The last drumbeat dissolved into the violet sky, and the courtyard lamps flared one by one as servants drifted toward the meal fires. Jang kept to the edges, copper coin hidden in a fist slick with sweat, mind still ringing with talk of vaults and constellations. Five days. A span so small it felt absurd beside the vast gears he had just glimpsed—elders, relics, sect history—but small was not the same as safe.
He found Won-Il crouched beside the rice cauldron, ladling thin porridge into chipped bowls for whoever queued. The older man's sleeves were rolled past scarred forearms, steam beading in his lashes like dew on spider silk. When he spotted Jang, he jerked his chin toward the shadows behind the cook-shed, signalling a private word. Jang collected two bowls, added a crust of day-old millet cake, and followed.
They settled on a fallen beam repurposed as a bench, firelight throwing shaky amber onto their faces. Crickets stitched silver threads through the silence. Won-Il slurped once, sighed, then fixed Jang with the half-smile he used when humour and worry pulled the same rope.
"Your eyes are louder than your mouth tonight," he said. "What did the stones whisper while you scrubbed them?"
Jang blew across the porridge, letting the steam veil his expression. "Keys," he murmured, voice pitched low so the crackling firewood would chew the syllables before they travelled. "Keys can uproot mountains."
Won-Il's spoon paused halfway to his lips. "Is that a proverb or the start of a fever?"
"Both, maybe." Jang forced a chuckle, kept it thin. "Just something the elders said while they argued protocols. Made me think."
"You've been doing a lot of that lately—thinking." Won-Il poked the embers with a twig, sparks leaping like tiny spirits. "Used to be you'd complain about sore feet or stale rice. Now you mutter riddles and stare past walls."
Jang felt the Fang-Stitch seam itch where the fragment copy rested. He chose each word the way one picks stepping stones across a flooded path. "Walls have cracks. If you see them, you start wondering what's on the other side."
"Cracks are how floods come in too," Won-Il countered, smile fading. He tapped Jang's bowl. "Eat before it skins over."
They ate in parallel silence for several breaths. Overhead the first evening bats zig-zagged after moths, their wings making no more sound than turning pages. Jang measured the quiet, weighing how much he could share without dragging Won-Il into danger he only dimly understood.
"I might volunteer for extra duty," he said at last, keeping his gaze on the fire. "A caravan leaving in five days. They'll need porters."
Won-Il barked a laugh, a little too sharp. "Porters? Since when do you chase travel?"
"Since I realised some doors only open once." Jang's voice dropped to a thread. "And some keys don't come back."
Won-Il's brows knitted; he scraped the last rice from his bowl, then set it aside. "Is this about that beating in the pits? You still tasting cinder in your mouth? Because running down a road with merchants won't change—"
"It's not that." Jang risked a steady look. "I can't explain yet. But believe me, if I go, I'll… I'll come back stronger."
Won-Il studied him, embers painting copper in his eyes. Whatever he saw made his shoulders sag a hair. "Little brother," he whispered—rare tenderness in the address—"strength isn't just fists or Qi. Don't train so hard you forget what you're training for."
"I won't." The lie tasted like wet iron.
Won-Il forced the half-smile again, but a crease of unease remained. He rose, gathering bowls. "Dream of sweet things, then. I have latrine watch." He nudged Jang's ankle with his toe. "If mountains start moving in your sleep, wake me so I can watch."
Jang managed a grin he did not feel. When Won-Il limped away into the lamp-row, the emptiness he left behind was immediate, a chill draft across hot coals. Doubt flickered—was secrecy courage or betrayal? Yet the coin in Jang's pocket and the scroll against his ribs both insisted: some weights could not be shared.
Two incense sticks later the compound lay in muffled slumber, broken only by the occasional clank of a patrol's spear butt. Jang slid from his pallet, padded barefoot through the outer corridor, and slipped into the pantry stair that smelled of millet dust and old ginger. The same storeroom door eased inward with its familiar groan, and darkness folded around him like a willing cloak.
He lit a stub of tallow. Sulphur sparked, smoke spiralled blue, and the flame steadied—a lonely star in the cramped chamber. Sacks of rice pillowed the walls; on a low crate rested the ledger backs he had filched, edges trimmed square with a kitchen cleaver. Tonight the parchment felt almost luxurious compared to the scrap sheet spattered with blood upstairs.
He breathed once for calm, twice for focus, then unpicked the Fang-Stitch with a fingernail and drew out the silk fragment. Even knowing he would destroy it before dawn, he handled the piece like brittle porcelain: fingertips only, no oil smears, no tremors. The charcoal watermark of a lotus—nearly invisible unless the candle struck the correct angle—seemed to float between fabric layers, petals half-unfurled.
Jang laid the fragment beside the clean sheet, reached for the thumb-length ink-stick of pressed ash, and began grinding on the water-stone. Press, lift, drag, circle, the stick sang in tiny squeals. Thick liquor pooled, smelling of soot and tannin and night air after rain. Ash to ink, ink to oath, he recited silently, heartbeat syncing to the scrape.
When the pool was black and glossy as obsidian, he dipped a reed brush and started copying. Glyph after glyph emerged, mirror to the original yet subtly his—strokes a shade thinner where his wrist refused flourish, dots speared with urgency. He wrote until the candle's flame licked the last nub of wax. Re-lighting would waste time; darkness could finish the work. He closed his eyes, summoned the memory of each remaining line, and let brush meet paper guided by that inner lantern that had awakened when Qi first stirred.
By the time he set the brush down, sweat had cooled on his spine. He rolled shoulders, easing the ache, then folded the ledger sheet once, twice, corners aligning with ritual precision. The copy would live; the source must vanish.
He fed a sliver of kindling into the brazier's mouth and coaxed a whispering spark. When the glow steadied, he slid the silk wedge onto the coals. Fire nibbled, thread by thread, until black spread like ink dropped in water. The fragment curled, edges shrinking inward, and in that contraction petals appeared—negative space lotus blooming from its own demise. Ash lifted in corkscrew currents, grey on black, perfect, fleeting.
Jang watched mesmerised until the last fibre gave up form. Only a spiral ember remained, centre pulsing a stubborn ruby. Ash to ink, ink to oath, oath to spine, he intoned. Then he dropped the brazier lid and cut the light.
The dark was absolute. He sat cross-legged, letting breath settle, recalling the four opening lines—horse stance, inverted lotus, the 4-4-7 pulse. Slowly he rose, feet planting shoulder width, thumbs against index pads at belly's core. Inhale to four: air slid cool, collecting behind navel. Hold four: mind like still ink. Seven-count exhale: warmth threaded upward along spine's inner channel.
Unlike the first attempt, no needles burst behind his eyes. The warmth crept to his right elbow—gentle, inquisitive. His fingertips twitched of their own accord, a leaf in breeze. He held the sensation, memorising weight, texture, direction, then loosed the breath. The glow receded without punishment.
A smile, small but uncontainable, unfolded on his lips. One cycle, no blood. Proof that practice tempered peril.
He secured the fresh copy inside the Fang-Stitch, double-knotted, then brushed stray ash into the brazier's belly. Only a faint iron tang hung in the room—nothing a morning cook-fire wouldn't swallow.
Before leaving he touched the brazier lid. The metal radiated timid heat, reminder of secrets willingly burned. "Iron bends," he whispered, voice barely air, "ink endures."
Five days.
He closed the door behind him, becoming one more shadow in a corridor stitched from them, guided by a pulse that no longer beat quite like a servant's.