Yejin's team moved through the island under cover of darkness, footsteps quiet against the sand. From a distance, they spotted a local man, Minseok, working late along the shoreline, hauling supplies into a small wooden boat and cinching down its lines with practiced hands.
The moment he caught sight of the patrol closing in, something flickered across his face. Nerves. Barely a second, gone almost as fast as it appeared, but Yejin caught it anyway.
"Minseok, wasn't it?" she asked, stepping closer.
"A-Ah! Lady Yejin!" He straightened fast, nearly dropping the coil of rope in his hands, and gave a quick, uneven bow. "Yes, yes, it's me. Minseok. Heh."
"Working at this hour?" Her eyes drifted over the rations packed tight into the hull, the extra set of oars lashed alongside them.
"Um — y-yes. Night work's good work. Whole sea's mine out there this late. No competitors." He forced a smile that did not quite sit right on his face.
Yejin let it go, for now, nodding easily. "Just be careful out there. If something goes wrong in the dark, it will be difficult to find you, got it?"
"I understand, I understand. Off to fish now. Heh." He was already pushing the boat off the sand, wading in up to his knees before hauling himself over the side, oars dipping into the black water. He rowed out without looking back, entirely unaware that he had already given himself away.
"Think he's hiding something, my Lady?" Hajun asked, a Blood Rose member standing at her shoulder, watching the small shape shrink against the waves.
"Oh, he's hiding something." Yejin's eyes never left the boat. "Keep the patrol moving around the perimeter. I'm going to look into this myself." She paused. "Where's Kei, by the way?"
"The newcomer? Saw him along the shoreline earlier, but couldn't say where he wandered off to after that."
"If you spot him again, tell him to find me. Immediately."
"Understood, my Lady." Hajun bowed low and peeled off to rejoin the others.
Some time later, along a secluded stretch of the Iona mainland coast, Minseok dragged his boat up onto the sand to meet someone already waiting for him. The stranger stood half-swallowed by shadow, a deep hood hiding every trace of his face.
"What took you so long?" the cloaked man snapped, impatience sharp in his voice.
"I sorry — I delayed. Princess Yejin stopped me," Minseok said, bowing quick and low. "I could not leave soon, I swear it."
"We lost precious minutes because of it. I'm cutting your pay — this is unacceptable!" The man's tone left no room to argue.
"Please, I did try my best," Minseok said, wringing his hands. "I still take you to the cave, I promise."
The stranger climbed aboard without another word, ordering him to set sail for Saeho at once. Minseok obeyed without further complaint.
The crossing was short. When they reached the far shore of the island, Minseok led the stranger inland, toward a hidden entrance sunk into the earth, neither of them aware that Yejin was already trailing silently behind, keeping to the tree line, never quite close enough to be seen.
The cavern entrance was buried behind a thick tangle of wild vines and overgrown grass, nearly invisible unless you already knew where to look — but Minseok, born to this land, found it without hesitation, parting the vines like he'd done it a hundred times before. At the sight of the opening, the stranger's mouth curled into a cold, satisfied smile, and he gestured sharply for Minseok to go first.
"Minseok, what have you gotten yourself into?" Yejin thought, holding her breath as she slipped through the brush after them, careful with every footstep.
The rumors about the cave turned out to be true almost instantly. The air past the threshold plunged into a biting, sub-zero cold — not ten steps in, frost was already creeping across Yejin's exposed skin, her breath fogging pale and visible in front of her.
Deep in the tunnel, Minseok and the cloaked man reached a wide chamber, its rock walls covered floor to ceiling in ancient carvings, faded but still legible in places. Yejin crouched behind a stone pillar at the chamber's edge, breath held, presence folded down to almost nothing as she watched.
"You are interested in this cave." Minseok lifted his torch higher, throwing flickering light across the carved wall. "You know what these drawings mean? My ancestors might have carved these drawings before."
"Stop wasting my time with questions and bring that torch over here," the man said, voice flat and cold.
"Oh — right, right." Minseok scrambled over, holding the light steady while the stranger began hauling away a stack of heavy stones piled against the wall, grunting with the effort. "What are you doing?"
"Of course you wouldn't understand. You're nothing but an uneducated fool." The words landed sharp, dismissive.
