With each step, Sanwu felt a subtle unburdening, as if the weight of his past life, the monk's mantle he had cast aside, was slowly dissolving into the air, a vapor that clung to the earth beneath. He was walking away from the temple, but in a way, he was also walking toward something—toward a truth yet unknown, but painfully clear in its inevitability. His hands, no longer bound by beads or oaths, moved freely at his sides.

Eunchae walked beside him, her limp softening the steadiness of her steps. In the stillness, the faint, rhythmic sound of her breath seemed to fill the empty spaces between them, like a pulse in the quiet.

The region they entered felt...wrong. It wasn't just the ruin of the land; there was something else, something human. Villages they passed were thin, frail shadows of what they once were. The edges of buildings sagged, paint peeling, windows cracked. People walked with their heads down, faces gaunt, eyes glassy with something between resignation and hollow hope.

Sanwu looked at them, at the dark circles under their eyes, the hunger in their hands, and he couldn't help but remember what they'd once called him—The Unbound. The name was a weight, but here, it seemed to fall as light as dust.

There were signs of life everywhere—but they were ghosts of life, fragile and tired. The wind swept across barren fields where the land didn't seem to want to grow. In one of the villages, a woman sat outside her hut, muttering prayers under her breath, fingers tracing talismans made from a powdery substance that glimmered faintly in the sunlight. Shard-dust. War God fragments ground to a fine, deadly powder, worn like charms.

"They don't know," Eunchae murmured, noticing the talisman the woman wore. Her voice was quiet, almost as if she didn't want to disturb the stillness around them. "How dangerous it is."

Sanwu didn't answer, his gaze lingering on the woman's trembling hands, which held the tiny particles close to her chest. He had seen the remnants of the War God's essence before—he had touched it, felt its weight in his hands—but here, it was everywhere. A new kind of currency, traded and worn in ignorance.

The market—Crimson Market, they called it—was a sprawling, chaotic thing, as much a place of decay as it was of profit. It lay ahead, a distant smudge on the horizon. They had heard that it was a place where souls could be bought and sold, where the dead were traded like goods, where memories and curses were passed from hand to hand. The name fit—the market was as crimson as the blood spilled to create it.

When they arrived, they found themselves in a place that felt like it had never truly existed, an intersection between worlds. Stalls lined the road, stacked with remnants of the War God: pieces of his armor, cracked statues, chipped bones, tiny shards of pulsing energy that rippled like liquid beneath their surface. These were things that should never have been separated, fragments scattered like broken memories.

A voice called out to them as they passed.

"Fresh faces! Come, come!"

A man stood outside a stall, grinning wildly, his clothes mismatched and dirty. He was thin, but his eyes sparkled with a strange energy. He introduced himself as Halgun.

"Not here for the market, but there's always room for trade." His voice was oddly lyrical, like someone who spoke more in riddles than in reason. He glanced between Sanwu and Eunchae. "Protection for knowledge, yes? And knowledge, well, it's more valuable than silver these days."

Sanwu did not respond immediately. His eyes scanned the market, watching the way people moved, the way they looked at the wares. Each person seemed marked by what they carried or wore—fragments of the War God's brokenness sewn into their skin, tucked into their pockets. They wore power like armor.

"Ah," Halgun said, as though he had read Sanwu's thoughts. "You see it, don't you? The price of everything that's been shattered."

"Who would trade such things?" Sanwu finally asked, his voice flat.

Halgun's grin widened. "Ah, I knew you were sharp. You see it. They're not trading for profit, not really. Not all of them. Some trade to forget. Others to remember. And there are those, like me, who trade for...other things." He twirled a small vial of dust between his fingers, the powder shimmering in the light. "But protection's what you need, I suppose. These lands are no place for a monk—especially not one with such a past."

Sanwu did not flinch at the word, the reminder. His gaze stayed steady. "Protection from what?"

Halgun's eyes glittered with something ancient, something wild. "From the dangers of the outside world. You will soon understand."

The words felt like a strike to Sanwu's chest, but he remained silent.

The merchant's gaze flickered to Eunchae, his expression changing slightly—something quieter there, something knowing. "Crimson Market's where it all goes down. The black market for souls, memories, fragments of gods. You name it, it's there. But be warned. Not all the pieces want to be found. Some pieces will make you want to forget everything."

Halgun leaned in, speaking in a softer voice. "War God's pieces, especially. Some are still angry. Some are...sadder."

Sanwu looked at the ground, the dust beneath his feet now feeling like ash. It was a strange thing—he had touched the War God's fragments before. He had sealed them, tried to control them, but now he realized that all this—this market, this decay—was the result of his past mistakes. The weight of it all pressed down on him.

"Where can I find this place?" Eunchae asked, her voice quiet but firm.

Halgun glanced at her, then back at Sanwu. "You'd be wise to go there, monk. To understand the cost of what you've released. But beware. The Crimson Market is a place where names have power. And yours..." He paused, his lips curling upward. "Yours might cost you more than you realize."

Eunchae shivered, but Sanwu didn't respond. He had no name to give now—not really. He had left that behind. But even without it, the truth of what he had done, of what was happening, was already with him.

Halgun gave them a strange, cryptic smile. "I'll leave you to it. If you're set on traveling, I can offer you something to help you along. No charge—just knowledge for protection."

