The world lurched.
Heat that had climbed his spine like a careful torch-bearer now flared, reckless, into skull and sinuses. A metallic tang burst across his tongue. Something wet struck the copy sheet—pat—then another—pat-pat—dark droplets blooming through the fresh ink until characters floated in blurry halos.
Jang clamped both hands over his nose too late. A crimson rope slid between his fingers, splattered the plank. For one stunned heartbeat he simply stared, candlelight prisming through the drops, amber into garnet.
I moved it.The thought rang brighter than pain. Warmth—that impossible inner ember—had answered. Proof shimmered red on rice-paper.
Reality returned with the stink of iron. Blood smell travelled; hounds could catch it. He ripped a strip from his sleeve, wadded it against his nostrils, and forced himself upright though the room dipped like a skiff in storm.
Copy sheet first: he dabbed where the worst splashes lay. The bleeding glyphs looked almost deliberate, a seal signed in life-ink. He folded the page twice, slid it into a narrow bamboo tube scavenged from chopstick freight, capped both ends with cork. The tube vanished into a cracked sesame-oil jar stacked near the wall—one vessel dulled by rancid residue, never checked by kitchen talliers. Perfect.
Next, the fragment. Fingers trembling, he fetched needle and silver thread Kwan had slipped him after the infirmary talk—Fang-Stitch supplies. Three quick punctures through his tunic hem, weave parted like willing flesh, the silk shard slid warm against his ribs. He cinched the loose bites of thread: seven fangs closing around prey. A tug on the final knot—secure. If anyone frisked him, they would feel only cloth.
Floor. Blood speckled wood told tales. Jang tipped a jug of cheap rice-wine kept for cooking, splashed a palmful, scrubbed with grain husks until red faded to pale pink smears indistinguishable from old spills. Wine vapour bit his throat; he forced slow breaths—four-four-seven—even as dizziness swirled.
Candle next. He cupped the flame; soft exhale—darkness swallowed the room. Smoke coiled upward, eager to betray. He fanned it with the torn sleeve until only lukewarm air and hushed rain remained.
Time bled too. He counted—one hundred heartbeats—then cracked the storeroom door. Corridor empty save for a single bead of lantern light far off, swinging with a bored guard's gait. Jang slipped out, sackcloth shoes silent.
Past the corner he paused before a wider chamber where cedar crates towered, each branded with the stylised character for lotus-char. The same ash he had shovelled, reborn into ink bricks. Candles set for tomorrow's manuscripts glimmered across their lacquered surfaces like trapped stars.
His right palm tingled—ghost trail of the Qi warmth. He pressed it to one crate, feeling cool wood, imagining the powder within: refuse made pigment, pigment made power. Voice barely more than breath, he reminded himself, "Ash remembers."
A low growl answered, distant yet near enough to prickle skin. Chain links dragged—the night hound making rounds outside the rear door. Jang withdrew, hugging shadow, heartbeat syncing with the rain that thrashed roof tiles above.
He navigated back through the service hatch, into damp midnight. Clouds had broken; moonlight silvered every puddle. Droplets hammered his face, diluted clots of half-dried blood on his upper lip, turned them to watery pink threads that slid down his chin. He let the rain have them. Secrets were safer washed away.
At the archive's corner he paused once more. Behind shuttered walls Brother Cheol's snores sputtered like a saw through pine. Keys on his silk cord jingled—a tell Jang now recognised to the second. Patrol still two passages distant.
He stepped out from the eave, straight into cold shower. Ink on his cuffs—left from frantic copying—ran in ragged streams. Letters dissolved, but the shapes remained etched in his mind, blazing white-hot as smelted iron.
Somewhere over the servant barracks lightning crawled, silent, through the belly of the storm. The hound bayed—long and low, a vibration in bone rather than ear.
Jang drew his soaked sleeve across cheek and brow, leaving a sooty streak like war-paint. His chest felt hollowed then refilled by something subtler than breath, heavier than hope. He lifted stained knuckles before his eyes, flexed them once.
"Turn waste to power," he whispered, voicing the oath he'd written in blood a few minutes earlier, "and write my name in fire."
Rain answered, drumming applause on every roof tile of Ironshadow as he melted into the maze of alleys— one more servant in grey, carrying a secret black as ink and bright as a newborn ember.