Jang’s lantern made a trembling ring of gold around his boots as he crossed the silent store-house yard. Sixth-bell chores were simple on parchment—carry a clay jar of whale-oil from the depot to the gate torches—but darkness warped every corner of Ironshadow, stretching corridors into mazes. One wrong turn and a guard’s lash could bloom out of nowhere. Jang kept to the courier alleys that threaded behind the kitchens, half-roofed passages where wind funneled wood-smoke like a warning.

Ahead, a dull thud broke the hush, followed by a grunt cut short. Jang slowed. Another thud, this time joined by the dry whick of rattan striking flesh. He eased the lantern higher.

The alley bent left between two grain lofts. Light spilled across stacked bamboo crates—and onto three broad-shouldered drudges hemming someone against the wall. One of them raised a broom-stave and brought it down like a cudgel. The victim blocked with forearms, but the impact still cracked loud enough to jolt Jang’s teeth.

“Kwan,” he breathed.

His brother’s braid was unravelling; the cedar polishing box lay shattered at his feet, brushes and camellia rags strewn like viscera. The attackers pressed close—Sun, Daehwan, and Gan, older men who had shoveled coal beside Jang for years yet never spoken a kind word. Their faces gleamed with the ugly thrill of a hunt finally cornered.

“Polish our boots, prince,” Sun hissed, swinging again. “Show us the Core bow you practiced.”

Kwan’s only answer was a grunt as the stave hammered his ribs. He staggered but did not drop, blood glistening at the edge of his lip.

Jang’s body moved before his mind caught up. He set the oil jar down, clenched the lantern loop hard, and strode into the light. “Enough!”

Three sets of eyes snapped toward him—wolves blinking at a fox that dared bark. Gan laughed, a short, cracked sound. “Little brother brings a candle to a storm.”

Daehwan shoved Kwan face-first into the wall, then advanced. “Run along, pup. We’re teaching humility.”

Jang swung the lantern. Glass rang off Daehwan’s shoulder; sparks fizzed as the flame licked fresh air. It bought a heartbeat—just long enough for Jang to dart to Kwan’s side. The back of his hand brushed hot blood on Kwan’s sleeve.

“Stay behind me,” he whispered.

Kwan tried to straighten. “Fool, you’ll—”

A broom-stave whistled. Jang raised the lantern as a shield, but wood caught his forearm instead. Pain detonated, white and shocking. He reeled; the lantern slipped from numb fingers, struck the cobbles, and burst. Oil spread in a bright slick, caught fire with a whoosh, then guttered in the same breath when the clay shattered—one heartbeat of brilliance, snuffed by pooling darkness. The brief flare etched everything in negative: three brutes, Kwan bent like a battered reed, Jang off balance, hope flaring and dying in a single snap.

Sun came on, brandishing his stave like the chain-whip at dawn. Kwan surged forward despite the pounding in his ribs and drove a wild fist into Sun’s nose. Cartilage cracked; Sun shrieked and stumbled, blood spraying the wall. Gan answered with a kick to Kwan’s knee. Wood bit again into Jang’s shoulder, spinning him into crate-stacks that rattled like dice.

The world shrank to impact, breath, vertigo. Jang tasted iron. Somewhere distant, a voice counted—one, two—his own reflex tallying blows the way it had tallied lashes that morning.

Footsteps clicked beyond the bend.

The attackers froze. Even hunched on hands and knees, Jang felt the air change: pressure thickening until breath had to fight for space. A cane tapped stone, measured and slow. Chain keys chimed once, twice.

Ma Gok walked into the ruined circle of lantern-oil and blood.

No sword hung at his belt, yet his presence unsheathed an invisible edge. Frost seemed to climb the grain-loft walls; torch-glow from the distant corridor dulled as if strangled. The three brutes backed a step—then another—as his shadow fell across them.

“Explain,” Ma Gok said, voice quiet as banked coals.

Sun cupped his shattered nose, words slurring through blood. “Disrespect… promotion… thought he was—”

“Silence.” The single word struck harder than any stave. Gan’s knees buckled; Daehwan dropped his weapon with a clatter that echoed like guilt.

