was it abandoned?”
Turning his head in a flash, a transparent figure appeared at the window, it looked like a little
child, dragging his feet, slapping on his burnt clothes.
Prea called, “ Who are you?”
It looked back to Prea, and it turned its head and darted away, sobbing, then disappearing
from sight.
Prea went back to Khongordzol.
Breaking the silence, Khongordzol started, “ What is your greatest wish?”
Blushing, Prea smiled, “I want to be a hero, saving people like Jesus. Leading people to the
brightness. It will be forever a wish, because I’m a coward. ”
Forthwith, the breeze grew into a gust, it whistled like teary bloodcurdling whines, a
breathtaking voice to chill the bone marrow.
Khongordzol said shakily, “ The wind sounds like “help us” in Mongolian.”
Prea nodded, “I just saw a spirit behind the houses. I think there’s something.” Soon, they fell
into an uneasy sleep.
Sunrise broke the wickedness of the night, Prea was woken up by a screech from next door.
He crept out from his sleeping bag, and to the next room. There was a transparent figure behind
the fences.
Prea yelled, “ Who are you?”
Prea chased after the transparent figure. Straining his eyes in slits, Prea could see that it
was a bride. Her hair was tangled with a few burnt flowers in it; her eyeliner mingled with her
tears; the edge of the tattered bridal dress was burnt leaving a craggy edge; her legs were marred
everywhere. The bride then ran into a cave, and out of sight.
Hastily, Prea muttered to Khongordzol, “ We ... must go now. I saw something.”
Khongordzol started to pack up. Dashing through the empire, they attempted to find the exit.
But the desert seemed to grow itself, the path led them back to the cave where Prea saw the bride.
They went back to the cave again and again.
Khongordzol clarified, “Let us stop here, and think about the way to get out.”
Prea started to draw maps on the sand. He could feel something was moving underneath.
Something crawled under the sand, it crept onto the wall and vanished. As he dug his hand into
the sand to catch it, he felt something embossed in great detail. He nimbly brushed away the sand,
until the whole mural was unveiled.
Prea read the mural, and analyzed, “ It tells the start, rise, weakening and death of the
kingdom,” he continued,“ The kingdom was once a beautiful country, but the nobles argued with
the witches, then the witches burnt the whole kingdom, and ... locked the souls here to stop them
from rising to the heaven. Doesn’t it ?”
Khongordzol stroked the pits of the words on the mural, “Yes. And those locked souls in this
kingdom were tortured.”
Prea declared, “So the lost souls are leading us towards this cave in order to show us the message.”
Prea gaped at the message, it was a language that he didn’t understand. Under the long
paragraph, something was drawn - half of the setting sun on the horizon with a man lying in
front of it, who forms a straight line with the setting sun.
He demanded Khongordzol, “ Would you like to tell me what does it tell us?”
Khongordzol translated the message, “ It says if you dribble a droplet of blood onto this
