The blade falls in a soundless flicker of torch-glare and everything inside Jang tears forward, but his body answers with a late, broken twitch. Pine-shadow swallows the scene as he tumbles down the slope, gravel skittering beneath his ribs, thorns raking his forearms in quick, bright scratches. When he lands, the world rings: a thin brass whine in his ears, as though the arrow storms have lodged there and continue to sing.
Through the briar mesh above, he can still see the clearing—its light stuttering under shattered wagon lamps, the cultists' cloaks winging in and out of flame-struck darkness. Won-Il is a kneeling silhouette, shoulders yanked back by a cord, throat shining wet where the knife-edge rests. The distance between them is no wider than the laundry yard at Ironshadow, yet it feels as far as the mountain's root.
Breathe.Lotus-Root.Four-four-seven.
The pattern wobbles, every count snagging on the pain glittering behind his right eye. Blood from the ruptured Gate drips into the pine-needle loam, darker than pitch. He presses the scroll tube splint tighter against his flank to steady the tremor and reaches for the memory of violet-ink diagrams—the Heart-Talon Pierce. Thumb-blade mudra. Index knuckle raised, other fingers curved to direct the pulse. Downward flow only.
He shapes the mudra, arm trembling like a sapling in gale.
Now.
A dry spark stutters along the meridian, no bigger than the static shock off winter blankets. It should roll from wrist to shoulder in a glossy sweep and spear outward, but instead it hits the damaged Gate near his diaphragm and lashes back. A white-hot whip cracks through his nerves; bile, blackened by old blood, splashes the back of his tongue. He recoils, shoulders ploughing into the thorn wall. Barbs enter meat, withdraw glistening. The meagre spark gutters into smoke.
Above, the clearing sharpens for a heartbeat—torch flare painting every figure bronze and monstrous. He sees Won-Il's eyes searching, hopeless, and his own voice flees him. All that escapes is a whisper scraped raw: "Hold on."
The cultist tightens his grip on Won-Il's hair. He chants in a dialect that grinds consonants like bones in pestle—"Fear feeds door, door feeds sky." The ritual blade lowers, deliberate, so the prisoner can taste the metal. Won-Il's shoulders stiffen; even from here Jang reads the effort not to scream.
Jang's fingers spasm around the staff shard. He tries again—thumb-blade mudra, inhaling the cold resin-scented air, dragging what little Qi remains into the downward meridian. It skitters like frightened mice and refuses to gather. The split in his Gate widens; he feels it as wet warmth sliding under ribs.
The knife begins its arc.
Move move move—the command flashes through every tendon but nothing obeys. Pain eclipses will like clouds drowning moonlight. A ringing hush falls. Even torch crackle seems far away.
The blade kisses flesh. Crimson opens across Won-Il's throat, a curtain parting in impossible silence. The cultist does not draw fast; he draws artfully, harvesting the fear-thickened pulse till blood runs in thin scarlet ribbons down the boy's chest. Won-Il's mouth shapes Jang's name. No sound crosses the clearing, but Jang reads it—two syllables, one last joke of shared rice-gruel nights swallowed by dark.
"I'm sorry you never felt Qi," Jang mouths back. Tears do not rise; the body has no water left.
Won-Il slumps forward, heartbeat pumping out in diminishing bursts that look almost black beneath torch-gold. The cultist wipes his blade on servant grey.
Silence rushes into Jang's skull, then shatters. Sobs he did not know he carried rip from him and the forest answers with distant rock-crow echoes, as though mocking grief. He claws at the ground, thorn branches cracking under his weight, but nothing moves except the tremor of a dying meridian.
Somewhere to his left another servant screams, abruptly cut short. Hooves pound; a wagon wheel snaps; disciples bark orders he cannot parse. None of it touches him. He sinks to his elbows, forehead brushing pine mould, and the spiral inside begins—a slow, tight orbit of memories: lash counts muttered in dormitory dark; Ma Gok's cane tapping approval that felt like ice; Seo's apple core spitting wet pulp onto his cheek; Won-Il's wheezy laughter over burnt millet, Turns out enlightenment tastes like bile. The orbit narrows, becomes a sinkhole. Enough. The word beats like a pulse. Enough enough. If the Gate finishes tearing, the pain will stop. He could lie here, bleed into root-shadow, and join the ring of grey-ink ghosts already forming in his mind.
Then another image wedges in: Kwan's quiet grin as he folded the Golden-Silk poultice, the whisper of star-vine camphor. Jisoo's blood-dark oath swirling in the basin. Yun's iron-lotus badge glinting beneath Ma Gok's keys. Chains, yes—but every chain promises a key.
"So be it," he mutters, voice hoarse as rust.
Hands claw earth, push. Thorns shred sleeves; blood weeps anew. Crawling feels like someone hammering nails into his spine, yet inch by inch the briars part. Smoke from torched pitch stings his eyes; through the gauze he spots the supply cart toppled on one flank. Corpses lie strewn like discarded practice dummies—inner disciples, servants, cultists tangled beyond naming. A single figure remains upright against the cart wall: Core Disciple Han Jeong-il, one knee bent grotesquely, the ruin of an arrow haft jutting from the empty socket where an eye had been.
Jang drags himself closer. Each movement is a quiet thunderclap in his skull. When he reaches Han's boots, he pauses to breathe through teeth chattering like dice. The white jade of Han's scabbard gleams immaculate—untouched blade in a field of ruin. The arrogance of that perfection twists something in Jang, but he leashes the feeling. Purpose first.
The Fang-Stitch lesson returns, crisp despite pain: inner linings hide what outer cloth cannot. Using the splintered staff tip, he saws into the silk under-robes, following seam until silver glints. A narrow chain, lotus-etched coin the size of a gaming piece. Its surface catches dying torch-light and for an instant he sees his own reflection warped across the petals. Two characters lie at the centre—根 (root) interlocked with 軸 (axis)—and between them a star-shaped socket he can feel more than see, tugging faintly at the iron in his blood.
The Medallion hums in his palm, a vibration finer than insect wings. It feels wrong to steal from the dead, but Han dropped his shield ring first, made servants into meat. Jang whispers a steadied breath, pockets the coin inside the Fang-Stitch of his sash, the place Won-Il once joked would keep rice wafers dry.
Pain roars anew. He digs out the Golden-Silk poultice, presses the sticky, pearl-flecked mass against the Gate wound. Fire lances down his spine, then icy numbness seals edges. Skin around the poultice pales to snow. The price for standing.
A gust pushes smoke aside, carrying voices from the ridge path: "Relic secured. Grand Elder awaits. Wings converge on vault—withdraw!" Footsteps retreat, ordered and swift. The Black-Vulture force is leaving; the march is broken. No masters, no banners—only ruined carts and cooling bodies.
He kneels beside Won-Il, brushes soot-matted hair from vacant eyes. "The debt is mine now," he tells the silence, and it tastes like iron vows on his tongue.
Staff shard in hand, medallion humming against his ribs, he turns toward the dark mouth of the forest where the cult withdrew. Dawn violet creeps along the edge of the sky, but here beneath the Grey-Pine canopy night clings like a shroud.
"The mountain eats keys—" he whispers, gripping the shard until splinters drive under nails, "—but I'm its splinter."
He steps forward, alone, into the breathless hush before first light.