The drip slows, or his breathing lengthens past the interval—he cannot tell which. Everything narrows to the band of iron around each wrist and the pulse that passes beneath it. When the pulse grows too loud he shifts attention to the brand itself: rough ridges cooling into permanent geometry, a lotus made of scar. He names its pieces in silence, the way Elder Choi once taught students to memorise sect diagrams—petal, stamen, crown—except here the lesson hides inside pain rather than parchment.
Another heartbeat.Friend.Another.Fragment.Another.Dawn.
Outside the slit window, sky the colour of watered ink leaks toward darkness. The courtyard lamps he cannot see throw faint reflections on the opposite wall, so distant their light arrives as the thinnest breath of gold. He studies the flicker until it steadies; only living flames waver, and tomorrow his own must not.
Somewhere overhead chains rattle—changing of evening watch—and boots cross the flagstones with the casual cadence of men who have already decided the verdict. They pause outside his door; a ledger page turns, someone mutters, "Breathing, still," and footsteps retreat. The echo dies fast; stone keeps secrets greedily here.
He tests the manacles, gently, not to escape but to gauge. The left link drags a half-grain sooner than the right; useful tomorrow if he needs sudden slack to redirect force. He notes it, seals the knowledge alongside every brush-stroke flaw in Jisoo's forgery and every tremor in Seo's voice when he promised to flatten petals. Paper fangs, he thinks again—sharp until they meet a throat of bamboo and water.
Lotus-Breath deepens; with each exhale cool air passes over the burns, lifting steam that only he can see. Mist gathers, lingers, sinks back beneath skin. The Gate rules remain: spend nothing unnecessary, waste nothing given. He recites them in cadence with the drip until the two sounds overlay perfectly—inner drum, outer water, hammer and anvil forging something neither metal nor silence but the tension between.
He does not know how long he kneels before the pulse marks its own completion. When it does, he bows once—no witness needed—then settles upright, shoulders square to the door that will open at first light. The rhythm holds, a metronome forged of grief and ember and promise, and the thought follows effortlessly behind:
If iron obeys power, then power will remember whose fire taught it to glow.
The drip falls again, striking the stone like a gong struck in miniature—friend—fragment—bloom—and the chest behind the branded wrists answers with a single, unbroken beat.