In the Dreaming, he is small and lost in a world on fire. He’s wearing his court robes, starched and uncomfortable with scratchy collars, while he walks through the catastrophe. Broken buildings, broken bones...nothing lives in this place and that is how he knows he’s not awake.
Dead?
He desperately wanted to die for years when he was under the lash and the cruel hand of his master (under his master, his hair knotted in the man’s fingers). Now he’s free of those torments and wants them back so badly he tastes blood in his mouth. At least then he was wanted, and not left so utterly alone like this.
Sometimes he hears voices that come and go, rise and fall in the distance, as if seasons are changing.
Sometimes he feels inside himself, present...
Angry.
The scenery stops and starts, changing oddly as — he suspects — time passes. It is never the dusky, beautifully dark world of his childhood. That memory is warm and soft around the edges, comforting orange shadows and deep, calming red fields. His brother, holding him in their matching bed robes as Ye Zun coughs, talking softly through their tears.
Did he ever really care? Ye Zun wants to believe he did. Hates himself for believing. They were supposed to be together.
The Dreaming is a cold place, a lonely place. He walks until his court robes are tattered and gray, listlessly moving forward in a shifting awareness of memories, fury, and despair.
He wakes up in stone and chains.