It would take time to reach the entrance, and Kei knew it. So he lowered Yejin gently to the ground first, her wounds still weeping blood through the makeshift bindings, and stripped off his cloak and shirt without a second thought, wrapping them tight around her side to slow the bleeding as best he could.
Then he hauled her back onto his back and kept moving, faster now, every step measured against how much time he thought she had left.
Several minutes later, he reached the chamber with the ancient carvings — which meant the entrance was not far now. He pushed himself harder.
Meanwhile, back at Saeho Tower, Vincent woke from sleep and immediately went looking for Kei, tracking down Tsuyu instead.
"They're out on patrol right now," Tsuyu told him. "Go fix yourself up. We've got maybe an hour before we take their place. Breakfast's in the eating room."
"You're not gonna walk me over there?" Vincent asked. "It's been over a week, sure, but I still don't feel comfortable around the students here."
Tsuyu stared at him like he'd grown a second head, then burst out laughing. "You're being serious right now? I've known you for quite some time now, Vincent, but that's genuinely funny. Never once pegged you as the shy type. That's Kei's whole personality, not yours."
"Hey, I get shy too, I'm just better at hiding it." He turned his face away, arms crossed, the picture of wounded dignity. "Case in point — I was being shy just now, asking you to come with me."
"If that was you being shy, I completely missed it."
Vincent leaned in, grinning. "You know, you're not at all the woman I expected. Figured you'd be more like Yul — quiet, composed, the whole brooding thing."
"Sorry to disappoint you. Come on, let's move — we don't have all morning." She grabbed his arm and towed him toward the eating room without further argument.
Once they were seated, plates in front of them, Vincent could not help himself. "So how'd you actually meet Yejin? Or more specifically — how'd you end up a hwa-samurai serving under her?"
"You're literally asking me to tell you my life story." Tsuyu picked at her food, thinking back. "We were friends as kids, studied together right here in this Tower. Nine years ago now, maybe? Feels longer. Time moves weird when you look back on it."
"Is training here actually as brutal as it looks?"
"Oh, absolutely. I nearly didn't graduate — one master failed me over and over because I couldn't get the hang of moving things with my mind. What's the word for it again? Ah, yes, telekinesis. Just wouldn't click for me, no matter how hard I tried. But swordsmanship, archery? I was good. Second in our whole batch, right behind Yejin." She shrugged. "And then, once I graduated, Yejin started her own division — the Blood Rose — with her father's backing. We fought the South more times than I can count, nearly died more than once. And here we still are."
"What about Yul? How'd you two cross paths?"
"Yul was always known as a talented practitioner, gifted swordsman — guess it just runs in that family. He's a distant cousin of Yejin's, and yeah, we were kids together too. About a year after we started the Blood Rose, Yul joined up, mostly because he didn't want to become a seon-gak like Yejin. Hates having that much responsibility hanging over him." She smirked. "Every woman in the division was thrilled when he signed on, for the record. Man's handsome and everyone knows it."
"Ha! Were you one of them?"
Tsuyu glanced up, sighed, something wistful crossing her face for just a second. "I know Yul. He's still hung up on the Crown Princess, Akira. So even if I had liked him — which I didn't, for the record — there was never really a chance."
"Wait, the Crown Princess?"
"Mm. They're close. Used to be inseparable, actually — he went everywhere with her. But between her duties as Crown Princess and his responsibilities piling up with the family and his career, they've been drifting. Probably part of why he hates the idea of taking on even more responsibility himself."
Vincent let out a long, theatrical sigh. "Man, I didn't realize Yul and I had so much in common. I hate responsibility too."
Right as the words left his mouth, a Blood Rose hwa-samurai burst into the room, breathless. "Lady Tsuyu — Kei's back, he's carrying Princess Yejin, she's badly hurt!"
Both of their heads snapped up. "What?" Tsuyu was already on her feet.
In the physician's room deep within the Tower, Yejin lay on a table while physicians worked over her, moving fast and grim-faced. Vincent, Yul, Tsuyu, and half the Tower seemed to converge on the room at once. They found Kei sitting shirtless on a bench just outside, blood dried dark across his chest and arms, staring at nothing while the physicians did their work.
"What happened to her?" Tsuyu demanded, tears already welling.
"I found her in an underground cave," Kei said, voice flat with exhaustion. "There was a man down there — she must've followed him in. If it weren't for my eyes, I never would've found her in time."
"A man? Who was he? Did you get a look at him?" Tsuyu pressed.
"Didn't have time to check. She was already bleeding out. I had to get her here."
Yul steadied Tsuyu with a hand on her shoulder, easing her down onto the bench beside him to wait. Vincent settled next to Kei. "We need to go back there, figure out what actually happened. You know why she was chasing that guy in the first place?"
Before Kei could answer, Hajun stepped in, breathless. "Last night — I was on patrol with Princess Yejin when we spotted Minseok heading out to fish in the middle of the night. She thought it looked wrong, said she'd look into it herself. We haven't been able to find him since."
"Minseok — is he a local from Saeho?" Kei said slowly. "I passed a body on my way to her. Might've been him."
