Rain combed the tiled eaves in thin, harp-like lines when Jang slid from his pallet. The dorm brazier had guttered hours ago; only the thinnest ember glow limned the edges of twenty sleeping shapes and the sagging roof beams overhead. He counted seven silent steps to the threshold, eased the warped door aside, and breathed the corridor's colder air—wet stone, boiled laundry, a hint of lamp-oil—before padding toward the wash-alcove.
A stub of gutter-flame shivered in the niche. It threw a trembling ring of amber across slick flagstones and silvered the basin's still water like a hand-mirror. Beside that circle of light, Jisoo knelt. She held a kitchen shear in one fist, whetstone in the other, dragging steel across grit in long, patient strokes. Shhhk—pause—shhhk. Sparks glimmered at the blade tip, then died against the damp.
He stopped at the threshold. She did not look up, but her voice—low, too calm—slid across the stone. "Keys clatter when you walk, Hwan."
He blinked. "I—I don't carry any." His whisper left a puff of fog in the chill.
"Then your bones are louder than iron." She rose in one smooth line, shadow folding behind her like an ink splash. The shears snapped shut. "The shed, the soot, the way you breathe through pain—don't insult me with silence."
He glanced back toward the dorm door. No shuffling, no coughs; the others still slept. Cho Sun-kyu's patrol bell would not pass this wing for another quarter hour. He stepped inside, shoulders brushing the carved lintel, and let the curtain fall. Rain dots drummed the clay tiles overhead—a muffled metronome.
Jisoo planted herself between him and the exit. Lantern-light caught the crescent shear edge, set it glowing gold. "What fire are you feeding?" she asked again, softer now, yet every syllable weighed.
"I… needed air," he began, pulse stumbling. "Laundry shift left me smelling like lye—"
"Spare me." Her eyes—dark lacquer catching twin candle points—flicked to the raw bruises ghosting his wrists. "No detergent paints meridian lines up the forearm."
Words deserted him. He tasted charcoal dust from a dozen dawns of training, felt the ache knitted into his calves, the Fang-Stitch seam prickling beneath his tunic. Trust her, or lose her. He drew breath that tasted of rain-metal and forced his hand inside his hem.
Fabric whispered; hidden stitches loosened. He tugged free the tight roll of parchment and laid it on the basin's rim. "This," he said, voice no firmer than the flame. "Only this."
Jisoo did not reach for it—she stared instead at his arm, at the faint purple threads spidering from elbow to palm where micro-channels had torn and knit, torn and knit again. Lantern light emphasized each line like map-routes under skin. Her lips parted—not in horror, but in a strange, quiet fascination.
He unrolled the copy. Lotus-char ink danced midnight black across thin rice paper, strokes confident in places, shaky where pain had bitten. Title glyphs, half-formed diagrams, marginal breathing counts. The candle hissed as a droplet of gutter water hit molten tallow; orange rings wavered over the writing as if the characters themselves breathed.
"I stole only a fragment," he said, hearing the confession rust. "I copy, I train, I burn the rest. If they find it—"
"They'll lash you until those meridians unravel," she finished, fingers finally moving. She traced the edge of one glyph without touching it, measuring pressure, angle, ink pooling. "Ink without night-dew dots," she murmured—a craftsman's critique. Her sleeve brushed parchment just long enough to carry away a barely visible fibre.
He watched, uneasy. "Jisoo… I won't drag you down with me."
"Too late." She lifted her gaze, and the secret lamp Jang kept mistaking for kindness flickered there. "Show me the stance marks on your soles."
Rain ticked faster outside as clouds shifted. He obeyed, peeling back threadbare straw sandal to reveal fissured skin, black ash embedded where toe-arcs traced Branch-Step loops. Her breath left in a tight hiss—admiration or calculation, he could not tell.
A silence yawned. The dorm's timbers creaked under wind. Somewhere on the far side of the courtyard a night hound gave a chain-dragged growl; the sound came dull, distant, like thunder under blankets.
At last she set the shears on the ledge, blade gleaming wet. "Secrets drown in water, so the old wives say." She nudged the basin forward. Reflections shattered and re-formed around ripples. "Let's see if blood floats."
His heart stumbled again, but he nodded. Rusty paring knife lay in the wash tools, edge jagged. He picked it up; the metal smelled faintly of onions and old iron. A quick breath, a nick at the pad of his index; bead of red welled bright. She matched the motion—no flinch—her droplet darker, almost black in weak light. Together they let the drops fall. Concentric ripples met, merged, small whirl shaping a petal before the blood thinned to grey.
Jang exhaled, copper taste in his mouth. "If I fall," he whispered, "burn the copy. Burn my notes. Let them think I was ash from the start."
Her thumb smeared his still-bleeding cut across the parchment margin, sealing the vow in ink and blood. "If you rise," she answered, "don't forget who steadied the ladder."
Their wrists met—sticky pigment smudging like dusk-paint on both skins. For one heartbeat he felt less alone than ever in the echoing halls of Ironshadow. Then a lantern arc swept past the shutter slats: Cho Sun-kyu's limp-paced patrol. Bars of light marched across the walls, lingered, retreated.
Jisoo snapped the basin lid shut—mirror water silenced. "Hurry." She wiped crimson-ink residue with her sleeve, but not all; a faint sheen remained on the stone, like a secret signature.
They slipped back toward the dorm. Won-Il's snore broke rhythm as they passed his pallet; Jang froze until it deepened again. Behind them the alcove candle guttered out, leaving only rain's whisper and the smell of rust-tinged water.
He lay on straw not long after, eyes wide to rafters he could not see. From the corridor came the sudden roll of a single drum—three booming strokes that shuddered through planks and ribs alike. The hall monitor's nails hammered a parchment to the main post: expedition roster to post at sunrise.
Jang raised his thumb—still stained dark—and pressed it beside his beam tally. The blot spread, half-petal, half-wound. Two marks left.
Outside, the rain slowed, soft as the hush before dawn steel meets whetstone.