They found the man's daughter tucked away in a small, half-collapsed shrine deeper in the forest, watched over by a single SAT soldier. Yejin ended him before he even had the chance to turn around, quick and silent, and that was that. The man thanked them with all his heart. Afterward, she brought Kei to one of Kyungsuk's infirmaries to recover. The walk back had been slow and tense, Kei leaning most of his weight against her shoulder.
The infirmary itself was small but well kept, the air thick with the smell of dried herbs, lantern light pooling warm across the wooden floor. Kei was laid down in a bed near the back, his wounds cleaned and wrapped, and Yejin lingered long enough to make sure he was settled before slipping off to handle everything else waiting for her.
Oddly enough, for a town with enemy forces camped in the woods just beyond its walls, Kyungsuk carried on like nothing was wrong. The streets stayed quiet. Vendors opened their stalls. Children ran past the infirmary window, laughing about something only they understood.
Kei was resting, afternoon light cutting pale stripes across the floor through the window, when the door creaked open with all the subtlety of a falling tree.
"Good to see you're still breathing, buddy." Vincent dropped into the chair beside the bed, the wooden legs shrieking against the floorboards. He leaned back, hands laced behind his head. "Word is you took down the Fifth Commander of the Great Battalion. So, how'd it feel? Judging by the state of you, I'm guessing a real blast."
Kei shifted, wincing slightly. "They fight with demonic power. That commander wasn't someone to take lightly." He touched his side without thinking. "Threw me into the ground once. Cracked a couple ribs doing it."
Vincent let out a low whistle, grinning anyway. "Still, no complaints from me. Princess Yejin already filed the report — you took down the Fifth Commander. You get what that means, right?"
Kei just stared at him, waiting.
"It means we're ten steps closer to why we're even here. We haven't even hit a full week yet, and look how much ground we've already covered." Vincent said it like he'd personally done the fighting.
"We?" Kei raised an eyebrow. "Last I checked, I was the one who got slammed into the ground."
"Your win's my win, come on." Vincent laughed. "We're in this together, idiot."
Kei let out a slow breath, and something close to a smile tugged at the edge of his mouth despite himself. "Fine, whatever. I need to rest. Do me a favor and shut up for a while." He shifted onto his side, turning away from Vincent entirely, as if that alone might convince him to leave.
It did not. Vincent, constitutionally unable to sit in silence, wandered over to a small bookshelf against the wall instead, fingers trailing over the cracked spines. "Picked up some interesting talk while I was out," he said, casual on the surface but with something heavier underneath. "Some people around here don't think Amaterasu's just the kind, gentle goddess everyone likes to talk about. They think she's got a cruel side too — that everything falling apart in the world right now is her punishing anyone who's strayed off the righteous path." He tugged a couple of books free, flipping through the pages absently. "There's a whole religion built around that here. Claims to speak for both sides of her — the merciful half and the punishing half. They call it Yeoljin." His expression sobered. "Makes me wonder if that's the same group that's been sacrificing kids. You remember Haein's story, right? Her sister got taken by a cult too."
Kei turned to face him properly now. "And why are you bringing that up?"
Vincent set the books down, all the lightness draining out of his voice. "Because that commander you fought was pulling from demonic power. That's not something you brush past, Kei. There are people out there who treat demonic practices like just another chapter in some old practition book — and cults are usually where that starts. Most of them don't have a clue what it actually costs to make a deal with a fiend." His voice dropped lower still. "It's spreading. Fast. And if that commander was drawing on it, chances are plenty of the South's soldiers are doing the same thing. Whether that's tangled up with the crystals losing their strength, I can't say for sure. Might be nothing. Correlation isn't causation and all that." He paused. "But my gut says this isn't just a coincidence."
Kei turned the words over, eyes drifting up toward the ceiling. He hated to admit it, but Vincent's logic held together better than he wanted it to. The pieces were scattered, sure — but they were starting to point somewhere ugly.
Once Vincent left, the room settled into a heavy quiet. Kei did not sleep right away. His mind drifted backward instead, to a small village in Freor, to the night a blizzard tore through it and left him the only one standing. He still did not know why he had survived when no one else had. Caught somewhere in that old memory, his eyes grew heavy despite himself, and sleep finally dragged him under. The warmth of the infirmary faded away, replaced by the howling wind of his childhood.
"Kei... Kei... Kei..." An old man's voice, calling through the dark.
He opened his eyes to a face too blurred to make out, though the words came through clear enough.
"I'm going to join the others. Stay here and keep our things safe. Understood?"
Young Kei nodded, silent and obedient, the way he always was.
He waited alone inside their home, a dome shaped like an igloo built from fir wood bent into ribs and packed with wool. Strange as it was, he had never once felt cold in his life — which made it all the more confusing that others in the village kept dying from it, especially when the storms turned vicious.
Morning broke, the storm finally spent. But the old man never came back. Still, Kei waited. One day passed. Then another. Then another. The women left behind, and the handful of men too old or too young for the hunt, grew more and more anxious with every hour their husbands and fathers failed to return.
Then, one night, another blizzard rolled in, worse than the last. Kei let some of the villagers crowd into the dwelling to escape the cold.
