Soundless.
Sightless.
And then suddenly, a light.
A tiny flame flickered at the end of a long, thin match. Orange warriors danced in light just over the wick of a flat, round candle. In a moment, they would leap desperately from the match and cling to the wick, resuming their lively display as if they had never left home.
A wall of fur and ink shifted away from the candlelight, the entire room around him waking drowsily with the glow of fire. A shirt was grabbed from where it hung in front of the small, circular hearth at the opposite end of the room. Ashes upset themselves with the fluttering of the garment from its resting spot, settling once again as it was pulled over the mountain of pandaren muscle and tucked into the waist of crimson legplates.
A rattle of chain and the groan of floorboards murmured around the room as a weight was lifted from the bedside. A hand of gauntleted digits wrapped around the handle of the circular door and pushed it open without a sound, a flourish of cloak and plate stepping through the moonlit gap before the door closed with a hollow:
Click.
And once again the room was still, save for weary warriors dancing drowsily down towards their demise.
______
Oku’s greaves sat heavy upon the ill-paved road. The hints of a new day snored breaths of dim daylight from just beyond the horizon, the moon still full in the sky. Blue eyes darted from where the sky met the land and off down the path ahead of him, away from a small shack nestled somewhere in the mountainside of the bloody peaks of Kun-Lai.
The cold air swept circles about the Pandaren’s feet, billowing his dark cloak off to one side. The dark burgundy fringe of the garment appeared something akin to bubbling blood with the erratic motion. A hood hung low over the Pandaren’s visage as he approached the Temple, a bundle of cloth and twine tucked under one arm. The pandaren moved through the early morning at the coastal outcropping, the few faces awake at the time following him intently as they had every other day. Oku made no eye contact with the locals, eyes focused only ahead of him.
His feet found their way just past one of the large training courtyards to the edge of the cliffside. It looked out over the crashing waves, white capped and roaring hundreds of feet below. Oku sat down and untucked the bundle from under his arm, finding a seat just before a small pile of stones. Untying the bundle, it collapsed open with more stones.
All of the stones were a strange, pale white.
One by one, Oku moved the stones carefully. His focus was steeled upon the rocks, stacking one and then the next with a lethal precision. Focused carefully until-
“Why do you do this? What are you hoping to accomplish?”
A merchant stood just at the edge of the courtyard, arms crossed and glowering over at Oku. The blue gaze of the berserker broke from its target, one stone clicking ever-so-carefully to the left and out of place. Oku’s gaze seethed with a cold fury, shifting towards the merchant.
“A man came to me with similar questions the other day. You should ask him.”
The merchant scoffed, crossing his arms.
“And where might this man be, then?”
Oku paused and looked for a long moment at the old merchant, studying over his features. Then one hand lifted, a finger extended. The direction swept from just at Oku’s side, and out further until it set out over the cliffside, down into the frigid waters crashing hundreds of feet below.
The merchant paled, stammering for a moment before huffing at Oku and hurriedly walking back off towards his cart.
Unfazed, Oku looked back to his work. Before long, only one stone was left. Oku lifted the stone from the cloth and reached into a shirt pocket. He pulled a strand of torn silver silk, which snaked further and further out of the pocket until it lifted completely out. Tied to the end, carefully but firmly, was a single crane feather. Oku took the untied end of the silk and bound it about the final stone, then placed the stone atop the stout cairn he had just finished. The feather caught the coastal breeze, the silver silken strand taking to fluttering off to one side of the pile.
Oku gazed upon the pile of stacked stones, pale as snow. His eyes then shifted just further up the cliffside, where a similar cairn stood with the same silvery strand and fluttering feather. His eyes shifted to the next.
And the next.
And the next.
And to every single pile that dotted that coastal cliffside, vigils constructed to watch and sit.
To sit by the water.