Ma Gok’s cane lifted, angled not at the assailants but at the spatter of extinguished fire. “Lantern oil wasted,” he murmured. “Light squandered. Hope dirtied.” He turned the cane, showing its dark iron tip. “Rot has its use—fertiliser for discipline.”

Qi pulsed—no visible glow, just sudden weight that pressed skin to bone. The three men gasped as their legs folded, foreheads smacking stone involuntarily. Jang felt the force brush him too, like icy fingers at his collar, but it flowed around him and Kwan, leaving them upright while the attackers writhed flat.

“Six lashes was mercy,” Ma Gok continued. “Tonight you earn twelve. Each.” He angled his head toward the alley mouth; two enforcers melted from shadow, ropes uncoiling. Sun and the others were hauled upright, limbs trembling from the aftertaste of Qi they could not name.

Kwan swayed. Jang caught his elbow. Ma Gok’s gaze fell on the brothers—dark eyes, unreadable abyss.

“Stronger chains,” he said at last, “for stronger prisoners.” The cane tapped once between them. “Follow.”

He set off toward the infirmary. The threat in his back-tilted cane made disobedience unthinkable. Jang hooked an arm round Kwan’s waist; together they limped after him, leaving the cracked lantern and its dead pool of oil cooling like an extinguished star.

Herbal smoke curled low in the infirmary’s lamplight. Reed mats creaked under Kwan’s weight as Jang wound linen round bruised ribs. Outside, enforcers dragged Sun and his cronies toward the holding cellar; their distant pleas thinned to whimpers beneath the night rain.

Kwan hissed when Jang tightened the bandage. “Could’ve managed alone.”

“No,” Jang answered, firm despite the tremor still hopping in his wrists. He tied the final knot, hands streaked with salve and dried lantern oil. “They’d have killed you.”

Kwan managed a wry grin. “Brooms today; sabers tomorrow—same swing, little brother.” But the grin slid crooked, exposing fear he hadn’t swallowed yet. “I saw real rage in them. Like they wanted my new duty burned off my skin.”

Envy, Jang thought, letting the word settle cold and metallic on his tongue. How many more would envy until fists turned to knives?

Kwan’s gaze wandered to the slit window where torch-light guttered. “Core quarters… did you know their blade-racks hum? Like thunder kept quiet.” He sighed—the sound of a man hearing storms he cannot weather. “If I make one scratch—”

“You’ll make none,” Jang said.

Kwan looked at him. “I need a hiding trick,” he whispered, suddenly urgent. From his inner pocket he produced the tiny steward’s medallion—new, polished, damning bright. “Sun wanted this off me. Next time he’ll bring sharper friends.”

Jang remembered the Chain-Lotus badge and Ma Gok’s cane tip glinting. “Stitch it,” he said. “Inside the lining. Like fangs biting cloth.”

Kwan blinked. “Fang Stitch? Where did—”

“Tailor’s hall,” Jang lied smoothly, though he’d only overheard the phrase once. He tugged a thread from the linen roll, demonstrated the quick loop-and-skip every third puncture. “Silver thread decoys warding glyphs. Pocket sits flat, even if they pat you down.” He finished one temporary seam on the discarded polishing cloth; the medallion vanished like a coin in a conjurer’s hand, fabric innocent to sight and touch. Kwan’s eyes shone with something more potent than gratitude—relief edged with possibility.

Before Jang could bask in that small victory, Ma Gok’s shadow darkened the threshold. The Head-Servant said nothing, but his gaze flicked from the hidden medallion to the makeshift bandages to Jang’s oil-streaked sleeve.

He drummed two fingers on the cane. Tok-tok. A private rhythm neither praise nor rebuke. Then he turned away, leaving only a faint scent of winter bark in the room.

Kwan exhaled. “Is he savior or jailor?”

“Perhaps both,” Jang murmured.

Later, dorm lamps died one by one. Jang sat alone, rolling bruised knuckles over his palm, letting moonlight pool in the water-bucket’s dent until his reflection bent like iron softened at the forge. Chains, he thought, could be hammered—could be picked.

Resolve flared—no burst of reckless fire, just the steady ember of a boy who now knew how quickly light could be snuffed and how fiercely it must be guarded.

He lay down beside Kwan’s quiet breathing, and in that hush the ember burned on, tiny, adamant, unyielding.