@infernalire.
Rui’s lost track of what time of day it is, due to the fog. It’s thick enough that he can’t see the sun – both a sort of blessing and a curse, in that he doesn’t feel he needs to worry about it, but he’d rather know – and in the process of investigating the other side of the mountain, well... he lost any sort of spatial awareness. The fog all blends everything together – the time, the scenery, the spirits.
They’re the worst part of all, whatever they are. Whyever they’re here.
Rui has enough strength that shattering one of the statues was no issue at all. The fog had cleared slightly, but not enough to disclose the time or weather, but it had fully exposed a spectre looming in the distance. A spectre with a shape all too familiar to Rui, someone he hadn’t seen in much, much too long, and –
– Rui’d heard the whispering. About the Deep Woods. About what the spectres here were, too.
So he turns and runs.
Rui doesn’t often run. It feels wrong, even now that he’s no longer just a sick, weak human. But running is better than handling a father-that-isn’t-his-father, than having to face that spectre head on, so he goes until he’s back at the mouth of the cave.
Only then does he process that somebody else is there. Rui doesn’t look at them when he speaks; he just gazes out into the fog, trying to see if the spectre’s still out there.
“... were you heading out there?”
“It may be worth waiting a moment or two. I don’t know how far I was followed.”