the terrain began to shift.
The wind thinned out. The clouds moved slower, as though hesitant to pass overhead. The vast sky dimmed subtly, sunlight seeming to filter through some invisible lens that muted its brilliance.
Even the Qi in the air felt different—compressed, silent, and oddly patient.
And then they saw it.
The Great Burden Monastery.
It sat atop a wide, flat plateau that rose abruptly from the plains like the back of some ancient beast. The landscape around it was bare, without a single tree or blade of grass in sight for miles. The monastery itself was a singular structure of great mass, hewn from black stone that drank in light rather than reflected it. Its sweeping, sloped roof was tiled in weathered ash-gray slate, giving it the appearance of a resting tomb more than a place of worship.
