Pain prowls his spine like a lantern-brand dragged along raw bark; every step from the receding glow of the vault grinds its ember deeper.He will not—cannot—stop.
The corridor narrows toward the gorge mouth, ceiling so low he must half-stoop while the crude poultice under his tunic dries to a brittle shell. Each breath rasps through grit-lined lungs; iron dust and stale incense of long-dead torches coat his tongue. Twice he sways, palm catching sandstone, and feels the Gate beneath sternum flutter—an injured bird's wing trying to close. Seven breaths, he bargains, tracing the pattern Elder Baek once mocked servants for reciting. Hold three, release four.The roar in his ears dulls to a muffled rush, but white-noise flecks still stud his vision. Thin threads of blood tickle from the left ear; he wipes them with the back of a shaking hand and stares at the smear, fascinated by how dark it looks against jade–lit skin. One more price. Pocketing the fragment, he presses the Medallion against it—metal to silk, root to bloom—and for an instant the two pulse together, heat spreading along his knuckles like promise. The sensation fades, but the memory of it paces beside him, a silent guardian urging onward.
Soon the wind-blade vents reappear, ranked like jagged mouths across either wall. Their rhythm has changed—gusts shorter now, perhaps the mountain's old mechanism tired by his earlier passage. Fatigue breeds recklessness; instead of counting he dives into the first lull, Branch-Step stuttering as muscles cramp. A later pulse clips the hem of his sleeve, razor air flaying linen to ribbon, but skin is spared. He lands on the far flagstone, a statue for three seconds while the world tilts, then spits blood-saliva and lurches forward before nerves remember terror.
Beyond the last vent the rust-fog greets him with the copper sting of fresh lightning. Dusk has fallen into premature night; the sky overhead churns indigo and bruised scarlet, clouds shredding on unseen ridges. He braces against the stele to catch breath. The half-effaced side-script seems clearer in storm-light, as though iron dust outlines the strokes: astral backlash devoured crown root. The phrase drills into memory, another shard for later study.
Thunder rolls, closer now, followed by the single, ululating howl of something too large to be wolf and too mournful to be mere beast. Almost immediately a horn answers: three notes, each lower than the last, reverberating off gorge walls until direction is meaningless. Black-Vulture hunting call. Their wings, it seems, have not lost his scent.
He drags himself toward a splintered fir standing alone at the ravine lip. The trunk leans outward, roots gripping shale like desperate fingers, offering scant shelter. He wedges between roots, back to bark, and unwraps the scroll fragment enough to read one line beneath the opening verse:
—petal turns upon spiral; spiral sets marrow aflame; flame becomes bloom; bloom devours chain—
Words shimmer, refusing stillness. They are not instructions so much as confessors, whispering of a power vast enough to eclipse pain—if his body survives long enough to claim it. Another Gate-twinge answers, and he folds the silk before ambition can outrun sense.
Fat raindrops strike iron dust, exploding into coppery spatters that freckle his cheeks. Wind tugs branches overhead, needles scribing frantic sigils across the storm- bruised sky. Between thunderbeats he imagines other sounds: boot-crush on gravel, the hiss of toxin-fletched arrows slicing rain. Yet when he listens closely all is distance; the cult horn has receded downslope, chasing echoes of a quarry that fled hours ago. Perhaps they track surviving disciples, perhaps they scent only spilled caravan grain. Either way, the brief reprieve belongs to him alone.
Lightning forks, illuminating the gorge mouth—and in strobe-white brilliance he sees what thunder tried to hide: a pair of stone doors half-collapsed across the gap, their fractured surfaces etched with the same lotus-spiral that girdled the vault dais. One hinge still holds; the other tilts outward, providing a climbable angle. Beyond the ruin of doors lies only blackness, but the Medallion in his pocket stirs, tugging not toward the gulf behind him but toward that yawning dark ahead—as if answering a summons tempo-matched to the storm.
Jang exhales, steadying the tremor in his legs. The Gate hurts, yes, and chills creep along marrow like worms tasting new feast, but purpose now anchors every ruptured channel. Won-Il's laugh still echoes behind fresh memory of blood; the fresco's faceless prisoner glows on the backs of his eyelids. Teach me the next breath, his friend had begged. Fine—he will learn it, and teach the wind itself to drown in it.
He tightens the Fang-Stitched pocket, slides the staff-shard beneath rope belt, and steps from the fir's meagre shelter. Rain smears ash-mud across his boots, washing away the last sign of caravan prints, erasing servant and disciple alike until only the path of one stubborn splinter remains.
Up the tilted door, over jagged sill, into a throat of mountain that rumbles in welcome. Behind him gale and thunder clash like ancient armies; ahead, silence waits—impatient, questioning.
He answers with the click of Medallion against fragment, the quiet rasp of scarred knuckles on stone.
The gale of the old world stirs at his back, but in his clenched fist the second fragment glows like a coal refusing ash.Ahead, the storm opens its throat—and he steps into its question.