The shrine was gone.
Or rather, it had never been.
When Ji Haneul stepped back through the stone archway, the structure that had once loomed above the bleeding lantern no longer existed. In its place was a circle of ash, ringed by cracked earth. As if the shrine had burned itself out from the world entirely.
But the sky had changed.
It wasn't darker—but quieter. The kind of quiet that came before mourning. Or war.
Haneul moved down the ridge path without stopping.
He didn't need direction anymore.
He followed the signs.
Dead animals. Vacant farmsteads. Caravans with no wheels. Merchants too afraid to speak. The martial world in Gansu was curling inward, devouring itself without fire or flame.
At the second village he passed, a wooden pike had been driven into the center square.
On it, a corpse.
A swordsman—likely from one of the middle sects. His fingers were crushed, his eyes removed, and his tongue pinned to his chest by a needle.
Someone wanted him to suffer.
Someone wanted to send a message.
But the body wasn't the message.
The symbol carved into the dirt was.
Three downward lines slashed across a crescent.
The same insignia on Haneul's manual.
But inverted.
He crouched near the mark.
"Not a warning," he whispered. "A challenge."
From the nearby alley, an old man stepped out.
Bent with age, one eye gone, but his gait was steady.
"You shouldn't linger," the old man rasped. "They'll come for you next."
"They already did."
"You're still breathing."
"Most of them aren't."
The old man studied him. Then spat.
"Then maybe you're the one they're looking for."
Haneul didn't flinch. "Who?"
The old man's eye narrowed. "They don't wear names. Just veils. Move in the night. They call themselves the Shattered Soul, but that's not their true face."
"What is?"
"The echo of one. Broken things pretending to be whole. They've been gathering. And they're not alone."
"What else?"
The man hesitated.
Then pointed west.
"Two days from here, there's a gorge. They say it howls. Nobody crosses it now. Last three caravans that tried? Vanished. But one sent a hawk before it did."
He handed Haneul a torn parchment. Blood-streaked. Half-burned.
But legible.
"Hollow footsteps. Voices without mouths. A gate in the rock that opens when you bleed."
Haneul looked up.
"I'm going."
The old man didn't stop him.
But he called out, just as Haneul turned to leave.
"What's your name, boy?"
Haneul paused.
The snow had begun to fall again.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "They'll know it when I draw."
And he vanished into the wind.