Snow.
It fell like ash — silent, slow, and uncaring.
On a ridge soaked with blood, bodies lay twisted, unmoving. Among them, a lone man knelt.
Jin Seol, Elder of the Beggar Sect, clutched a broken short blade. His face was pale, cracked with blood and frost. His robes—once brown and ragged—were now stained red and black.
Around him stood nine masked men, silent as shadows. The Elder's Council.
One of them stepped forward, voice cold and sharp.
"You shouldn't have taken what was not yours."
Jin Seol gave a small, bitter smile.
"I didn't even read it." He coughed. Blood hit the snow.
"Is curiosity punishable by death now?"
A second elder's voice replied, dry and grim.
"You had the final piece. That was enough."
The scroll — an ancient martial arts manual sealed for centuries, said to be the foundation of the sect's inner techniques — had been split into fragments, hidden across generations.
Only the Sect Leader was permitted to see it whole.
And somehow, Jin Seol had found the last page.
He didn't get to study it.
Didn't even get a chance to hide it.
They came for him the moment they knew.
Now he was kneeling in the snow, surrounded.
"So that's it, then."
Jin Seol laughed quietly. The sound was strange in the silence.
"No legacy. No children. No woman ever called my name. Fifty years, and I die like this?"
The men said nothing.
He looked to the sky — a dull gray bleeding into night.
"Surely life… should've had more to offer than this."
The sword struck.
There was no scream. Only silence.
Darkness.
But not the final kind.
Not yet.
There was something else.
A warmth. A heartbeat. A breath.
And then—
Jin Seol gasped.
He sat up suddenly, chest heaving.
He looked around. Mud walls. Filthy straw mat. Wooden beams dripping rot.
He knew this room.
The lowest beggar dormitory.
He scrambled to his feet, stumbled to a broken mirror shard nailed to a post.
He froze.
A boy stared back at him.
No wrinkles. No scars.
Black hair, mid-length. Blue eyes like tempered ice.
He raised shaking fingers to his face.
It was his. His face — twenty years old.
"…No."
He stepped back. Heart racing. Memories flooding in.
This was real. This was before.
Before the scroll.
Before the betrayal.
Before he wasted fifty years of his life serving men who saw him as dirt.
Suddenly, the door flew open.
"Jin Seol, you lazy dog!"
It was Cook So. Still alive. Still drunk. Still spitting on beggars like they were rats.
"Get to the latrines before I break your spine!"
Jin Seol didn't speak. He just stared.
The old man stormed off, muttering curses.
Alone again, Jin Seol sat on the mat and stared at the floor.
His thoughts were quiet, focused.
"I remember where I found the scroll."
His heart beat once — loud in the silence.
"This time, I'll read it. But not yet."
He clenched his fist.
"They feared the final piece."
He smiled faintly.
Not angry.
Not emotional.
Just curious.
"If they killed me for it… what secrets does it hold?"
He lays back down, hands behind his head, blue eyes fixed on the ceiling.
This time, he wasn't rushing.
This time, he wasn't afraid.
This time, he would move quietly.
Until the world had no choice but to kneel.
🔚 End of Chapter 1