Moonlight pooled across warped floorboards, silvering the gaps where rice husks once spilled like pale embers. Jang's bare feet pressed through the loose straw, each step stirring motes that glowed in the lantern light. He raised a finger to his lips—then tapped his ash-crown headband thrice against the doorframe of the abandoned granary. The soft knock echoed wood-grain and hollow emptiness, a summons only those bound by whispered promise would follow.
Silhouetted at the threshold, Seul slipped inside first, shoulders hunched against the steam drifting up from the lower kitchens. Ara hovered behind her, lantern in hand, face pale but resolute. The kitchen twins, identical as mirror images, crept forward next, their eyes flicking between Jang and the yawning void of the loft. A laundry boy, cotton sack on his back, and a stable girl trailing straw in her hair completed the circle. Six servants, each carrying a blade of fear in their chests, fell silent as Jang closed the door.
The granary's rafters cast long shadows, and Jang struck another three taps—soft as a lotus petal disturbing still water. Beneath rusted beams, the knot of his vow tightened. In the centre of the cleared floor, he placed a single lotus lantern on an iron frame, its amber glow carving a pool of warmth. The silent watchers formed a loose ring around it, shoulders squared, breath held.
He knelt, ash cloak pooling around him like smoke frozen in time, and each servant echoed his posture. No words passed at first—only a hush deeper than any sermon. Jang's voice broke it: "I am branch to root," he intoned, each syllable deliberate against the grainy hush. "Bloom to blade." They repeated—voices rising from the throat in a fragile chorus. "I am branch to root, bloom to blade."
Lantern light trembled on their faces. Seul's jaw set. Ara's eyes glistened with dew and determination. Even the twins, ever reticent, whispered in twin breaths. Jang's final vow stitched unity into the granary air: "Iron and lotus—bound in one."
A single lotus-mist tremor flickered at Jang's sleeve, unseen by all but him, sealing the circle. Then he rose, gesturing for them to stand. The ritual concluded as quietly as it began, but in that silence lay the birth of something new—something that would grow in shadows until it could stand in light.
He stepped to a low wooden table stacked with clay pots and incense burners. From beneath his cloak he produced a battered bamboo flute, its surface etched by winter's chill. "Our first lesson," he said softly, voice measured. "Listen." The servants crowded closer, breath fogging around the soft tinkle of distant wind-chimes beyond the granary walls.
Jang raised the flute to his lips, inhaled as if drawing in mountain mist, and exhaled in one steady, breath-counted note that hung in the steam. The sound rolled through the husks and under rafters—an echo of Grey-Pine breath technique. He paused, lowered the flute, and laid fingertips over the pulse at his own wrist. "Sense," he whispered. "Hold." In the damp hush, a tremor passed through the circle as each servant placed a hand against the next, searching for the telltale beat.
Seul gasped—her finger trembling as a tiny spark of Qi pulsed beneath her palm. Jang nodded once, approving, and the others leaned in, breaths short, eyes bright. The soft lantern glow caught the moment when fear and wonder converged: blades of potential coalescing into a single promise.
A distant drip from a timber leak punctuated the lesson's close, and Jang let his cloak fall free. "Pain will follow," he said, voice low. "But we endure. Only then does strength hold meaning." He gazed at each in turn: the laundry boy's clenched jaw, Ara's steady stare, the twins' mirrored nod. "Tomorrow," he added, "we test what you've learned."
Outside, wind-chimes sang. Inside, the Iron-Lotus Branch awakened.