The snow didn't fall like it used to.
This time, it was heavy—sharp like blades. Cold enough to freeze breath. Silent enough to hear the crackle of blood underfoot.
He stood at the gate, still as a statue. The only warmth left on him came from the bodies sprawled before him. Some bled into the snow. Some didn't even have faces left.
There was no warning. No survivors. Just corpses and smoke.
This was Jinwol Sect.
His home.
Gone in a single night.
Seol-Hak didn't blink. His eyes scanned the courtyard—quiet, sharp, calculating.
He recognized every corpse. Friends. Brothers. Even that coward who once stole from the pantry. Dead now.
His gaze stopped at the temple steps.
His master was there. Kneeling. Upright. A blade planted before him, his hands resting over his knees. Like he had been meditating before death took him.
Seol-Hak walked toward him slowly.
He bowed. Not out of grief. But respect.
Then he saw it.
A single black feather.
Gold-tipped.
The kind only sent from the upper ranks of the Murim Alliance.
An execution feather.
A silent death order.
Approved by the people who smiled in public and stabbed in private.
Seol-Hak turned his back on the bodies. Not because he wanted to leave. But because there was no one left to bury.
He didn't say goodbye.
He didn't shed a tear.
He simply walked away, taking only the feather and his master's broken sword with him.
He would return. But not as the boy they once knew.
He walked into the northern wilds, into mountains where few dared to live.
There, hidden behind frost and silence, he found an abandoned cave.
He sat.
Opened a scroll he once stole from the forbidden library—a scroll none thought he could use.
Silent Vein Technique.
A cultivation path for those with broken dantians.
It punished the body. Tortured the veins. But it taught something no other manual did:
How to hide. How to strike. How to kill without being seen.
He started training. Slowly. Carefully.
Every movement sent pain through his chest.
Every breath cut into his ribs like fire.
But pain meant progress.
His enemies were strong.
He had to be smarter.
Days passed. Then a week.
He stopped counting.
He didn't sleep. He didn't speak.
He trained until his body stopped shaking from the cold and started moving with the wind.
He entered a place of stillness.
Not peace.
Just control.
No sound.
No feeling.
Only action.
On the ninth night, a man appeared at the cave entrance.
Sword drawn. Robes dark. Eyes sharp.
"Seol-Hak," he said. "They said you might've survived. I'm here to fix that mistake."
Seol-Hak said nothing.
He waited until the man took one step closer.
Then he moved.
One breath.
One slash.
A clean cut across the thigh.
The man fell screaming.
Seol-Hak took another step. A second strike.
This time across the wrist.
Then the mouth.
Then the knee.
He crippled the man slowly.
Methodically.
"I want you to crawl back," Seol-Hak said coldly. "Let them know the boy they tried to kill is still breathing."
The man whimpered. Blood leaked into the snow.
Seol-Hak turned and walked away before the man could even respond.
He didn't enjoy the pain.
But they needed to learn fear.
Not from death—
But from what came before it.
He sat again inside the cave.
Opened the scroll to the next page.
His fingers didn't shake this time.
His breath didn't fog.
His eyes were ice.
He would grow stronger.
He would tear down the Alliance piece by piece.
He would never show mercy to those who chose power over justice.
But he would protect the innocent.
The child who stared too long. The woman who lost her husband. The elder walking slowly on broken legs.
They would see a shadow pass them in silence.
And know they were safe.
He wasn't righteous.
He wasn't kind.
But he knew who deserved to suffer.
And when he returned to the Murim world—
They would learn his name again.
Only this time…
They'd say it while kneeling.