The first attack came at noon.
Not from the front. From below.
Sejin felt it through the soles of his boots—a vibration, wrong and deep, like something scratching up from the earth's belly. He opened his mouth to shout a warning.
The ground exploded.
A Ura burst from the soil—not a Wisp, not a Shade, but something larger. Its body was swollen, pale, threaded with black veins. It had no eyes, only a mouth that split its head in two, ringed with teeth that pointed inward.
It swallowed the nearest Vessel whole.
The man screamed for half a second. Then the jaw closed. Then silence.
Mira reacted first. Her Lux blade flared—white, blinding—and she carved into the creature's flank. The Ura shrieked, twisted, released a cloud of black spores. The spores stuck to skin, burned, burrowed.
Sejin grabbed a fallen sword—steel, not shadow—and ran toward the thing.
"Don't," The Other said. "It's a Feeder. The spores will—"
Too late.
Sejin swung. The blade bit into the creature's neck. Black blood sprayed across his face, his chest, his left hand. The blood burned where it touched skin. But where it touched his bandaged left hand—
The blood evaporated.
The black veins on his arm pulsed once, twice, then drank.
"Interesting," The Other murmured.
Sejin didn't have time to ask what. The Feeder was dying, thrashing, its body collapsing into itself like a paper bag crumpled by an invisible fist. Mira finished it with a thrust through the skull.
The creature dissolved. And inside its remains, tangled in the gore, was the half-digested body of the Vessel it had swallowed.
His eyes were still open.
---
They buried what was left.
Twelve Vessels now. Sejin didn't know the dead man's name. He hadn't asked. He regretted that now, standing over a shallow grave with dirt on his hands and blood on his coat.
Mira stood beside him. Her face was stone, but her hands—resting on her sword hilt—were trembling.
"He was with me for six years," she said quietly.
Sejin didn't answer. What could he say? Words were useless. Words couldn't fill a grave.
"You're thinking you should have warned them faster," The Other said. "Stop. You couldn't have known."
I should have felt it sooner.
"You're not omniscient. You're a boy with a broken arm and a monster in his head. Forgive yourself."
Sejin's jaw tightened. He didn't forgive himself. He never did.
---
They marched until dusk.
The path climbed. The trees grew thinner, replaced by grey rock and twisted shrubs. The air grew cold. The sun bled orange behind the mountains, painting the sky in colors that felt obscene after the morning's blood.
Mira called a halt at a natural depression—a bowl of rock, defensible, with only one entrance. The Vessels set up a perimeter. Watches were assigned. Rations were distributed.
Sejin didn't eat.
He sat apart from the others, back against a boulder, staring at his left hand. The bandages had come loose during the fight. He could see the black skin beneath, the purple veins pulsing with their own rhythm.
"You're afraid," The Other said.
"I'm always afraid."
"Not of death. Of something else."
Sejin pulled the bandages tight with his teeth. "I'm afraid of becoming like him. Like Kang."
"You won't."
"You don't know that."
"I know you. You've had a hundred chances to become cruel. You've taken none of them. That's not weakness. That's a choice."
Sejin leaned his head back. The first stars were appearing, cold and distant.
"What if I run out of choices?"
The Other didn't answer.
---
The second attack came at midnight.
Not from below. From all sides.
Sejin woke to screaming. A Vessel—the healer, the thin woman with cold hands—was dragged into the darkness by something fast and low to the ground. Her Lux aura flared, died, flared again.
Then went out.
Sejin was on his feet, shadow blade in his right hand, left arm hanging useless. The camp was chaos. Shapes moved in the darkness—Uras, dozens of them, their eyes reflecting the dying firelight.
"Shades," The Other said. "Intelligent. Coordinated. Kang is testing you."
"Testing what?"
"How much you can lose before you break."
A Shade lunged at Sejin. He sidestepped, drove his blade through its chest, twisted, pulled. The body crumbled. Another took its place. Then another.
He lost count.
Mira fought nearby, her Lux blade a wheel of white fire. She was good—better than Sejin, even uninjured. But there were too many. For every Ura they killed, two more emerged from the darkness.
"We need to fall back!" someone shouted.
"There's nowhere to fall back to!"
Sejin's arm was slowing. His shadow blade flickered. His Source was draining—too fast, too much, too soon.
"Let me out," The Other said.
"No."
"You'll die."
"Then I'll die."
"You're being a child."
"And you're being predictable."
Sejin dropped to one knee. A Shade leaped at him, mouth open, teeth black. He caught it with his left hand—his broken, bandaged, black-veined left hand—and squeezed.
The Shade didn't just die.
It unraveled. Like Lord Park. Like the Feeder's blood. The creature dissolved into threads of darkness that wrapped around Sejin's arm, sank into his skin, fed the pulsing veins.
