…The dorm's sliding door surrendered to them with a breath-soft rasp. They stepped into the dark aisle between pallets, bare feet mapping the familiar maze of limbs and discarded blankets. The brazier at the room's centre had burned down to fist-sized coals; each ember winked like an exhausted eye and painted low red crescents on the rafters. Won-Il's soft snores rose and fell close by, a tether to ordinary life that almost made Jang forget how iron tasted on his tongue.
Two strides ahead, Cho Sun-kyu's lantern flare grazed the outer shutters, slatting gold-black bars across floor, wall, ceiling—iron cages drifting over every sleeper's face. The guard's limp punctuated the glow: two even steps, one scrape-drag of the bad knee, chain links kissing flagstone to keep time. Jang froze, ribcage locked. Across the aisle, Jisoo's silhouette merged with a post, motionless as ink dried on parchment. The lantern paused, beam tilting to count heads. When it slid past Jang's pallet the heat of it prickled the cut in his thumb and the hidden scroll under his hem felt suddenly leaf-thin, flammable.
Scrape-drag, scrape-drag—Cho moved on. Darkness folded back around them like wings. Only then did Jisoo melt toward her bedding, the faint rustle of straw the single confession she allowed. Before she settled, she reached beneath her sleeve and pressed something flat and near-weightless—no larger than a fingernail—into the seam of her blanket. Jang missed the gesture; he was busy breathing his pulse down from hammer-strike to steady forge-thrum.
Sleep proved a rumour. Eyes closed, he still saw the basin's black surface, the lotus-shaped bleed absorbing moonlight. The room smelled of wet wool, candle smoke, old sweat. Somewhere a drip marked the rain's retreat, each plash a countdown second sliding into oblivion. He rolled onto his side; the beam tally hulked above him in shadow. Two slashes, one fresh, glimmered where blood-ink had yet to dry.
The first drumbeat split the dark like a falling axe. He flinched; so did half the dorm, mutters rising before silence re-conquered. A second beat followed, then a martial roll that rattled shutters. Every servant knew that cadence—announcement dawn, courtyard muster, postings. The impending expedition had been rumoured for weeks; now the parchment would be nailed for all to dread.
Footsteps scurried outside, and the hall monitor's mallet struck wood—tok-tok-tok—before he hammered notice to the entry post. Paper flapped in the wind, eager to spread its news. Jang pictured his name absent, then present, each possibility a different blade pressing at his throat.
He lay until the drum echoes dissolved into the hush just before sunrise. Breath by breath he counted the pulse of the compound: a bucket set down in the kitchen, the forge bellows sighing awake, rice being rinsed in the yard trough, Cho Sun-kyu's lantern again tracing its predatory bars. Under the blanket his thumb still bled slowly; warm tackiness clung where ink from Jisoo's parchment copy had smeared during their oath. He raised the thumb to the beam, pressed, and left a dark half-moon beside the two carved strokes. In the gloom it looked like a petal beginning to open.
Two days.
He closed his eyes, not to sleep but to weld the night into memory—ink, blood, vow, the hush of mirror water closing over secrets—and to remind himself that a mountain waited, indifferent, enormous, but not immovable. The fire under his ribs answered with a muted flare, as though agreeing to the impossible bargain.
Outside, the rooster's second cry tore free of the clouds. Dawn, raw and iron-grey, crept across the dorm floor, and the basin's ripple, miles behind him now, seemed to travel with the light, widening, widening, until the whole world felt poised above its silent, black eye.