Minseok's jaw tightened, the insult stinging more than he let show, but he swallowed it down and said nothing more.
Once the last of the stones had been cleared, a narrow fissure opened up in the cavern wall, previously hidden entirely. The stranger leaned in close, peering into the gap, his eyes catching the torchlight in a way that made them gleam. A dark, hungry smile spread slowly across his face.
"The Prophet was right," he murmured, almost to himself.
Without any further hesitation, he squeezed his body into the narrow opening and vanished into the dark beyond. Minseok lingered at the edge, fear plain on his face, but the thought of finally saving enough kyeols for a real home on the mainland pushed him forward anyway. He swallowed hard and climbed in after the stranger.
Yejin waited a full, silent minute in the empty chamber, making sure they had moved on far enough, before finally stepping out from behind the pillar. She looked down into the black opening in the wall, drew one quiet breath to steady herself, and slipped through after them.
What waited on the other side was not absolute darkness at all — the space was lit dim and blue by swarms of tiny flying insects that glowed faintly as they drifted through the air, like slow-moving stars. And the cold was gone too. It was warm here, almost humid. They had descended nearly two hundred meters below the surface — deep enough that climbing back out would probably cost an ordinary man hours, not minutes.
Yejin moved carefully through the glowing dark, scanning for any trace of the two men, until she found a passage branching off toward another section of the cave. That was when she heard it — Minseok, screaming, faint but unmistakable. She broke into a run toward the sound, and as she got closer, the scream kept fading, losing strength even as it grew clearer.
She was already too late by the time she found him.
His chest had been torn open, his heart forced out through his own ribs, and his eyes — what was left of them — looked burned, sockets scorched black. Yejin forced herself to keep moving instead of freezing at the sight, following a trail of blood deeper into a darker stretch of the cave, still moving without a sound.
There, she found the man. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, whispering something in a language she did not recognize, syllables that scraped against the ear wrong. Minseok's heart sat in the center of a circle formed by seven lit candles, their flames burning low and strange, casting long shadows up the cave walls. The warmth that had filled the tunnels moments ago had drained away entirely, replaced by something colder than the entrance outside — a dead, unnatural cold that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"My Lord, Zhuanxu." The man's voice had changed completely — deeper, wrong, nothing like the sharp, irritated tone he had used on Minseok earlier. "It appears this is the location. The ninth pillar, the one that must come down. But I cannot yet find exactly where it lies."
A pause stretched out, heavy and waiting. Then a voice answered — a voice dripping with a madness that felt physically wrong to hear, crawling under the skin. "Take your time. We will wait."
"Is there anything I can do to hasten the search?"
"The Pillar breathes cold when you're near it," the voice said, slow and deliberate, "but breathes warmth once you're closer still. That is the only clue you'll be given." And then it was simply gone, the presence of it vanishing from the air like it had never been there at all.
The man rose to his feet and turned, scanning the chamber — and that was when Yejin stepped out from cover, no longer bothering to hide. He fixed his eyes on her, and they were wrong too, darkened, scorched-looking, thin red veins crawling out from the sockets like something had burned through from the inside.
Yejin did not hesitate. She drew her blade and closed the distance fast, aiming to end it before he could react — but lightning tore from his palm and caught her mid-stride, throwing her sideways across the cave floor. She had not expected that. Had not guarded for it.
Pain lit up across her side where the burns had already started blistering, blood soaking fast through torn fabric.
"The Princess..." the man said, savoring the words, a slow smile spreading as he looked down at her.
He raised his hand for a second strike, already gathering the charge to finish her — and a dagger cut through the air faster than sound, burying itself straight through his skull. He dropped where he stood, blood spreading dark and wide beneath him.
Kei dropped down from above a heartbeat later, already moving toward Yejin before the body had finished falling.
"Yejin!" His voice cracked with something raw, nothing like his usual calm.
"K... Kei..." Her voice came out thin, barely more than breath, before her eyes rolled and she went still.
He pressed his hands to her wounds, trying to force healing into the torn flesh, but it was not enough — he could barely slow the bleeding, let alone close it. Realizing there was not time to do more, he pulled her up onto his back without another word and broke into a full run toward the surface, praying the two hundred meters would not cost her everything.