Volume 9: Veins of the Forgotten Path
The deeper they went, the more the air forgot the sky.
Sun-Ho descended into the ruined heart of the long-dead sect with the silence of one who'd done this before—though not in this body. The others followed behind, their shadows long under the flickering torchlight. The stone steps spiraled downward, carved not with words but patterns—circular, fractal, repeating veins. Like roots feeding something still alive.
Ma-Rok squinted at the markings. "Feels like something's crawling under the walls."
"It's not crawling," Ji-Mun muttered. "It's watching."
---
At the end of the stairwell, a massive stone disc blocked the path. Unlike the rest of the ruins, it was untouched by time—glossy, black, smooth as water. Etched across its surface was a single sentence in archaic flame-script:
> Here rests the light that memory tried to kill.
Sun-Ho stepped forward and pressed his hand to the disc. Fire qi pulsed outward—not aggressively, but as if recognizing something lost. The stone melted inward soundlessly, vanishing into heatless light.
Yul-Rin let out a breath. "Not creepy at all."
The hidden chamber beyond was not grand—but it was dense. Scrolls embedded in stone columns. Racks of copper tubes sealed with wax and woven thread. A mural dominated the far wall: a warrior cloaked in flame, holding a blade in one hand and a lantern in the other—illuminating a path behind him, not in front.
In the center stood a figure—hooded, masked, motionless.
No face.
Just a mask carved with a single faint ember where the mouth should be.
Sun-Ho stepped in alone.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The figure bowed faintly. "One who tends the flame. I am called the Curator."
"Flame of what?"
"The one forgotten."
---
Ji-Mun edged into the chamber and murmured, "Does no one normal guard secrets anymore? Why not a cute librarian?"
The Curator ignored him.
"Baek Sun-Ho… or should I say Hwan-Seok? You left behind more than grief."
The voice was not synthetic, nor ancient. It was strangely… neutral. Like someone reading aloud from a script.
"What did I leave?" Sun-Ho asked.
The Curator gestured behind him. A pedestal of white stone rose from the floor. Floating above it, inside a three-sided crystal prism, was a scroll.
The air around it shimmered with heat and pressure.
"Your last instruction," the Curator said. "Locked behind three seals: fire, lightning, and wind."
Sun-Ho's eyes narrowed. "And if I didn't have all three?"
"Then you would have walked away incomplete."
---
Sun-Ho extended his hand.
Fire answered first—steady, warm, unwavering.
Then lightning—a quiet crackle along his forearm, shimmering silver and white.
Finally, wind—soft but certain, spiraling through his fingers like a breath remembered.
The prism cracked.
Light burst outward—not violently, but like a sigh that had waited a thousand years.
The scroll unfurled itself midair, its ink still wet as if written just yesterday. Written in his hand.
> To the one who finds this—I am not your past. I am your path.
> The Verdant Flame was not extinguished. It was buried—deep in memory, sealed across seven veins, each holding a truth we were once too afraid to name.
> If you seek to rebuild what was erased, begin at the place where we first bled for the world.
Blackroot was our first wound. And within it lies our first blade.
---
As Sun-Ho read, his fingers tightened.
So it was true.
Not only had he once founded a hidden sect beneath the Murim Order's eyes… he'd prepared for his own return.
Yul-Rin moved beside him. "Are you really going to dig up something you buried yourself?"
"I buried it," Sun-Ho replied, "because I wasn't ready to use it."
---
Aboveground, dusk faded into a cloudy, purple night.
So-Ri waited near the edge of the ridge, her fan tapping gently against her hip. She'd sensed the qi flare earlier—subtle, layered. And now, something else.
A thread of instability.
Her eyes darted up the slope.
"Yeon," she said under her breath.
He was standing at the entrance of the path—alone, his chest heaving, skin slick with sweat despite the cool night.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, approaching quickly. "You weren't supposed to come."
"I… I followed," Yeon muttered, voice ragged. "I felt him... hurt... or fading—"
"Yeon, stop. Your qi's unstable."
"I didn't want to be useless," he whispered, before his legs gave out.
---
So-Ri caught him just before he struck the ground.
The boy's body convulsed—qi backlash rolling across his channels, wild and uncontrolled. He wasn't bleeding. But his meridians were screaming.
So-Ri laid him gently on the grass and placed both hands against his spine, her own inner energy weaving a net to stabilize his flow.
"Stupid," she whispered, biting back the fear in her voice. "You stupid, brave little thing…"
A crack of displaced wind surged nearby.
Sun-Ho appeared a moment later.
He dropped beside Yeon without a word, his palm sliding against the boy's lower back.
Qi recognition.
"Cracks," he said. "Not breaks. He's lucky."
"He's not lucky," So-Ri said. "He's desperate. He thinks if he's not moving forward, he's a burden."
Sun-Ho didn't speak for a while.
Then, "He's not wrong to want more."
He turned Yeon gently, resting a hand on the boy's chest.
"You reached too far," he said softly. "But you didn't fall."
Yeon's eyelids fluttered.
"I'm… not useless."
Sun-Ho shook his head. "No. But you're untrained."
Yeon closed his eyes. "Then train me."
---
They carried him back to camp as the night deepened.
The others said little—Ji-Mun cracked a joke no one laughed at, Ma-Rok carried Yeon like he was made of paper, and Yul-Rin walked ahead, unusually quiet.
Once Yeon was resting, Sun-Ho sat beside the campfire, eyes reflecting only flame.
He unrolled the scroll again, rereading the line:
> Blackroot was our first wound. And within it lies our first blade.
The Scholar's voice echoed in his mind:
> "You were not meant to return. But you have."
He looked over at Yeon, now sleeping with his fingers curled into the fabric of his robe.
Sun-Ho didn't know what kind of weapon was buried in Blackroot.
But maybe the one beside him now was already being forged.
---
End of Chapter 118 – The Scholar with No Face