The corridor's torches dim behind him, and Jang steps into the Medical Pit as the stretcher's wheels sigh over slate. Tremor-leaf oil lamps gutter along the walls, their yellow flicker turning every shadow into a specter. He limps between rows of slab beds, each scored with dark rivulets of red and sealed with crushed star-vine paste. The air tastes of metal and herb, a throat-scratch reminder that survival often smells like battle's aftermath.
A healer-adept meets him at the threshold, apron stained with coagulated ichor. "Dream-Lotus powder?" she asks, holding a small wooden bowl of silvery dust that catches the lamp-light like moon shards. He pauses, breath hitching as tinnitus drums in his ears—an unrelenting metronome since the bridge. He shakes his head, voice low: "No. I need the pain."
The healer's lips press into a hard line. With a practiced motion she lifts a gourd of star-vine rinse, pours the bitter liquid into a shallow cup, and presses it into his hand. He drinks, the cold tang ripping through raw nerves, and feels the blood still sing in his veins. The world sharpens: distant drip of a poultice mortar, a metal spoon against ceramic, the rasp of leather sandals on slate.
He finds his slab, clutching the edge for balance. Manacle burns on his wrists flare as he props himself up; the faint lotus-mist sheen around the scars shimmers once, then recedes. He extends his arm and watches the red welt climb toward ghost-grey flesh. A second healer slides beside him, her fingers deft as she sprinkles a white powder—star-vine granules mixing with sweat—to staunch the worst of the heat. Jang's teeth grit against the sting. He imagines the Gate's fissure, mapping its tremble in his mind like a bone-deep earthquake.
Beside him, the slab of Seo Yun-tae bears copper splints around a broken rib; an overseer reads from a crumpled edict: "Three months punitive labour at the Rust-Well crank." Seo's hand twitches on the splints as though craving revenge more than breath. His dark gaze tracks Jang's every flinch. The crowd of junior scribes beyond the iron bars murmurs at the sentence; Jang feels their eyes but turns his head, focusing on the antiseptic tiles.
A tribunal messenger arrives then, stepping lightly across the floor. He unfurls a grey sash stitched with a single jade thread, and with two clipped noises pins it to Jisoo's arm sling—the mark of probationary Outer-Disciple. Applause flickers among the scribes, surprising in its sudden warmth; the servant gallery holds its breath. Jisoo's head dips, her lashes brushing a bruised cheek, but she will not look at Jang.
He closes his eyes and lets the corridor's clamor fade into the hammering in his skull. The opiate temptress remains unused at his side—healed but unquiet, every nerve still reaching for the pain to guide him. A low bell tinkles somewhere, an echo of the Execution Gong, and he recalls Won-Il's laughter at the first campfire: bile tastes worse than sake. He inhales, tasting copper and ash, and exhales to steady the Gate's tremor.
At the far end of the hall, Grandmaster Baek's jade-inlaid cane taps a measured rhythm. Jang glances up as the old man pauses, eyes drifting over the lotus scar on his palm. The Grandmaster inclines his head once, as if filing the mark away for later. Then the shadows swallow him.
A hush settles, pierced only by the soft hiss of the pestle against mortar and the distant shuffle of a ledger closed with a final snap. Ma Gok and Kwan appear at opposite ends of the row, their nods wordless but weighted—an unspoken pact of blood and bone.
Beyond the grated doorway, kitchen servants lean in, voices hushed into a single drumbeat: "He bloomed on the bridge." The refrain ripples down the corridor. Jang rises, each step a concise echo of sandal against stone, his arm heavy with bandages. Outside, the sun waits—cold, indifferent, and vast. He steps into its pale blue light, and every whisper in the infirmary trails after him like petals on a restless wind.