Three weeks after the funeral pyres, Kael Ryou disappeared from the public eye.
No one in Tanshiro saw the general again.
Some said he had gone mad. Others whispered he had taken his own life, driven to the edge by grief. But the truth was far more dangerous.
Kael had vanished into the wilderness because vengeance needed patience.
And because vengeance had nearly killed him.
The ambush came on the ninth day of his hunt.
He had trailed a Crimson Serpent scout convoy through the cragged hills of northern Na'kao. A careless slip on wet rocks betrayed his presence. Within moments, he was surrounded.
He killed five.
The sixth rammed a dagger into his side.
The seventh broke his shoulder.
The eighth set the forest aflame behind them, denying him even the solace of retreat.
Bleeding, barely able to stand, Kael stumbled for hours through pine-thick ridges and moss-choked trails. His vision blurred. His steps faltered. The pain in his side pulsed like war drums beneath his skin. Fever crept into his blood like ice.
Night fell like a hammer.
He collapsed beneath a crooked cedar tree, shivering, armour still smeared with his blood.
"Is this where I die?" he thought.
He didn't fear death. He had walked beside it every day for years.
But dying now, without even carving the first scar into the serpent's flesh—that was unacceptable.
Then came the voice.
Dry. Old. Somewhere between a whisper and a chuckle.
"Hmm. You're either a corpse who refuses to stop breathing… or a fool who doesn't know how to die properly."
Kael's blurry eyes strained upward.
A figure stood above him, cloaked in a heavy patchwork robe, wisps of white hair tied back in a loose braid. A gnarled walking stick tapped the ground beside him.
"You've got poison blooming in your liver, boy. And your chi is scattered like broken glass. But I've seen corpses more stubborn than this."
Kael tried to reach for his sword. His hand didn't move.
"Rest, idiot. I'm not here to rob you. You've got nothing worth stealing anyway."
When he awoke, he was in a hut, carved deep into the forest cliffs. Herbs hung from the ceiling. Fire crackled in a stone brazier. A bitter smell hung in the air.
The old man sat beside him, grinding a jade pestle into a bowl.
"I stitched your lung, patched your liver, and pulled three inches of steel out of your gut," he said without looking up. "You still owe me a thank you."
Kael groaned, trying to sit up. Pain screamed through his body.
The man snorted. "Name's Wen. And you're lucky I haven't buried you yet."
Kael's voice was hoarse. "Why… help me?"
Wen shrugged. "You were dying interestingly. That's rare these days."
He moved like a man whose joints had long ago made peace with pain. Yet there was sharpness in his eyes — the kind Kael had only seen in master assassins or forgotten warlords.
Wen handed him a steaming bowl. "Drink. Deer root, crimson leaf, and snake gall. You'll want to die… but don't."
Kael drank. It tasted like bile and rot. His vision swam.
And then — darkness again.
Days passed.
Fever came and went like ghosts.
But Kael didn't die.
He crawled back from the edge inch by inch, fueled by memories of burning cherry blossoms and the sound of Haru's laugh echoing through his dreams.
Master Wen, for all his grumbling, became a reluctant caretaker.
And then a teacher.
Kael wasn't content to just heal.
He wanted to learn how he'd been saved. What made the pain stop? What herbs stop bleeding? What pressure points blocked the poison?
He absorbed everything Wen taught him like a starving man.
"You're not just a soldier," Wen muttered one evening, examining Kael's steady hands as he practised acupuncture on a dead rabbit. "You've got the mind of a surgeon… and the patience of a killer."
Kael didn't reply. His hands moved in silence. Precise. Intentional.
In time, Wen shared more.
Not just medicine, but something stranger: appraisal.
"Every object tells a story," Wen said, placing a dusty porcelain plate between them. "Find the story, and you find its worth."
Kael learned how to date bronze by the shade of oxidation. How to tell a fake jade by its grain. How to know a thousand-year-old scroll from a mere copy.
And with each skill gained, Kael's plan sharpened.
Revenge wouldn't just be bloody.
It would be surgical.
Strategic.
And… profitable.
One night, as the wind howled through the forest and embers danced in the brazier, Kael sat outside the hut with a scroll in hand.
He spoke aloud for the first time in days.
"I won't waste this life."
Wen grunted beside him. "Good. Because I don't save people twice."