Coal dust ghosts his boots as he slips through the half-ajar pantry hatch and descends the ladder no servant is meant to know still exists. Lanterns were stripped from this stair a decade ago—light would only betray smuggling routes—but someone left a finger-width crack in the shutters above, and that sliver of dusk funnels downward, enough for a revenant's work. Jang counts each rung, silent as breath held under water, until his feet meet grit instead of wood.
The cellar yawns out, wider than memory suggested, ribbed with rows of ancient coal bins and the calcified throats of ruined forges. Ash carpets everything in a film the colour of dried bones; each step sets a soft sigh swirling around his ankles. One forge still remembers heat. He feels it first—not warmth, exactly, but an exhale of faint ember-scent, pine-pitch and iron filings, like a story trying to rekindle itself. Good. He needs a witness that can keep secrets.
He shrugs off Kwan's patched cloak, spreads it across a toppled anvil to mark the centre of his circle, and draws the boundaries with a charcoal nub scavenged on the way down: three overlapping petals for Bloom, a talon feather's arc bisecting each at one-hundred-twenty degrees. The geometry steadies his pulse. If the angles hold, the marrow will follow.
Lotus stance first. He sinks, weight balanced heel-to-arch, left hand open like a cup for grief, right hand knife-edge to sculpt the air. Breath in—root. Breath out—petal. Again. Again. When the inner roar settles to a distant hush he pivots into the Heart-Talon preparatory crouch, index and middle fingers folding to an invisible claw. The fused fragments whisper from the hidden pocket at his waist, their silk humming against rib and scar like caged insects begging flight.
Strike.
Petal arc meets feather thrust a heartbeat late. The qi thread kinks; backlash punches between shoulder blades. A coal brick behind him fractures with a pistol-crack, spraying black shards that nick his ear. He grits teeth, rolls the burning vertebrae, resets the diagram with shaking chalk.
Second attempt. Breath anchors perfectly; the pivot is true. But pain ghosts the Gate's cracked rim at the last instant, and he flinches. Knuckles glance stone, skin peels open. Blood dots the charcoal lines and steams where it lands. Hairline fractures spider-web beneath his soles, grey on grey like frost trying to remember winter.
He wipes fingertips on trousers already stiff with old gore. One more.
Slow now: Branch-Step glide, weight sliding over ball of foot, torso folding forward, spine curved like bow. Feather thrust extends along diagonal set by imaginary petal. For the first time tonight everything clicks so softly it feels predestined—three slate petals unwind in grey fluorescence, the talon's ghost-edge riding inside their wake. The air caves inward with a basso pop; stone flags ripple as though skin over sudden muscle. Centre flagstone cracks open in a neat corolla-shaped crater no larger than a rice bowl.
Silence rushes back, louder than the strike. His left nostril floods scarlet; the white noise in his ears swells, then fades to a needle-thin whine. He sways, forces breath through the Grey-Pine cadence—inhale for root, exhale for wind between grave boughs—until pulse steadies and the cellar's darkness stops tilting.
A line of blood has crawled from nose to chin, pattering into the crater to complete the lotus image. He almost laughs—Won-Il would have called it tragic poetry—but the sound would cost oxygen he cannot spare. Instead he lowers to one knee, fingers probing the warmth beneath ear. Damp but not leaking; Gate #2 holds… for now.
The last scrap of golden-silk poultice waits in his belt pouch, stiff as parchment. He tears it into two, presses one piece over the nose to dam fresh flow and tucks the other beneath the collar, directly over the throbbing Gate. Resin sting sears; cool numbness follows like mercy wearing barbed gloves.
Grey-Pine breathing again. Close eyes. Picture dawn fog twining through cemetery roots, the grave he dug beneath those silent trees. Inhale iron-scented loam, exhale through imagined needles. Qi thread lengthens, clears; the tinnitus thins to a reed's whistle. When lids lift, colour has crept back to the cellar, ember-orange licking the cracked stone, charcoal outlines glowing faintly. A translucent veil—Lotus Mist, embryonic—clings to his forearms, then dissolves as he stands. Progress, but not enough.
He forces legs down, palms open to scrape the boundary lines away. No more brute petals tonight; the gate screams quiet protest even at thought. Theory work will serve.
He unwraps the violet-ink scroll stolen from the dying cultist—no, salvaged, a cost he paid in blood—and weights its corners with coal. Candle stub conjured from sleeve gutter cast amber halos over the parchment. The strokes curve like hooked beaks, every Heart-Talon route returning to the same three apex nodes. He overlays the memory of petal paths atop the diagram, fingertip tracing invisible arcs. Where lotus ends, talon begins. Where talon slashes, lotus empties. A dance of hungry spaces. He can almost feel the spiral hiding between them.
Ink smell gives way to throat-stinging liniment, sweat, and broken pine resin—different air, different room. Without punctuation, the narrative glides into that distant hall where Seo Yun-tae vents rage on straw dummies, each punch accompanied by a wet rip of canvas and a curse too florid for official manuals. Jisoo is already there, slipping from the shadow behind the pillar. She kneels like an obedient novice, scroll offered in both palms. Candled lamplight throws mirrored flames inside Seo's furious eyes as he unrolls proof of her betrayal. Salt and vinegar tease nostrils; bloodied rags nearby tell story of earlier tantrum. Their voices hummed low enough that walls themselves must lean to listen.
"…call this art?" Seo hisses.
"A weed can strangle cedar when fed in secret," she replies. "Show the tribunal he fertilised himself with forbidden weed, and your blade will simply prune."
He agrees, the promise of Outer-Disciple braid glinting brighter than any honour, and the forged scroll coils back into her sleeves, slick as a knife sheathed under silk.
Moonlight now, brushing courtyard cobbles where Jang sits, post-practice robes freshly rinsed, damp hair a ragged halo around face. Every exhale paints mist, yet the chill cannot penetrate marrow after kiln heat of the cellar. He threads Kwan's frayed hemp cord around wrist twice, knotting ends with sailor precision. The fibre smells faintly of sesame oil and family dinners never tasted; it is a tether to something gentler than tomorrow's bridge of blood.
"Strength is choice," Kwan had murmured, fingers squeezing once before departing. The echo lingers, mixing with pine-bark memory and lotus vow until it feels like a third Gate, one made purely of words.
Wind changes—the hour of judgment approaches. From across barracks roof night drums two slow heartbeats against sky: the Tribunal Gong test-stroke. Guards appear between lantern pools, iron shoes biting stone. They do not offer greetings, only chains. Cold metal kisses still-tender wrists; Lotus Mist shivers up his arms in reflex, longing to melt into nothing, but he reins it down, jaw iron-locked.
Martial steps escort him past storage sheds where ash still clings under fingernails; each footfall seems to hammer newfound technique deeper into bone. He counts seven petals, seven feathers, seven breaths from courtyard to the looming outline of the arena tower. Inside ribs something glows—not pride, not fear, but a forge-heart steadying for another strike.
The second gong stroke booms, rolling through cloisters like thunder trapped under tiles. Coal-cellar fractures in the floor, violet arcs of talon ink, Kwan's cord, Jisoo's inked betrayal, Seo's promised garden of blood—everything converges on that sound. He smiles, bare and quiet, letting the vibration settle behind teeth.
Forge completes beneath hammer.
And the night swallows the rest.