Stone swallowed every sound once the last gate rasped shut. No crowd, no banners—only the hiss of iron cooling against raw skin and the pulse that refused to slow. The guards had chained him to a waist-high ring set in the floor, long enough to sit but not stand; their torches left, leaving a single slit window to drip wan afternoon light down the far wall like a colourless waterfall. Dust motes hovered in it, too tired to dance.
Jang lowered himself with care, legs folding until the manacles jarred against the ring and yanked blood-slick wrists apart another finger-width. Pain spiked, white and immediate, then settled into a sawing throb. He steadied breath the way Kwan once taught him to lift cargo: inhale on the weight, exhale on the set. Root, stem, bloom.
Hot iron had seared a half-moon into living flesh; as it cooled the shape puckered, drawing the welt into a crude lotus rim. He could almost feel each petal bevel forming beneath the crust, the brand making itself permanent whether he survived dawn or not. A grim symmetry: the sect's emblem now etched in punishment where the flower's promise had first opened in marrow.
He closed his eyes and called the Grey-Pine wind.
Memory obliged—damp needles under the knees, shovel haft blistering palms, the hush after Won-Il's grave had swallowed the last spade of earth. In that hush a breeze had come, green and resin-sweet, bending the saplings till they whispered with voices too young to mourn. He matched his breaths to that rustle now: in on the rise of imaginary boughs, out as they bowed.
With the fourth cycle tinnitus withdrew a fraction; the iron-pulse in his temples dropped from hammer to drum. Lotus-Mist stirred, thin as morning fog, curling from charred links in hesitant tendrils. He let it flow only far enough to coat the wounds and keep them from sticking to the metal, then drew the vapour back. To flash a visible aura here would hand every listening warden another weapon.
Footsteps clanged outside—iron-shod again, brisk with official purpose. Keys rattled, but the door didn't open; instead a shutter grate slid aside at eye-level. A single bowl skidded through, sloshing grey rice-gruel across its rim before halting near his knee. The shutter slammed shut.
He left the bowl where it rested. Hunger would slow him tomorrow, yes, but the duel would finish long before starvation could matter; and the faint Qi he could harvest from meditation promised truer strength than half-cold starch. Instead he reached for the pulse again. Root. Stem. Bloom.
The mantra bloomed petals of colour behind his eyelids: slate first, then jade-rimmed grey, then the phantom crimson that always followed—the memory-tone of torchlight on Won-Il's blood. He anchored there, neither turning from the image nor clinging to it, letting it burn without consuming. Pain, he discovered, listened when addressed with care. It offered shape, rhythm, contour; accept those and it ceased insisting on additional attention.
A drip struck stone somewhere left—a slow, sporadic tap like a disinterested metronome. He bent his heartbeat to it: two beats on drip, exhale on gap. Minutes stretched; light thinned as the sun angled beyond the slit. At some point distant bells chimed—seventh afternoon, perhaps eighth. The Execution Bell did not ring for hours; its tongue swung only when verdicts demanded echo. Yet he heard a faint chord anyway, the ghost-resonance servants whispered about, vibrating in the bones of the condemned alone. Or perhaps in anyone who had felt a lotus burn into skin.
He remembered the falsified scroll hanging in sun, letters fattened by projection silk until even their errors looked authoritative. Brush-stroke flaws: over-inked horizontals, a tail on the "qi" radical where his own hand always lifted clean. He replayed each error, fixing them like knots on a rope to be tugged at dawn. Seo would flank the duel with rhetoric; breaking his certainty mid-combat might tilt more than swords. Words could cut, if timed between strikes.
Another drip. He opened his eyes.
Between his knees the rice-gruel had stilled, surface now a dull mirror catching the light of a newborn crescent moon outside the slit. He leaned forward, letting one droplet of blood slide from his wrist to ripple the reflection. Concentric rings crossed the bowl—three ripples before they faded. Root, stem, bloom. The pulse remained measured.
Somewhere above, courtyard lanterns would be lighting, gossip would coil through dormitories like incense: the traitor's scroll, the servant's tears, the duel decree. Jang pictured the rumours spiralling outward, petals of narrative with him at their unspoken centre. Petals could be plucked; stems cut. Roots? Harder.
He smiled—a small, private motion—then adjusted his seat until iron chains allowed the slightest slack. Lotus-Breath again, pulling warmth from charred steel, redirecting it along forearm meridians, teaching pain to circulate rather than stagnate. If he could keep the blood moving the brand would not swell shut; flexibility would stay.
The moon rose higher; its sliver of light crawled up the opposite wall, silvering damp mortar lines. He wondered, distantly, whether Jisoo watched it too and what stories ink told her when the courtyard emptied and applause died. Paper fangs, he thought; sweet with promise until they tasted marrow.
He would deal with that tomorrow, if tomorrow opened its hand.
For now he had breath and pulse and the cool suspicion that power, once convinced, would obey in silence the way iron obeyed heat—without illusion, without protest, without mercy.
Root.
Stem.
Bloom.
And beneath the chant the steady click of water on stone ticked time—not counting down, but counting in, forging every second into the steel he would carry onto the bamboo bridge at dawn.