When the door clicked shut behind Ma Gok, silence settled over the infirmary like fresh gauze.
Only two lanterns burned—small, nervous flames that painted the reed-matted floor in strips of tarnished brass. Jang listened to them hiss while he mixed a bowl of willow-bark paste: three pinches herb, one spoon warm water, grind to slurry. The measured work calmed the tremor still fluttering in his wrists.

Kwan sat shirtless on the narrow cot, ribs streaked purple. He turned the Chain-Lotus medallion over and over between thumb and forefinger, as if weighing its cost. Every time the iron disk glinted, Jang imagined broom-staves striking, lantern oil blooming fire, Ma Gok’s cane rapping stone—stronger chains for stronger prisoners.

“Hold this here,” Jang murmured, pressing the cool paste along the worst bruise. Kwan winced, but kept his eyes on the medallion.

“It’s an anchor,” he muttered. “Stick it to a rat and they’d drown.”

“Then hide the anchor where no wave can reach.” Jang reached into his satchel, produced a needle no longer than a sparrow’s quill and a coil of silvery thread filched from tailor cast-offs. “Fang Stitch. Six loops, seventh skip—leaves a breath-gap for the jade to sit.” He laid the needle across the medallion like a compass needle finding north. “Silver sings the same pitch as ward glyphs, so spirit-stones and search talismans hum right past.”

Kwan raised a brow. “Where did you—?”

“Laundry hall hears everything,” Jang lied, heart thudding at how easily the falsehood slid. He ripped the inside seam of Kwan’s tunic hem, tucked the medallion flat, then began the tiny bite-and-slip stitches, each knot a silent promise. The silver thread caught lamp-light, looked for an instant like frost tracing cloth.

While Jang sewed, Kwan spoke in a low voice meant for bruised rooms and sleepless nights.
“They say the campaign Master Seo led was against marauders who wore black wings on their backs. Servants whisper they were cult folk—the same who bribed that spy girl before Yun was stripped.”
His jaw tightened. “If the sect fears outside knives, they’ll clamp harder on the ones inside.”

Demonic cult. The phrase fluttered like a moth against the lantern glass of Jang’s thoughts. Out there, shadows plotted; in here, lashes kept everyone too afraid to look up. Two prisons, one inside the other.

He finished the seam, tugged the last stitch. The hem looked untouched; a pat-down would feel only worn cotton. Kwan slid the tunic on, patted the cloth, and nodded once—gratitude too large for words, distilled to a breath.

“Brooms today, sabers tomorrow,” he whispered, trying for the smile he’d promised earlier. It came out crooked but alive.

They left the infirmary on quiet feet. The holding cellar door clanged below—Sun and the others being chained for dawn lashes—but no one patrolled the servants’ wing this late. Rain misted through paper lattice, whispering over roof-tiles. Each droplet sounded like a nail tapped into memory.

Hours later the dorm lay in darkness, sixteen bodies breathing the slow rhythm of the bone-deep weary. Only Jang remained awake. He sat cross-legged beside the wash-bucket that served as mirror, his left hand gingerly flexing bruised knuckles, his right thumb rubbing the iron dent along the rim.

Moonlight slanted through the high vent, caught that dent, broke the reflection of his face into shards. One shard held the boy who flinched at every whip-crack; another caught the gleam of a hidden needle; a third showed nothing at all—an empty stain where a self might grow.

Iron bends.
He pressed the thought against the ache in his ribs the way a smith sets bar to anvil.
Chains bend—or they break. And bent links make keys.

Outside, the great bronze bell tolled eighth watch. The note hummed through timber walls, through Jang’s bones, and into the smallest ember he kept banked behind his heartbeat. He pictured that ember: lotus-shaped, petals folded, waiting. All day Ma Gok had shown how power could crush. Tonight Kwan had proven it could also shelter—if hidden in the right seam.

Jang dipped a cup, poured moon-silver water over the dented rim. Ripples blurred the broken reflection into one face again—his own, but different. Not stronger yet, merely decided. He leaned close enough that his whisper kissed the water and made it shiver.

“Keys.”

It was vow and seed in a single syllable. He curled his bruised fingers inward, locking the word inside his palm.

Footsteps padded beyond the door—Kwan returning from Cloud-Wing Lodge. Jang blew out the stub of candle, letting darkness settle like a cloak. When his brother slipped in, the only light came from a sliver of moon, enough to show Kwan’s cautious smile and the way his tunic hem lay smooth, unremarkable, perfectly stitched.

Jang closed his eyes, holding that final image. Somewhere far above, beyond tiled roofs and thunder-quiet blade racks, clouds drifted across the half-moon. Lanterns guttered. But under the hush, two brothers breathed—one dreaming of quiet survival, the other of locks yet to turn.

The ember within Jang, fed by pain, by silver thread, by an iron bucket’s warped face, flared once—then settled to steady glow. Dawn would come with its frost-silver orders, its quotas and whips, but he would meet it different. Not free, perhaps, yet no longer unarmed.

The bell tolled again, softer, as if marking the birth of something small but inexorable.
Jang let its fading echo carry him into a restless sleep where chains rattled and keys turned in hidden seams, and every snuffed lantern promised another spark waiting in the dark.