"You're absorbing them," The Other said, surprise in his voice. "That's new."
Sejin looked at his left hand. The bandages had burned away. The black skin was darker now, the purple veins brighter. And he felt... stronger. Not in his body. In his Source.
The Uras around him stopped attacking.
They stared at his hand. They feared his hand.
And then they ran.
---
The camp was silent.
Eight Vessels remained. Four had died in the attack. The healer was gone. The scout who had laughed at breakfast was gone. The young man who had sharpened his sword for an hour every evening was gone.
Mira stood in the center of the carnage, her Lux blade dripping black blood. Her platinum hair was matted with gore. Her cold blue eyes were empty.
"How many?" Sejin asked.
"Four dead. Two wounded. Can't walk." She looked at him. Her gaze dropped to his left hand. "What did you do?"
"I don't know."
"You absorbed them. The Uras. Their Source went into you."
Sejin looked at his hand. The black skin had spread past his elbow. The seal was weakening. He could feel it—cracks in the wall between him and The Other.
"I didn't mean to."
Mira's jaw tightened. "We need to move. Kang knows where we are. He'll send more."
"And the wounded?"
She didn't answer.
Sejin understood.
---
They left them behind.
Two Vessels, a man and a woman, both with leg wounds that wouldn't hold weight. They didn't argue. They didn't beg. They simply nodded when Mira gave the order, and they wished the others luck.
Sejin was the last to leave.
The woman—her name was Yuna, she had told him that morning, she had offered him bread and he had refused—looked up at him with calm eyes.
"You're not like the others," she said.
"I'm not anything."
"You're going to kill Kang. I can see it in you."
Sejin knelt beside her. He didn't know why. He had no words. No comfort. No hope.
"I'll try," he said.
Yuna smiled. It was a sad smile, tired and resigned.
"That's all anyone can do."
Sejin stood. He walked away. He didn't look back.
Behind him, he heard the sound of a sword being drawn. Not in anger. In mercy.
He kept walking.
---
"You're crying," The Other said.
Sejin touched his cheek. It was wet.
"No I'm not."
"Your eyes are leaking. That's crying."
"It's the cold."
"It's not the cold."
Sejin wiped his face with his sleeve. The sleeve came away black with soot and blood and something that might have been tears.
"They trusted me."
"And you're going to honor that trust by killing Kang. That's the deal."
"I didn't agree to that deal."
"You did. When you buried the children. When you fought the Feeder. When you walked away from Yuna without saying goodbye." The Other's voice was soft, almost gentle. "You've been making that deal your whole life. Protecting people who can't protect themselves. Dying for strangers. Burying the dead."
Sejin walked faster. The path was steep now, the rocks sharp under his boots.
"What's your point?"
"My point is that you're not alone because no one wants to stand beside you. You're alone because you won't let them. You'd rather die than watch them die."
"And?"
"And that's not strength. That's fear."
Sejin stopped.
The path ahead was dark. The mountains loomed. Somewhere beyond them, Kang was waiting.
"Maybe," Sejin said. "But it's the only fear I know how to face."
He kept walking.
---
Dawn came grey and cold.
The pass narrowed. The walls rose on either side, close enough to touch. The sky was a strip of iron above them. The air smelled of sulfur and old blood.
Mira called a halt. She gathered the remaining Vessels—seven now, including herself and Sejin—and spoke in low, clipped tones.
"The fortress is half a day's march. Kang will know we're coming. He'll have traps, ambushes, probably more Uras. We move fast. We don't stop. We don't engage unless necessary."
One of the Vessels—a young man with Ventus affinity, his arm in a sling—spoke up. "And if Sejin falls?"
Mira looked at Sejin.
"Then we all fall."
Sejin met her eyes. For a moment, something passed between them—not trust, not friendship, but understanding. Two people who had lost too much to pretend anymore.
"I won't fall," Sejin said.
"Good."
They marched.
---
The fortress appeared at midday.
It wasn't a castle. It wasn't a palace. It was a wound in the mountain—a black scar, jagged and raw, as if the rock had been torn open by something clawing from the inside. Veins of purple light pulsed along the walls. The air hummed with Source.
Sejin's left hand throbbed.
"He's inside," The Other said. "Waiting."
"I know."
"He's stronger than you. Faster. More experienced. He's been doing this for decades."
"I know."
"And you're going to fight him anyway."
Sejin looked at his reflection in a puddle of black water. Grey eyes. Black hair. Scars like a map of pain.
"I'm going to kill him," he said. "Or die trying."
"Those aren't the only options."
"They're the only ones I have."
He walked toward the wound.
Behind him, Mira and her seven Vessels followed.
Above him, the sky was the color of iron.
And somewhere inside the mountain, Lord Kang smiled.