I ended up talking with Xin and Ming for a while.
Most of the time, they stayed quiet about the deeper stuff. Every time I asked something important, they just gave me a look and said I'd find out soon enough.
It was frustrating but I could tell it wasn't because they could not talk. It was more like they didn't want to. Or maybe they thought words weren't enough to explain what was really going on here.
Still, I managed to learn a few things.
They'd been trapped here for almost eight months now. Eight whole months. No escape. No rescue. Just surviving.
The way they said it made it sound normal, like it was just part of life now. But that hit me hard. Eight months in a place like this....it was a slow decay.
I asked them why no one had broken out, and they explained the situation clearly: a Grandmaster-level guard watches over the entire realm.