"Where's old Katri?" one of the women asked, glancing around.
Kei said nothing. Another woman answered in his place. "He must have gone with the hunting party. I'm sick with worry over my husband too — none of them have come back."
"I know that feeling well," another murmured. "May Hailon, the God of Snow, watch over them all."
The hours dragged past midnight, the storm never once easing. Inside, the cold crept in anyway, the walls cracking under the pressure, letting frost and ice needle through the seams, the dwelling's warmth bleeding out into the night.
Eventually exhaustion won out, and Kei drifted off despite himself. When he woke, the roof had caved in around them — and the people who had been sleeping beside him were no longer breathing.
They had frozen to death in their sleep.
When he stepped outside, there was no one left alive. No one, except a tall figure in a black hooded cloak, standing very still, a raven perched motionless on his shoulder. The figure turned to face him. His features stayed blurred, unreadable, but somehow young Kei could still feel the smile behind them.
"I knew you'd make it through the blizzard." The voice was almost fond. "This is what's fascinating about Freor. It's murderous. Ruthless. Cold." A pause, considering. "It's how I imagine you'll turn out to be, someday."
Kei said nothing, just stared up at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. Then a young woman — barely able to stand, her face torn apart with grief — screamed and lunged at the hooded figure with a small knife clenched in her fist.
The blade sank in. Blood spilled down in a steady dark line. The figure only tilted his head, unbothered, fixing her with a look colder than the storm last night.
Then...
Her breath turned ragged almost instantly, hands flying to her throat, and then blood surged from her mouth all at once. She dropped where she stood.
Kei was too young to understand death yet, not really — he had already grown far too used to watching the people around him die for any of it to register on his face.
The figure's gaze drifted back to him. "I like those eyes of yours. Empty. Cold. Numb." He studied Kei a moment longer, unhurried. "You're probably not even wondering why you're the only one left alive."
A flock of ravens swept overhead all at once, blotting out what little light remained. "But that's something you'll come to understand on your own, someday, Kei..." He leaned in close, and this time his face finally came into focus — golden eyes, and dark blue corruption marks branching like veins across his left cheek, curling down his neck.
"WE WILL MEET AGAIN."
His smile curled into something far more sinister, and the sight of it tore Kei straight out of the dream and back into the waking world.
Yejin was already at his side, one hand braced on his shoulder. "What's wrong? Are you all right?"
Kei sat upright, chest heaving, eyes wide and unfocused for a moment before the room resolved around him.
Yul, Vincent, and Tsuyu stood nearby too, worry plain on all three faces.
Eventually his breathing evened out. Vincent asked again, gently this time, what had happened.
Kei said nothing at all.
"You need to recover fast, Kei." Tsuyu's voice was even, all business. "The SAT forces already took the village of Hokaishin. By the Dae-Ryeong's orders, we're staying put here, ready to respond the second the South makes another move."
"From what we can tell, the SAT forces that landed at Hokaishin number over twenty thousand," Yul added, arms crossed. "Turns out those warships that hit Saeho Isle a few days back were just a distraction the whole time. Kyungsuk got spared, though — thanks to you for wiping out the Fifth Commander's entire battalion. The Shogun's actually requested an audience with the both of you."
"The Shogun?" Vincent blinked.
"My father," Yejin said simply. "Choi Seojun."
"Whoa. Did not expect we'd be meeting him this soon." Vincent sat up straighter.
"I'm fine. Fully recovered, I think." Kei pushed the blanket aside and swung his legs off the bed, testing his weight on his feet. "My strength's back too."
"You sure?" Yul studied him. "You still look... pale."
"Don't sweat it, Yul. Kei just looks like that all the time," Vincent said, deadpan.
Kei crossed the room toward his folded clothes, but Yejin stepped in front of him before he got there. "Not those. Please — wear our division's colors instead. Red marks you as one of the Blood Rose."
Kei glanced past her at Vincent, already dressed in the division's red cheollik, the Blood Rose insignia stitched sharp across his back.
Still, Kei shook his head.
The uniform was not built for how he fought — no room for the daggers and throwing blades he needed close at hand, no hidden pockets, none of the sheaths sewn into his own gear. He was not willing to trade function for appearances, not even for her.
Yejin considered that for a moment, then nodded. "Fair enough. Your reasoning holds up — I won't force the uniform on you." She paused. "But if you're telling me you're fit to move, I need you to travel to Goryeong Fortress. My father's requested to see you both. Yul will go with you."
"Anything else waiting for us there, besides the Shogun himself?" Vincent asked.
"I've told him everything — including the Fabled Class. Don't worry, though. He's fair. Level-headed. As long as it serves the empire, he'll hear you out." Yejin's eyes moved between them. "You came here looking for answers about the crystals, didn't you?"
"That's right," Vincent said.
"I don't know much about them myself. But I'm hoping my father can point you toward someone who does — or at least somewhere worth starting."
"Thank you, Princess. That means a lot." Vincent's tone, for once, was entirely sincere.
Yejin turned to Yul and told him to see the two of them safely to Goryeong Fortress. Yul led the way out, guiding Kei and Vincent to the syndyr terminal, where a calash sat waiting to carry them onward toward Goryeong.