Yul stood abruptly. "Kei. If you're able, I need you to take me back there. We're investigating this now."
Kei took a long breath, forced his shoulders straight, and nodded once.
"I'm coming too," Tsuyu said, already rising.
"No — Yejin needs someone here when she wakes up, and it needs to be you." Yul turned to Vincent instead. "You joining us?"
"I'll stay," Vincent said. "Can't leave Tsuyu here by herself."
Yul nodded, gathered a handful of retainers while Kei pulled on a fresh shirt and cloak, and headed straight for the cave entrance.
A few Hwa-Samurai stayed posted outside to keep the site sealed while the rest fanned out to search the tunnels. The passages narrowed fast, though, so only Kei, Hajun, and Yul pushed in deep, the rest holding position near the surface in case anything went wrong.
Eventually they reached the section glowing faintly with the blue light-emitting insects. Yul stopped short, honestly startled — he'd assumed the chamber with the carvings was as deep as this cave went. He'd been wrong.
They pressed on and finally found what was left of Minseok. It was worse than any of them expected. His heart and eyes were both gone, and what remained of him looked less like a body and more like a husk — completely drained, skin gray and hollow.
Hajun set to work recovering the remains while Kei led Yul further, toward the chamber where he'd killed the man responsible. But when they arrived, the body was gone. So was Minseok's heart, which Kei realized only now he'd missed the first time. Even the candles had burned out completely, their light gone along with everything else.
"You're sure you killed him?" Yul asked, studying the empty space where a corpse should have been.
Kei stood still, running it back in his mind. He was sure. "There's no surviving a dagger through the skull. Not like that." He let his Deathsight flare back to life, scanning the room for any trace of moving prana — but there was nothing. Just faint residue of dark energy, clinging to the walls like smoke that refused to clear.
"What actually happens, when your eyes do that?" Yul asked, genuinely curious now.
"I see the fundamental energy underneath everything — prana, and the corrupted version of it too. There's residue here. Old spellwork, twisted. I can still make it out, faintly." Kei's eyes stayed fixed on the walls as he spoke.
Yul just nodded, quietly impressed, though he kept it off his face. He searched the chamber a while longer, hoping for anything else, but found nothing beyond the burned-out candles.
Eventually they turned back.
Hajun carried Minseok's remains ahead of them. But as they passed back through the chamber thick with drifting blue light, something caught Kei's attention — a different kind of energy entirely, glowing orange in his vision, distinct from everything else around it. It was close. Surrounded on all sides by the same glowing insects, but unmistakably its own thing. He could pinpoint its exact location without even trying.
"How did I miss this the first time through?" Kei murmured, already turning toward it.
"Miss what?" Yul asked, confused, following his gaze and seeing nothing unusual.
Kei drove his fist straight into the cave wall. The impact rattled the whole chamber, dust and small stones raining down around them.
"Kei! What are you doing?" Hajun's voice cracked with alarm. "You'll bring the whole thing down on us!"
"Go ahead without me. There's something here I need to check." Kei didn't look away from the wall.
"No — I'm staying with you. It's not safe alone down here." Yul turned to Hajun. "Get moving, get that back to the surface. The others can't be far ahead of you."
"Yes, Sir." Hajun nodded and pressed on without further protest.
The wall had cracked under Kei's punch, spiderwebbing outward, but it held — still too thick to break through cleanly.
"Whatever it is, it's on the other side of this rock," Kei said, frustration edging into his voice.
"Maybe don't keep punching it, then," Yul said carefully. "If this whole tunnel comes down, we're both buried here with it."
Kei exhaled, forcing himself to slow down. "You're right."
They searched the surrounding area instead, methodical, checking every gap and fissure that might lead them closer to whatever Kei had sensed. A few minutes in, they noticed swarms of the glowing blue insects drifting down from a narrow fissure high in the ceiling.
Kei jumped, caught the edge, and hauled himself up before reaching back down to pull Yul up after him. Together they crawled forward through the cramped passage, low and awkward, until faint blue light began seeping in ahead of them.
And then they were through.
The chamber beyond opened up wide, filled floor to ceiling with countless glowing insects drifting lazily through warm, still air — far warmer than anywhere else they'd been in the cave.
"This is..." Yul trailed off, staring.
Kei couldn't quite believe what he was seeing either. A thought surfaced, impossible to ignore.
He stood frozen at the mouth of the passage, Deathsight still glowing faintly in his eyes, staring at the source of that orange light at the chamber's center.
It was not a giant monument like Kei had pictured. Hovering quietly in the middle of the chamber was a slender crystal, no longer than a logger's axe. It looked light enough that a man could easily grab it with one hand and carry it away. Yet the power coming off it filled the entire room.
The crystal glowed with a deep, warm orange light, looking almost like a piece of the morning sun trapped in glass. The heat radiating from it was gentle and soothing, keeping the whole chamber warm while the glowing blue insects drifted around it in circles.
Yul was speechless. Kei stepped forward into the warm light, his boots making no sound against the stone.
"This could be..." he murmured, his voice barely a whisper in the chamber. "...the Heavenly Crystal."