Healer-Adept Lin steps forward with a shallow porcelain bowl, its rim dusted with the pale glimmer of Dream-Lotus powder—moon-dust, she calls it, balm for bone and mind. Jang's gaze drifts past her fingers, already stained crimson at the knuckles. He lifts a hand, the veins along his forearm pulsing like trapped eels, and shakes his head. Lin's breath hitches: the corridor air, thick with tremor-leaf smoke, seems to still.
She presses the bowl nearer. "One pinch, disciple. Sleep without dreams."
He closes his eyes, tasting copper and ash on his tongue, and replies quietly, "I need to remember." Pain is a map, and he needs the Gate's tremor, not its silence.
Lin's relief shows in the softening of her shoulders. Without another word, she swaps the bowl for a wooden ladle, scooping star-vine rinse from a chipped earthenware jar. He grips the cup as though it were a lifeline and drinks, the liquid's bitter cold coursing through the raw red channels on his skin. The sting sharpens his senses: the mortar's grind in the next alcove, the faint buzz of the lamps overhead, the distant clang of a ledger's cover snapping shut.
A low bell tinkles to mark a shift in pace—an echo of the morning's Execution Gong—and Grandmaster Baek steps into view at the far end of the slab row. His jade-inlaid cane clicks against slate: one, two, three. He pauses, fingers curled around its head, and studies Jang's lotus-shaped scar and the blackened circles where the Fangs of Bureaucracy bit his wrists. The old man's eyes narrow, as if tasting the wound, then he turns away without a word.
Jang exhales through his nose, breath catching on the graft of skin. He allows himself a moment to trace the scar with a fingertip, imagining Wan-Il's laughter in the Grey-Pine hush. The reminder tastes metallic and bitter.
Moments later, Ma Gok appears at his side, the infirmary's herb-bottle satchel hanging from one shoulder. He offers a small, cloth-wrapped cylinder—Ma Gok's marrow-fire pill, cramped to three days' grace against Hollow-Marrow fever. Jang accepts it without question, kissing the rough cloth in silent thanks. A single nod passes between them: no words, only the weight of debts acknowledged.
At the same time, Kwan slips in from the opposite archway, dark robes whispering against stone. He carries nothing but the faint scent of mint and candle-wax. His eyes meet Jang's, and there is something in that glance—pride, concern, an unspoken command. Kwan inclines his head twice, an echo of Baek's silent beat, and departs as quietly as he came.
The aisle beyond fills with a susurrus of whispers—kitchen girls in soot-stained aprons, stable hands with dirt under their fingernails, copyists whose ink-dipped robes trail behind them like dark petals. They lean in, mouths tight, trading scraps of rumors passed up through laundry vents and drainage grates: He bloomed on the bridge… He split the tiger's blade… He broke the Execution Bell… Each fragment lands in the air like a falling leaf, catching on the roughhewn beams.
Jang's heart ticks steadily, the Gate ache in his temple a keening drumbeat that drowns out the corridor's clamor. He stands, bandages snug around his arm, and flexes his fingers—no Dream-Lotus fog, no clouded haze. The blood still hums in his veins, and he lets it guide him down the length of the ward.
He reaches the open doorway where midday light falls in a pale curtain across the threshold. Servants lining the walkway freeze, clutching bowls of water, stacks of ledger books, bundles of linen. Their eyes are wide as koi eyes, reflecting the silver-blue glare of a sunlit courtyard. Jang steps out, each sandal-scrape deliberate, and passes through their ranks. Whispers trail behind him like a wake—a silent current pulling at the edges of every whispered promise and threat.
Once outside, he tilts his head upward, letting the light wash over his scarred wrists. The world feels too bright, too open. The corridor of his mind narrows to the steady thump of Gate-pain, a pulse he alone can hear, a rhythm he must never silence.
And ahead lies the Shadow Council's halls, where questions will be sharpened like knives. But for now, there is only the sun on his face and the soft chorus of rumor riding the breeze—He bloomed on the bridge—and a man reborn in pain, limping toward a future written in steel and petal.