📜 NEW CHAPTER 5 — THE WHISPERS BEGIN

Dawn broke wet and grey over the salt pans.

Gil’s men shuffled through the freezing brine pools, shoulders hunched, eyes darting to the hills where Baek’s steward might ride down any hour.

But word spread faster than the morning wind: House Ryu was paying fair again.

A barefoot boy dashed through the salt yards, breath puffing like a ghost. He stopped at Gil’s shack where Tae waited, arms folded, eyes scanning the work gangs.

“Lord Jin says we’ll double the wages if they come to the main yard at dusk,” the boy said, voice cracking from cold and fear.

Tae flipped him a stale barley cake. “Eat first. Then run to the mill house — tell Old Master Oh the same.”

The boy bowed, crumbs spraying from his mouth, then tore off through the salt wind.

In the village, the whispers grew teeth.

Women at the communal well leaned close, voices low: “Ryu coin’s moving again.”

Old men at the tavern door spat into the mud: “Baek’s tax collectors’ll come for it.”

A merchant by the roadside lifted his head from his ledger when he heard the gossip. His name was Shin — fat-bellied, silk-robed in a way that pretended at poverty. He sold barley, winter cloth, salt lumps cheap enough to make a poor man rich on the side.

He closed his ledger when he heard the name Ryu on the wind. He packed up his stall by noon.

By dusk, Jin stood at the broken gate of the House Ryu courtyard, watching the old retainer Master Oh haul in three carts of half-rotten barley.

“Better than dust,” Master Oh grunted, wiping his brow with a sleeve crusted white with salt flakes. “Merchant Shin gave me a deal. Said he’d rather risk Baek’s boot than your wrath.”

Jin barked a laugh that startled even him. Soha stepped up beside him, cloak wrapped tight around her shoulders.

“Shin’s a snake,” she said.

“All merchants are snakes,” Jin said. “But this one wants to fatten himself on our scraps before Baek eats him whole.”

He reached into his coat, pulled free a worn scrap of paper — a contract he’d written himself, shaky calligraphy on cheap reed pulp.

He pressed it into Master Oh’s cracked hands.

“Next time Shin comes, we give him the Ryu mark. He’s ours now.”

Soha studied her brother’s face. Under the torchlight, Jin’s eyes glowed — bright, cold, alive.

“You look happy,” she said softly.

“I am,” Jin said. “The gossip’s spreading. It’ll reach Baek’s steward by dawn.”

“And when it does?”

Jin lifted his eyes to the courtyard walls. His father’s shadow seemed to loom there — not the drunk, broken man who’d died gasping for coin, but the founder’s ghost from a century ago.

“Then the real game begins.”

Night fell hard.

Inside the ruin of House Ryu’s main hall, they laid out maps on a table scarred by decades of spilled ink and spilled secrets.

Tae jabbed a finger at a fork in the salt road.

“Baek’s steward will come through here,” he said. “He’ll bring men — armed or not, doesn’t matter. They’ll call it a tax inspection.”

Soha traced another line with her ink-stained thumb.

“The villagers will watch. They’ll see who bends. Who doesn’t.”

Jin watched his siblings — the way Tae’s shoulders squared when he spoke, the way Soha’s lips twisted when she found a flaw in a plan.

He almost smiled. Almost.

Then he rolled up the map, slow and deliberate.

“No blood on the salt,” he said.

Tae’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Baek’s steward expects blades. Thugs. Fear.” Jin’s smile was cold as the brine pools. “He won’t expect paper.”

He pulled a slip from his coat — another ledger page, this one burned at the edges to hide how old it really was.

“A fake claim,” Soha breathed. She caught on first — of course she did.

Jin nodded. “When he comes to seize the pans, he’ll see this — proof Baek’s men have been skimming taxes for years. Enough to get him whipped if Baek believes it.”

Tae let out a low whistle. “So he leaves the pans alone.”

“For now,” Jin said. He slipped the forged claim back into his coat. “But he’ll want proof Baek won’t punish him for failing.”

Tae’s grin was sharp. “So we give him a reason to lie to his master.”

Soha’s eyes met Jin’s across the flickering torchlight. A reason. Or a threat.

An hour before dawn, the steward arrived.

A thin man with a broad hat and a face like a rat peering out from an expensive cloak. Two rough men flanked him — cudgels under the cloaks, the stink of stale wine and old bruises.

He found Jin standing alone in the yard. Tae and Soha watched from the hall’s broken doorway.

“Lord Jin Ryu,” the steward said, bowing just enough to mock the title. “I bring Lord Baek’s greetings.”

Jin didn’t bow. Didn’t smile.

“You come to count my salt?” Jin asked mildly.

The steward’s grin gleamed yellow. “Your salt, young lord, belongs to House Baek now. Unless—”

Jin cut him off with a flick of the forged ledger slip. The paper fluttered between them, landing in the steward’s gloved hands.

“Count that first,” Jin said.

The steward read. Eyes narrowed. His goons shifted, one cracking his knuckles like firewood snapping.

“This is nonsense,” the steward spat. “Lies.”

“Prove it,” Jin said softly.

He stepped closer — so close he saw the steward’s breath freeze between them.

“Prove my father didn’t pay the tax before Baek’s dogs stole it. Prove your master didn’t skim it again. Go ahead — bring your papers. I’ll bring mine.”

The steward looked at Tae in the doorway, at Soha’s unblinking stare.

Then at Jin — the boy who wasn’t a boy anymore.

The steward crumpled the ledger slip in his gloved fist.

“You’ll pay for this,” he hissed.

Jin’s grin was all teeth now.

“I’m counting on it.”

By the time the steward fled the yard, Jin stood alone again under the frozen sky.

Soha stepped to his side, voice barely above the wind.

“You think he’ll run to Baek?”

“I hope he does.”

Tae came to stand at his other side — the three siblings, shadows under the ruin’s gate.

Jin turned the old dragon ring on his finger, metal cold against his skin.

“Tonight we whisper,” he said. “Next time we roar.”

To be continued.