"The first step in a strange land is not forward, but inward — remembering who you are when all else has changed."
— Jin Mu-Won
The days passed quietly, but Jin felt the weight of each one. His qi was not what it had been. Where once he had channeled rivers, now he drew only from streams. He had been a mountain, immovable, but now he was a man with wounds that stung in the night.
Still, each morning he rose.
He walked the roads that wound through gentle valleys and sparse forests, listening, watching, learning. The land was green, fertile, but beneath its beauty he sensed unease. The lords whose names he heard — Stark, Lannister, Arryn, Targaryen — were like great sects in Murim, ruling men's lives from heights far above them. The smallfolk were little more than reeds, bent by every storm.
Jin knew that truth well enough: evil did not always wear the face of demons. Sometimes it wore the crown of kings, or the armor of knights.
---
He found work where he could. In one village, he lifted beams to repair a roof struck by storm. In another, he cut wood with a rhythm so precise the farmers watched in silence, not knowing they were witnessing martial form disguised as labor. When children played around him, he taught them stances — not calling them martial arts, but "games of balance." The laughter that followed was strange in his ears, almost painful in its innocence.
One evening, as he sat beneath a sycamore eating bread given in thanks, an old man asked him cautiously, "Are you a hedge knight? You carry no sigil, no steel, but you fight like one."
Jin shook his head. "A knight is a title. I have no title."
"Then why fight at all?" the man pressed.
Jin looked at the setting sun, red upon the horizon. "Because someone must. That is enough."
The old man muttered prayers and crossed himself. Jin said nothing more.
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The first true test of his new life came when he stumbled upon a village near the Kingsroad. Smoke rose above its thatched roofs, and the cries of frightened women carried on the wind. Bandits had descended — rough men with rusted swords, hungry eyes, and laughter like hyenas. They herded the smallfolk into the square, demanding grain the villagers did not have.
Jin's staff was in his hand before he thought of it.
A bandit shoved a boy to the ground, raising a cudgel to strike. The boy curled up, small hands over his head. Jin moved.
The staff struck once, clean and sharp. The cudgel flew from the man's grip, his wrist snapping like dry wood. Another bandit lunged with a knife. Jin's strike disarmed him, the dagger clattering to the dirt.
The rest hesitated. Something in Jin's calm unsettled them — his eyes unblinking, his movements precise, as if every strike was inevitable.
Then fear overcame hunger. They fled, torches abandoned, curses trailing behind them.
The villagers whispered. Some crossed themselves. Others clutched their children. One boy stared at Jin as if he were more ghost than man.
"Are you a sorcerer?" he asked in a trembling voice.
Jin knelt, meeting the boy's eyes. "No sorcerer. Only a shield."
He left before dawn, though by midday, whispers had already begun to spread down the Kingsroad: of a dark-haired stranger who fought with wood as if it were steel, who saved without coin or oath.
And though Jin wished for quiet, he knew his path would not remain hidden.