The morning mist washed over the tall trees and made mere phantoms of the ridges. Doryeong came to life with the drowsy speech of chickens waking, the distant sound of firewood being chopped, and the murmur of villagers greeting the new day. Gwi awoke to the scent of wet earth and to the biting pain in her shoulders, reminders of all the hoeing she had worked at the day before..
Mistress Hana had left early. In her place, folded on a stool, was a bundle of cloth: a worn tunic the color of slate and trousers patched at the knees.
"Better than this sack," Gwi muttered, pulling off her tattered dress. As she dressed, she studied her reflection in a bowl of still water. Her face—older than most in the village, with lines drawn by time and memory—didn't belong here. But her eyes... they had changed. Sharper now. Focused.
She stepped outside, drawn by voices.
A crowd had gathered by the communal well. Low whispers passed between them like threads.
At the middle of was a man wrapped around on a cloak of travel stained; the satchel hung across his chest.
. His boots were clean, his eyes calculating. A city man.
"Messenger from Gojin," someone said. "Says the King's sick. The Council's taking control."
Another voice, harsher: "Council's always been snakes. This is just the skin shedding."
Gwi edged closer.
The messenger unrolled a scroll. "By order of the Provisional Council of Verida, all able-bodied villagers must contribute grain and two persons per family to aid the war effort. Northern rebels have crossed the Silver Border. The realm must unite."
A ripple of dread passed through the crowd. War. Rebels. This was no longer the soft threat of rumor—this was proclamation.
Gwi stepped back. *The Kingdom of Verida is ailing,* she recalled Jiyun once saying, *but no one notices until it breaks at the spine.* Was this it? The beginning of that fracture?
She needed to know more.
That evening, while others fretted over portions and who would be sent from each family, Gwi visited the edge of the village—where the woods thickened and the mountain's shadow grew long. There, she found the boy.
She had noticed him before: thin, alert, and always quiet, as if listening to things others could not hear. He was sitting with a rabbit snare, frowning at a torn net.
"You set your line too close to the ridge," she said gently.
He looked up, startled. "You... you talk like a city scholar."
"I was one. Once." She crouched beside him. "What's your name?"
"Taen," he replied, eyes narrowed. "You're the woman with no past."
"That's what they say," Gwi admitted. "But I remember enough to know this—when kingdoms fall, it's not swords that break them first. It's secrets."
Taen hesitated. Then: "My father said the same. Before he vanished."
She blinked. "Vanished?"
"He used to be a record-keeper. Said he saw something he wasn't meant to. One day, he rode toward Gojin. Never came back."
A chill touched her skin.
"What did he say he saw?" she asked.
Taen reached into his cloak and produced a torn scrap of parchment, yellowed with time. On it was a sigil—an eye set into the sun, surrounded by four stars. The ink shimmered faintly.
"I think it's old magic," he whispered. "He said it was from *before* Verida."
Gwi stared.
She had seen this symbol before.
*In Jiyun's sketchbook.*
The forgotten sigil of the First Pact—the ancient covenant that bound the four provinces before the kingdom ever bore its crown.
And if this existed... then so did the hidden histories.
She closed her fingers around the parchment. "Taen," she said, "we need to talk. And I need your help."
"Why?"
"Because your father tried to expose the truth and vanished. If we don't act now, so will we all."
That night, as the village lay quiet beneath stars older than kingdoms, Gwi sat by the fire and held the parchment close.
She was no longer just surviving.
She was investigating.
And if Verida was collapsing, she'd be damned if she didn't understand *why*.