The land grew narrow.
Mountains no longer rose—they pressed inward, like jaws. Wind scraped across jagged stone and echoed in low, steady pulses that resembled breathing.
This was the gorge.
Locals had no name for it. Only a gesture: two fingers over the mouth, then down to the chest. A gesture for silence… and for the dead.
Ji Haneul stood at the mouth of it now.
Before him, a path wound between vertical cliffs, barely wide enough for a cart. The stone was dark—not just in color, but tone. Each footfall sounded wrong. Muted. As if the world inside the gorge did not wish to remember the sound of life.
He walked.
The wind grew quieter the deeper he went.
The howling didn't.
It wasn't wind, Haneul realized, but something deeper. Like voices. Not whispers—but the residue of them. Screams replayed as memories in the stone.
Then he found the blood.
Not fresh. Not pooled. Just a streak along the right wall. Thin, deliberate. Like a finger dipped in crimson and dragged along the surface.
He followed it.
The streak turned into symbols. Then into script.
Foreign, yet familiar.
Not because he could read it—but because the rhythm was the same as the meditations in the Heaven-Splitting Manual.
A twisted reflection.
Then—the wall changed.
A circle.
No door, no hinge. Just solid stone etched with the same crescent-and-slash symbol he had seen again and again.
He stepped forward.
Nothing moved.
He remembered the parchment.
"A gate in the rock that opens when you bleed."
He drew his sword.
Made a shallow cut across his palm.
Let the blood touch the stone.
The response was instant.
The wall shimmered. Then peeled back—not with force, but absence. As if it had never existed, just masked the way forward.
And beyond it—
—a stairway. Not carved. Formed.
It descended into utter dark.
He lit no torch.
He walked without sound.
And when he reached the bottom, the howling stopped.
Not gradually.
It ceased.
Ahead, an underground temple stretched wide. Its columns were made of human bones, bound by chains. Torches burned with blue fire. In the center, a pool of still, dark water.
And above it—
—an altar.
Where someone knelt.
Alive.
Breathing.
Not chained. Not bound.
Waiting.
The figure looked up.
A mask of white porcelain. Blank. No features.
Only the voice gave identity.
And it was not human.
"Welcome," it said. "You carry the shard."
Ji Haneul stepped forward, unsheathing his sword without speaking.
The masked figure stood.
"You come for answers," it continued. "But answers require weight. And yours is untested."
"I'm not here for riddles."
"No. You're here for blood."
Haneul struck.
Steel met emptiness.
The figure blurred—then reappeared behind him, fingertips raised in a strange sigil.
"Split the sky, child of ash," it whispered. "Let's see if you bleed like your ancestor."
Haneul turned, sword dancing.
The cavern lit with sparks.
And the gorge above began to howl again.
Not from wind.
But from memory.