Baek Mu-hyeok had not taken a single step backward in eleven days.
He'd walked out of his trial and kept walking. Through the hills, through the empty towns, through two cities that had tried to stop him and one that hadn't bothered. Every step he took forward settled into his body and stayed there, stacking on top of the step before it, until the ground itself had started to complain about his weight. He could feel all of it now. It sat in his legs and his shoulders and his fists like water held back behind a dam.
The trial had told him one thing before it let him go. There was a crown in Andong, so he'd come to Andong.
He walked down the river road through a storm of falling playing cards and watched the man in the red coat walk out to meet him.
