The balm left ghost–pale streaks where it cooled the red lattice in Jang's palms, but the ache receded enough that he could twist the heavy wash-ropes without wincing. By late afternoon he had traded the shed's hush for the clamor of the dye-yard, shoulder-deep in vats that fumed indigo steam. Sun-struck leaves spun over the courtyard, and every clang of a dyer's paddle jarred his bruised meridians like a mallet on cracked bell-metal.
Jisoo's bucket sloshed past. She paused as if to breathe off the heat, yet her gaze lingered on him rather than the vat. The charcoal tang that clung to his sleeves mingled poorly with the fermented indigo; her nose wrinkled. "Kiln chimney still coughing?" she asked, casual as a linen fold. He only shrugged and hoisted another rope; droplets pattered the boards like fat raindrops, masking his racing pulse. When he straightened, she was rubbing a smear of black off her cuff, eyes narrowed in a calculation he could not read.
That night the shed greeted him with a hush so complete it felt ceremonial—ash undisturbed, lantern wick trimmed, broken floorboards creaking in familiar reproach. He marked the beam—the fourth tally now—and laid the shard of rotted broom-staff across two bricks at chest height. The hanging chain—twenty links and a rusted hook—swayed lazily overhead. In the uncertain pool of lamplight, each task had its place: the Guard to set breath, the Branch-Step to steal distance, and now, if ink and ash had taught true, the Iron-Bough Parry to answer violence.
He began with the form that had become heartbeat: brace, sink, draw, hold. Sixty breaths rode the rhythm of distant kiln bellows. On the sixty-first inhalation he slipped inside the arc scratched earlier in soot, foot gliding, hips folding, wrists rotating the staff fragment up to meet the chain's imagined cut. Wood struck iron with a thin ting, vibrations crawling his forearms. Wrong. He reset.
Again—ting—again—tunk—again—until the lantern's oil thinned and the light shrank inward like a frightened pupil. Sweat salted his lips, and the balm's frost had long since melted to a dull throb. Four hours, perhaps five. Kiln gongs tolled the rat-watch outside; he matched their tempo, refusing the luxury of thought.
On the next attempt the fragment moved as if the hinge of the world had been oiled. Branch-Step slid him under the chain's swing, body coiling, wrists soft—then snapping. The staff fragment bit iron, rolled, and split with a report like dry bamboo kicked in half. Half the shard flew away in spinning splinters. The chain jerked aside, clacking harmlessly off the shed post.
Silence flooded in. Ash motes drifted through the lantern glow, and Jang's pulse slammed joyful thunder beneath his ribs. He stood, panting, staring at the jagged stump in his hand—proof that angle, breath, and will had finally braided into something real.
A laugh tried to escape, but another vision overlaid the shed: Won-Il under falling cinders, servants shrinking from Seo Yun-tae's passing, Sun's broken nose on drenched clay. Power—if that was what this was—had teeth. They always bit downward. His lungs, still flaring with triumph, tightened around the memory like wire. Power for what? The splinters on the floor answered with dumb glitter.
Enough. He let the remaining shard drop. Ash puffed. Lantern shadows recoiled.
He plucked the nail he used for tallies from the beam and carved one long, deliberate slash beneath its brothers. Wood ground away in thin curls, and the new wound glimmered pale in lantern light. Two dawns left. Petals of dust settled on his outstretched palm, soft as snowfall, before tumbling through his fingers.
From outside, somewhere beyond the latched door, a crow stitched a ragged call into the pre-dawn dark. Farther off, the low bronze of the first drill bell shivered through the compound. Jang wiped the soot into a dark band across his cheek, then blew the lantern out; darkness folded him in its wings.
"Two more embers," he told it, voice ash-rough, "then the mountain."