The memory always smelled of scorched earth and wet iron.

Before the "Red Purge," Muryeong’s world was measured in the length of a furrow and the weight of a harvest. He was a child at the outer outskirts of the Seo estate—a "living asset" owned by a family he never saw, working lands that would never be his. Yet, there was a quiet beauty in the poverty. His father, a man with hands like cracked leather, would lift him onto his shoulders to see the sunset, while his mother and sister sang songs of a world where the King’s ledger didn't reach.

Then came the Official.

He arrived with a scroll that carried the weight of a mountain. "The Seo clan is consolidating," the man had announced, his voice devoid of any human warmth. "This village is to be liquidated. The able-bodied are to be sold and shipped south. The rest are... unnecessary."

The rebellion didn't start with a plan; it started with a scream. When Muryeong’s father saw the chains being brought for his daughter, the stoic slave became a wolf. He swung a wood-axe, and for one glorious, doomed hour, the slaves of the Seo estate reclaimed their humanity.

But the State did not tolerate discrepancies. The Official had fled, and in his place, he had sent the Correction.

He had sent Jang Saheon.

The immortal swordsman did not arrive with an army. He arrived alone, a silhouette of black lacquer and absolute silence emerging from the mist. The rebellion, so fierce against the local guards, shattered against him like glass against stone.

Muryeong’s father died first, his head rolling into the mud before his body even realized the axe had been parried. Then his mother. Then his sister. Jang didn't kill them out of anger; he killed them to prune the garden.

"Please!" the young Muryeong had shrieked, throwing himself at the giant's knees. "Kill me too! Just end it!"

Jang Saheon stopped. He looked down at the boy—not with pity, but with the cold, calculating eye of a farmer looking at a promising sprout. He saw the rage. He saw a hatred so dense it was warping the air around the boy.

"No," Jang whispered, his voice like grinding stones. "You are too valuable to waste on a muddy death."

Jang reached to the small of his back. He didn't draw the Black Ancestral Blade—the massive, cursed relic that hummed with the screams of a thousand souls. Instead, he drew a second, shorter blade. Its hilt was wrapped in a sickening, translucent skin, and the steel was the color of a bruised lung.

He drove the sword into the earth. It didn't just pierce the ground; the earth around it seemed to wither and turn black.

"This is my second blade," Jang said. "I give it to you to raise your odds of winning. If you grow strong enough, this steel might be the only thing in this world capable of ending my breath."

Muryeong stared at the weapon, his small hands shaking.

"But heed my warning, boy," Jang leaned down, his mask inches from Muryeong's face. "This is a debt. If you draw this blade before your soul is heavy enough to command it, the curse will devour you. It will turn you into an empty shell, and your remaining life force will be sent straight to my Black Blade—feeding my immortality and making me whole."

The boy looked at the sword, then at the bodies of his family.

"I give you fifteen years," Jang continued, his form beginning to blur into the freezing mist. "Fifteen years to sharpen your hatred into a tool. When the time is up, I will find you to collect the blade. If you cannot draw it, I will take your life instead. When you feel the steel begin to pulse like a heart... it means I am close."

With a flick of his cloak, Jang Saheon vanished. The fires of the village died down, leaving Muryeong alone in the silence of the dead.

He didn't cry. He reached out and wrapped the cursed hilt in thick, scavenged leather, hiding the breathing steel from the world. He made a vow, not to the gods, but to the ghosts of his kin: he would never draw this blade until the day Jang Saheon came to collect his harvest.

Muryeong’s hand jerked away from his waist. He was back in the clearing, the oak tree standing before him, splintered and scarred.

He pressed his palm against the leather-wrapped hilt.

Thump.

It was faint. A rhythmic, sickening vibration that matched the beat of a heart.

Muryeong’s blood went cold. He looked at his hands—the hands of a man who had survived fifteen years of hell.

"The time is almost up," he whispered, his voice trembling.

He looked at the second blade, a weapon he had carried half his life but never dared to unsheathe. If he drew it now, would it save him? Or would it simply deliver his soul to the monster who had murdered his father?

"Fourteen years and eleven months," Muryeong muttered, his grip tightening on his primary, "Reason" sword. "I'm not an empty shell yet, you bastard."

He turned back to the tree, his strikes becoming faster, more desperate. He didn't just need to be a warrior anymore. He needed to be a vessel strong enough to hold a curse.