The mountain hushes behind him, layers of dripping mist sealing the grave as surely as any stone lid could. Each step down-slope grinds gravel beneath torn sandals, and the rhythm starts to resemble a metronome: root, bloom, root, bloom—an echo of the eight-petal cycle now spiralling inside his spine. He lets the cadence settle, measuring how the repaired Gate holds under steady motion. A faint prickle radiates along the calcified star-scar near his ribs, but pain stays caged, no longer gnawing marrow like an animal.
The path switchbacks through slick ferns, then widens where last night's flash flood has gouged a shallow trench. He hops the waterlogged rut and glances back only once. The pine crowns obscure the mound, yet he can still picture the charcoal brand on the marker: HE DREAMED OF QI. Wind drags a ribbon of fog across the gap, as though the gorge is intent on erasing even that fragile inscription. Not yet, he tells it. Not until the promise flowers.
He resumes, shoulders angling to accommodate the pack's new weight. The fused scroll sits against his kidneys, warm despite the chill air, while the violet Heart-Talon parchment rides in an oil-skin slit beside the staff shard. Steel and silk, crime and creed—opposites sharing the same thin wall. He wonders if that is what his soul looks like now: stitchwork holding rival colours that will tear if he pulls too hard. Bloom for him, bleed for none, the inner voice reminds.
A low branch blocks the trail, snapped half-through by lightning. Jang ducks beneath, cloak brushing lichen, and a faint shimmer rolls off his shoulders—mist so colourless it might be imagined, except for the whisper of jade at its rim. He pauses, flexes fingers, watches the haze coil, disappear. A thrill flickers deep, tempered at once by caution. Stealth is a blade; draw it without thought and the edge drinks blood indiscriminately.
Further downslope, soil turns to scree and distant rooftops of Ironshadow Plateau hint through vapour like ink strokes on washed parchment. That far? The realisation steels him; tribunal tongues will be waiting, sharpening rumours before they taste facts. Servant buffer corpses, missing relic, Core disciples dead—someone will want a neck to hang all of it on. If the lotus in his marrow is to survive long enough to bloom, he must decide whether to sneak through gates or stride in bearing truth like a banner.
He grips the cloak's front clasp until knuckles blanch, then releases. One decision at a time. First, reach the outer garrison; second, find Yun Mi-rhe—her antidotes may be the only leash on the fever coiled inside him. After that, the tribunal can try to bind him with grey-ink ropes; he now knows what those fibres are truly woven from, and how fire answers char.
As dawn clears toward gold, rock-crows begin their mimic cries, but this morning the sound barely grazes him. His pulse lines up with the horizon; inhale on root, exhale on bloom. Tiny motes of lotus mist escape with each breath, instantly lost to sunlight like shy spirits seeking cover. Ahead, the trail bends east, toward tiled roofs and waiting jaws.
He sets boot to gravel, and the cloak flares once more—dark petal unfurling, then settling against his back.
The grave lay quiet, iron scent ebbing beneath newborn mist.Ahead, the path curved toward roof-tiles and tribunal tongues, but the lotus in his blood had tasted open sky.Every step would be a petal falling—and a promise kept.