The sky was too quiet that night.
No breeze stirred the lanterns. No owls called from the woods. Even the cicadas had gone still, as if nature itself recoiled from the blood about to be spilled.
Twelve-year-old Ryang Li, heir of the noble Ryang Clan, had never known true silence until that night. Not the peaceful kind found in gardens, but the kind that follows slaughter—the kind that hangs over corpses like fog.
He ran barefoot through the courtyard, the hem of his scholar's robe soaked in something warm and red. The white tiles beneath him, once polished and pristine, were now marbled with the blood of his clan.
His hand trembled as it gripped a small dagger meant only for ceremonial rites. It felt like paper in his fingers—useless, pathetic.
"Mother!" he cried out.
"Father!"
No answer. Only the soft crackle of a paper lantern as it tilted into the koi pond, setting its flame adrift.
He turned the corner into the central hall. His heart dropped.
They were all there. The Ryang Clan—warriors, scholars, elders, servants—all of them laid to rest on the cold floor, their expressions frozen mid-breath. Eyes wide. Mouths half open. No signs of battle. Only clean, single cuts. Precision.
Too fast for even resistance.
Standing in the center of it all was a man Ryang Li trusted more than anyone in the world.
Jin Seol.
His bodyguard. His mentor. His brother in all but name.
The man who had trained him to hold a sword, who stayed up late quizzing him on history scrolls, who carried him on his back through snow when he had a fever.
Now, he stood drenched in shadow and silence, his blade already sheathed. His eyes were calm—too calm—as if none of this had touched him.
Ryang Li dropped the dagger. His voice cracked.
"Why?"
Jin Seol said nothing at first. He stepped forward slowly, kneeling to Ryang Li's level. His gloved hand rested gently—almost fondly—on the boy's shoulder.
"You're not ready to understand," he said softly.
"Not yet."
He stood, turned away, and walked toward the mist beyond the gate.
"I don't kill weaklings," he said without looking back.
"Come find me when you're strong enough."
And just like that, he vanished into the fog.
That night, the wind never returned.
And the boy who cried in the blood-soaked courtyard never came back.
The seasons turned.
Years passed.
And the boy became a blade.
Ryang Li's grief did not harden all at once. At first, it drowned him—waves of despair, loneliness, and nightmares so vivid he woke up tasting ash. He had no home, no name that held power. Orphans of slaughtered clans are pitied for a day and forgotten the next.
He begged for food in temple towns. Slept in gutters outside city walls. Once, he nearly froze to death in the northern pass until a wandering monk wrapped him in a spare robe.
But he did not break.
He studied by candlelight in rundown archives. He trained with aging swordsmen who asked for nothing but his silence. He starved, bled, endured—and endured again.
By eighteen, he entered the army as a lowly infantry recruit.
By twenty, he was a battlefield tactician.
By twenty-three, the Emperor himself gave him command.
Now, at twenty-five, General Ryang Li leads legions. His name alone sends rebel camps scattering. Yet every victory, every medal, every kneeling noble… means nothing.
Because Jin Seol still walks somewhere in the world.
And the question still burns.
Why?
Ryang Li keeps the question hidden behind his stern gaze, behind the armor, behind the discipline.
But it remains.
And now, whispers stir through the Empire:
A swordsman seen in the west who fights like a ghost.
A masked figure who moves like shadow under moonlight.
A man with no allegiance—but a familiar blade.
Ryang Li stands at the edge of a new war.
But it is not the Empire's enemies he fears.
It is the truth.
The one that waits behind Jin Seol's eyes.