Lingshu drew in a long, slow breath, the kind of breath a man takes before setting down a weight he's carried a long time. Then he began:
"I think it's important you understand how I met my master, Jaewook, before anything else. Jaewook — that's a name from a long time back. There are so many stories about him, so many different versions, that it's hard to say if they're all even talking about the same man, or just different men who happened to share a name. Some tales say he studied directly under the Goddess Amaterasu herself. An extraordinarily powerful practitioner, one who drove countless fiends back into Abaddon. Others claim he was the protector of ancient Goryeong, long before it was ever a fortress — that he shielded the old villages from bandits back when this whole region was still wild and lawless."
He paused, eyes distant, as if looking straight through the walls of the chamber and into decades long buried.
"But the Jaewook I knew was, without question, the most miraculous person I've ever encountered in my life. He moved things with his mind without so much as lifting a finger — no gestures, no chants, nothing. Wounds that should have killed him ten times over closed themselves in moments. No curse, no matter how vicious, ever touched him. And every strike of his sword didn't just cut — it unmade whatever it touched, vaporized it down to nothing."
"He trained both me and Khael in the arts of practition. Everything I know, every bit of wisdom I carry, traces back to him."
Lingshu's expression darkened, just slightly. "Before he vanished, I asked him once why he'd chosen me as his pupil. Khael was every bit as talented as I was — more, in some ways. And yet I always felt my master, Jaewook, favored me. He told me he was preparing me for a catastrophe he had no way of predicting, no timeline for. He said that before the Goddess left this world, she scattered twelve heavenly crystals across it, hidden away. He knew where every one of them was. But he refused to tell me — said it was too dangerous. That dark forces were already hunting for them, that if they ever gathered enough, they could tear open the Gates of Abaddon on a scale the world had never seen, and finally claim it for themselves."
He looked up, meeting each of their eyes in turn. "Unlike him, I had no protection against that. He told me those same dark forces could reach into a mind like mine and pull the locations straight out of it if they wanted to badly enough. So he never told me. Not once. Not even at the end."
"But he did give me one name. Zerzes. He told me that if he was ever gone, I could trust that man completely — that he wandered the world, and that aside from himself, he was the only other person alive who knew where the crystals were hidden. But my master disappeared before he ever got the chance to introduce us."
The three of them sat frozen, hanging on every word, and the name Zerzes seemed to land heaviest of all.
"I searched through every historical record we have here," Lingshu went on. "I even asked the previous Mistress of Shengyowon directly. Nothing. Not a single account anywhere mentions him by that name. Plainly put — the man is close to a ghost."
"Zerzes..." Kei murmured, half to himself, brow furrowed like he was chasing something just out of reach.
"What is it, Kei? You remember something?" Vincent leaned forward.
"I read through some old texts on Elion's history once," Kei said slowly. "It's not common knowledge, but there's a practitioner named Zaksis mentioned in a few of them — someone who protected the ancient people of Elion during a massive demonic invasion. Supposedly he tore mountains straight out of the ground and hurled them at the fiends, petrified them where they stood." He shook his head. "But none of the texts said when any of that actually happened. Could've been a hundred years ago. Could've been a thousand."
Vincent grinned sideways at him. "You really burned through every book we had lying around the hideout, huh?"
"Zaksis? But that sounds like a different name." Yejin said.
"Or simply a misspelling. People wrote those texts, and they could have had misheard names." Kei answered.
"That is a valid point, but I've told you everything I know," Lingshu said, cutting back in, his voice losing its warmth and settling into something graver. "Shengyowon might be able to fill in more of the gaps than I can. Whether they trust you enough to share it, though — that part's on you now." He let out a heavy sigh. "Remember this, all of you. The dark forces haven't stopped moving. And the fact that the Gates of Abaddon are spawning faster and faster lately — that's not a coincidence. It tells us they've likely already found at least a few of the crystals. So once you've pulled what you can out of Shengyowon, go find this Zerzes. And when you do, I want to meet him myself. Understood?"
Everything they'd heard that day sat heavy in the room, almost too much to hold at once. But slowly, piece by piece, a shape was starting to form out of the fog — incomplete still, full of holes, but a shape all the same.
"Thank you, Grandmaster Yoo Lingshu." Vincent bowed deep, deeper than usual, genuine gratitude behind it. "We've got a real place to start now."
They left his chamber not long after. Once outside, Kei and Vincent asked Yejin if they could rest properly — the injuries from the Timeless Chamber still ached in a way that felt uncomfortably real, even if none of it had technically happened out here. Yejin agreed, though since there was nothing a physician could actually treat or even see, she simply walked them to their rooms herself instead of bothering with the infirmary.
Days slipped by. Saeho Island saw no invasion, not yet. Kei and Vincent split their time between digging for any scrap of information on Zerzes and keeping up with the routine duties expected of them.
Then, one morning, word arrived that the Dae-Ryeong and the Hwa-Samurai Divisions had reclaimed Hokaishin, driving the invading forces back out of the village entirely.
The Seventh and Eighth Commanders of the Great Battalion had both been killed in the fighting. The Fourth Commander, a man known by the name Aquila, had slipped away before they could close the net around him.
On the empire's side, however, the cost had been steep — several elite Hwa-Samurai lost, including Baek Seo-ah, leader of the Silent Willow. Many more had been wounded, Han Zhangli of the Scorching Dragons among them, hanging on but severely injured.
The news settled over the empire like a fog, and over Saeho with it. Yejin wanted badly to attend the funerals being held for the fallen, but her duties kept her tethered to the island. For now, all of them had to stay put, eyes on the horizon, bracing for whatever retaliation the SAT might throw at them next.