A kettle rattles over the barracks brazier, its lid jittering beneath the rolling boil. Steam sweeps the rafters in feathery ghosts while the chosen servants turn the night into an anvil-yard of muffled industry. Nails hiss when they kiss resin, drawstrings creak through paraffin-soaked eyelets, cloth slaps stone as Jisoo flings the grey banner across the floor for one last inspection. Her needle darts, silver fish in torch-light, closing a line of hollow back-stitches that look ordinary until she tugs a final loop: the thread cinches a narrow pocket flat, sealing whatever she slid inside.
Across the room Won-Il curses softly when the awl skids and bites his thumb. Blood wells. He sucks the cut, grins at Jang. "Better pay in advance," he jokes, but the grin falters when he sees Jang crouched in the far corner, brush flicking over a sheet of translucent oil-silk.
Jang's wrist aches from repetition yet the strokes emerge sure and lean, each charcoal line laid atop its phantom twin traced beneath the slick membrane. Press, lift, drag, flick—his lips shape the silent mantra of calligraphy and combat alike. When the final radical blooms he exhales, rolls the copy into a reed tube, and touches the brazier tongs to the charcoal original. Dry fibres catch with a startled gasp of blue; ash pirouettes upward, curling into the faint form of a lotus before dissolving. The shed, the bruises, the thousand trembling breaths—all compacted to a wisp that vanishes against the beams.
Heat pricks his eyes nevertheless. He slides the tube beneath his tunic where Fang-Stitch thread waits to cradle it against his ribs.
A scuff of leather signals another presence. Ma Gok does not cross the threshold—only tilts the supply-shed door wide enough for his cane to rap twice on the jamb. Something drops inside: a wax-wrapped packet the size of a child's fist. By the time Jang reaches it the corridor outside is empty save for the echo of receding taps.
He peels the seal. A leaf-wrap damp with star-vine balm nestles atop six dull ochre pellets. Bitter musk leaks from them, flooding his tongue with imagined aftertaste. Marrow-fire. Stories claim a single pill can wrench blocked meridians wide—at the risk of burning blood to smoke. No note accompanies the gift, only the faint indent of a thumb in the wax. He does not need handwriting to recognise the unasked question it demands: When the blade is at your back, how far will you gamble? Carefully he knots the packet inside his inner sash.
Moonrise finds the procession assembling beyond the east gate. Wagons groan as oxen dig hooves into gravel; lanterns are raised, their vented caps forming a staggered constellation along the column. Every flame spits yellow and red except the two mounted to the reliquary cart—those glass panes glow white, alchemic salts masking heat to things that hunt by ember-trace.
Jang clambers onto the tailboard of the coal cart with Won-Il hauling behind. Jisoo swings up opposite, banner roll lashed cross-body, her face a porcelain mask broken only by the twitch of calculation in each blink. Ahead, Cho Sun-kyu limps the length of the train, lantern slicing wary arcs. Seo Yun-tae rides a grey mare beside the lead wagon, posture relaxed, hand loose on rein, as though midnight journeys were afternoon strolls designed solely for his poise.
Core Han and Yun Mi-rhe confer by torchlight over a stone map-tablet whose inlaid veins shimmer whenever Mi-rhe taps abacus beads across its surface. A nod from Han, a snap of reins, and the column lurches forward.
Torches drift into motion, a fire-river poured down the slope. Wheels crunch frost-sheened earth; harness rings jingle like distant wind bells. Within the carton's shade Jang presses palm to the bruised heat at his sternum—the first Gate throbs like a buried smelter, equal parts ache and promise. The marrow-fire pills feel suddenly heavy against his skin.
Ironshadow's outer wall recedes, crenellations shrinking to a black comb against star-dusted sky. Wind sweeping off the heights carries soot, pine, and the faintest whisper of spent incense from the Bell of Edicts. He tastes all three, lets them settle as layers on his tongue, then shapes silent words:
Ash to ink, chain to key, bloom from cinder. No road returns unchanged.
One bend swallows the rearguard torches; another devours the main column until only the lamp at the coal cart's tail flickers against cliff walls veined with moon-silver quartz. The switch-back of Nine Sorrows draws them onward, into a dark that feels less like absence of light than the hush preceding a breath none of them have taken yet.
Stone underwheel judders. Jang lays his free hand upon the wagon rail, feels the rhythm pass bone to wood and onward into night. Two dawns ago he carved the last tally stroke. Now each turn of the wheel counts the next.
He does not know which crest will show first: the bloom he seeks, or the blade that waits, invisible, along the serpentine road.
Either will find him ready.