Wind slithers through the pines, combing fresh soil across the mound until the brand-black stick looks half-sunk, already fighting to stay upright.Jang's gaze lingers there one heartbeat longer, then slides to the fused scrolls resting in his lap—petal side overlaying root like a wound cupping its own scab. He feels the Gate twinge, a reminder that mourning has bought only minutes of calm; the rent inside him still waits to split wider.
Steel again. This time he does not hesitate. A line opens across his left palm; blood beads, dark and slow, as though reluctant to serve. He smears it along the scroll seam, letting crimson soak the lead-primed silk. When his thumb completes the spiral at centre, text ignites—soundless, colourless—then folds inward on itself the way smoke forgets it was ever fire. Letters unravel into thin ribbons of light, weaving through each other until nothing readable remains, only a pulsing sigil shaped like an eight-petalled wheel.
Root inhale, bloom exhale.
He closes his eyes. Vision drops into marrow: a corkscrew column of dimmer-green Qi that once leaked sideways now gleams hard silver along its walls. The fissure near the lumbar node pinches closed; heat rushes into his ribs, stops short of heart. Not healed—contained. Enough.
Jang exhales. The sigil collapses back into fabric with a faint hiss—blood boiled to steam behind the weave. The fragments are one sheet now, edges fused so seamlessly it might have been written yesterday. He binds it in oil-silk, tucks it inside his tunic, presses heel of hand to Gate. Fever is there, but receding like a beaten drumline.
A pine trunk looms ten paces away, bark slick from rain. He rises, wipes blade, and sets stance. Knees sink, hips coil, arms describe the opening petal. Lotus Bloom Strike, first form.
The air thickens, coloured only in imagination—three slate-grey petals, each a blade of compressed breath. He exhales into them, drives wrists forward. Impact: a dull, splintering crrrk; shards of bark spray in an arc that sparkles under the newborn sun. The trunk does not fall, but a puckered crater the size of two fists smokes where petals struck.
Blood freckles the inside of his lower lip from the rebound, yet the Gate holds. He coughs once, metallic taste faint, manageable.
"Better," he rasps to no one.
Kneeling, he unrolls the violet Heart-Talon scroll beside the dented trunk. Curved swoops inked in predatory strokes intersect at perfect thirds of a circle. He traces the arcs with a pine needle, then overlays the imagined lotus wheel: petals slot neatly into the gaps, 120 degrees apart, yin to talon yang.
Bloom-Talon.The phrase clicks behind his teeth like a key turning half a lock.
Thunder murmurs far off—storm retreating east—while light through pine crowns bleeds from copper to flax-gold. Jang cleans his knife on moss, folds the demon scroll, and notes the white-star grain on his bandaged ribs where poultice calcification shows through: a reminder that marrow still owes payment.
Pack shouldered, cloak drawn, he turns his back on the grave. The wind snaps the fabric once—grey on one side, near-black on the other—then settles to follow him down the serpentine trail toward roof-tiles, tribunal tongues, and the debts he intends to collect.