The sun was just rising behind the high cliffs of the eastern range when Tian and his companions left the Beast Sect grounds. The road ahead curved between valleys and broken foothills, golden light painting long shadows behind them. A cold wind from the north whispered of changes yet to come.
The group rode in silence, still bearing the weight of Sky Reaping Valley.
Seryeon yawned lazily. "We could've asked the Beast Sect for some dried meat, at least."
Junrok grunted. "We've got enough food. What we need is answers."
Gwanjeong was quiet, unusually so. He hadn't said much since leaving. Soheon rode closer to Tian, casting a glance at the white tiger cub curled on his lap.
"You've been quiet," she said. "Thinking about the creature's words again?"
Tian didn't answer right away. His hand rested absently on the cub's fur. "It said I carried the scent of the sky."
"And you believe it?"
"I believe… it recognized something I haven't."
They rounded a bend—and the wind changed.
It hit them all at once.
Blood.
The path ahead led to a ruined village. Burnt roofs. Shattered gates. And corpses. Dozens of them—men, women, children. Bodies torn apart, limbs broken with surgical precision. Some were piled at the center, as if arranged in cruel offering.
Gwanjeong dismounted first, walking slowly among the bodies. "These weren't bandits."
"No," Soheon murmured. "This was slaughter."
Junrok found the body of a village guard—face frozen in terror, blade still drawn. "Some tried to fight. But they never had a chance."
Tian stood near a broken water jar, staring at symbols scratched into a wall with blood:
"We do not forgive the forgotten. We are the silence that returns."
—
The massacre wasn't isolated. Over the next two days, they found three more villages in similar states—burned out, families erased, travelers ambushed on the road. All signs pointed to the same enemy. Someone fast. Precise. Organized.
They spoke to monks in roadside temples, beggars by the gates of hill towns, and wandering storytellers in mountain inns. Rumors circled like carrion birds.
A hidden faction. Masks without names. Eyes without mercy. Some whispered the name Guhonrim—"those who returned from the grave."
"They move like ghosts," a drunk beggar told Tian in a fog-covered village. "Speak with thoughts, not mouths. Leave behind only fear."
—
They followed the trail through dense fog to a forgotten forest in the south. At its heart was a hollowed mountain path—ancient and sealed by fallen stone. But Tian knew.
"We're close."
Junrok gestured toward the collapsed tunnel. "You think they're inside?"
"I don't think," Tian said. "I hear them breathing."
The stone shattered before they could move.
Figures emerged like nightmares—masks of bone, of iron, of cloth soaked in ash. They did not speak. They struck.
The battle ignited in the mist—fast, brutal, calculated. The attackers moved with eerie grace, flowing like shadows around trees and stone. Gwanjeong intercepted one with a parrying sweep, Seryeon cut through another's blade mid-air. Soheon danced among three with ghostlike precision, blades flashing like moonlight.
Junrok met one of the masked with a thunderous blow that shook the air.
And Tian—
He moved like wind over glass, drawing Silent Mourning and Heaven's Wound together. One black, one white. A dual tide of death. His red eye flared once, and three were downed in seconds—without being killed.
"Enough!" he shouted, voice firm and full of command.
A figure descended from the cliff above—taller than the rest, cloaked in gray, wearing a wolf mask marked by a black streak.
The others stopped.
"You're not Murim Alliance," the leader said at last. "But you wear their scent."
Tian stepped forward. "We aren't with them. We fight them."
The masked leader's voice darkened. "Do you take me for a fool? They've sent others before. We buried them all."
Tian did not reach for his sword. "Then test me yourself."
A duel broke out. Fast and furious. The leader was not ordinary—his movements were steeped in shadow arts, using feints, illusions, and telepathic strikes. He wielded twin daggers that flowed like smoke.
But Tian was something more.
He used the flow of Heaven's Wound to draw the rhythm, and Silent Mourning to end it. His footwork bent around the mist. He caught a dagger mid-spin and turned the momentum against the man, disarming him.
But he did not strike the final blow.
"You're angry," Tian said. "But not lost."
The leader looked at him from behind the cracked mask. "Why?"
"Because your story is still being written."
—
Later, they sat around the fire inside the shadowed cave. The others removed their masks one by one. Women. Men. Old and young. All branded, broken, or cast aside.
"I was Yeomha Soryun," the leader finally said. "A prodigy of the Yeomha Clan. I found records—proof that they were selling secrets, experimenting on orphans. I tried to reveal the truth. They hunted me down like a beast."
He looked at his people.
"They were like me. Discarded. Forgotten. So I gathered them. We lived in shadows. Took revenge on those who hunted us. But… something always felt empty."
Tian nodded. "You sought justice. Not slaughter."
Soheon stood. "We saw what you left behind. You don't have to keep doing this alone."
Seryeon added, "You could help people. Protect them like you protected these."
Junrok crossed his arms. "If you can stop killing the innocent, you'll be more than ghosts. You'll be our blade in the dark."
Gwanjeong looked at the outcasts. "We'll take your silence… and turn it into a weapon."
Tian extended his hand. "Join us. Become the shadow that guards, not strikes."
Yeomha Soryun bowed his head.
"You have our blades," he said. "And our silence."
—
By dawn, the Guhonrim had vanished—taking a sealed message from Tian to the Ancient Masters in Longdian, pledging their loyalty.
As Tian and the others continued south, no one spoke for a while.
But in the trees above, and the shadows below, they were no longer alone.
And far away, the Murim Alliance would soon come to fear what they had once forgotten.