Sanwu didn't need anything else. Not from Halgun, not from anyone. He turned to Eunchae, who was already looking at the merchant curiously.

"Let's keep moving," he said quietly.

They continued onward, the weight of the market behind them, and the world ahead feeling more fractured with every step they took. A faint echo of bells seemed to follow them, not ringing, but whispering. A reminder of the things left behind, the things still waiting to be faced.

Eunchae's gaze caught on something as they passed through the market—something small, fleeting, a blur of motion between the tangled stalls. It was a child, no older than six or seven, clinging to the leg of an older man, his face pale, eyes unfocused, his skin marked by dark veins that snaked like cracks beneath the surface.

"Sanwu," Eunchae murmured, her voice tight, her hand grabbing at his sleeve.

He followed her gaze and saw the child, the figure barely standing on his own, held up by the rough hands of a man who seemed oblivious to the suffering. The child's breath was ragged, his eyes flickering in and out of consciousness. There was something wrong with him, something that looked unnatural, as if he were slowly unraveling. And around his neck—barely visible, but unmistakable—was a tiny shard of the War God's essence, wrapped in a crude leather cord. It glinted faintly in the light, a stark contrast to the pallor of the child's face.

Sanwu's heart clenched.

The father didn't seem to notice the child's suffering. He walked with a grim determination, muttering something to himself that Sanwu couldn't catch. The child's fingers tightened around his father's leg, but there was no strength left in his grip. His eyes were hollow, his mouth slightly open in a half-formed whimper.

The scene was brief—a moment, a flash—and then the child was swallowed by the crowd, the father's back turned, the whole world moving forward as if nothing was amiss.

Sanwu stood frozen, his pulse quickening, his breath shallow. The memory of that look—the child's vacant stare, the trembling fingers—clung to him like a weight, pressing on his chest. This was the price of the relic trade, he realized. This was what people did with the War God's fragments. They didn't use them for healing. They didn't use them for protection. They used them as tools, as commodities—pieces of a god shattered and scattered into the world for profit, for convenience, for whatever they thought they could gain.

He stood there, unable to move for a long moment, staring at the space where the child had been.

Eunchae stood beside him, her expression unreadable, but her eyes were heavy with something akin to pity, though it was laced with anger. "They don't know what they're doing," she said, her voice a low whisper, as though she were speaking to herself as much as to him.

Sanwu turned slowly, his eyes narrowing. The child's face, the flickering of life within him, haunted him. He had seen it before—he had seen it in the villagers back in the cursed town, in the lost souls wandering with their bodies marked by the War God's essence. But this was different. This was worse. This was exploitation. This was a world where the divine had become something to barter with, something to sell like any other commodity, and it was leaving the people it touched in ruin.

He felt a surge of heat rises in him—anger, frustration, something close to guilt. He had spent his whole life sealing spirits, binding them away, protecting people from forces they didn't understand. But what had that achieved? Was sealing really enough? Was it enough to lock away the fragments of a god, to bind them into silence, to let the world continue as it always had, as if nothing had changed?

The child's hollow eyes flashed before him again, and the guilt twisted into something deeper, something more urgent. The world didn't need more seals. The world needed healing. But how could it heal when the pieces of the War God were being used, misused, and consumed? How could it heal when people were suffering—not just from the curses they carried but from their ignorance, their desperate grasp at something they didn't understand?

Sanwu looked at the ground, breathing slowly, as if he could ground himself in the dirt beneath his feet. But there was no escaping the feeling that had been growing in him since he had left the temple—the feeling that the very thing he had been trying to do, the thing he had been trying to avoid, had already happened. The War God's essence was out in the world now. It had been released, and now it was being used in ways he hadn't imagined—ways that he didn't know how to stop.

It was as though the seals he had placed, the bindings he had once believed were the solution, had become a barrier, not just for the spirits, but for him. He had built walls around the pieces of the War God, walls that kept him from seeing the truth of what was happening in the world. He had thought that keeping the pieces locked away would protect people, but now he saw that it was only keeping them in the dark, keeping them trapped in a cycle of exploitation and pain.

"What happened to him?" Eunchae asked softly, her voice breaking through his thoughts.

Sanwu took a deep breath and finally turned to her, his gaze distant. "The child? His father bought a shard from the market. A 'protective' shard," he said, his voice hardening. "But there's nothing protective about it. It's poison. Spirit poison."

Eunchae's face twisted with disbelief and sorrow. "That's...that's not protection. That's... death."

Sanwu nodded, clenching his fists. He couldn't shake the image of the child's face from his mind. The image of what had been done to him. And yet the world would continue, would trade, would use, without understanding the consequences. He had been a part of it. He had been complicit in this cycle by sealing away the War God's fragments, hiding them from the world, thinking that was enough.

But it wasn't.

The weight of it pressed on him. The realization that everything he had done in the name of protection had only served to keep people from facing the true nature of what was happening. The relics, the shards, the remnants of the War God—they weren't just things to be sealed away. They were parts of a broken world. And they were being used, twisted, and abused, all while the world remained blind to their true power.

Sanwu's fingers flexed, the familiar pulse of his prayer beads tugging at him. It was so easy to fall back into that role—to take the bead in his hand, to close his eyes, and seal it all away again. But he couldn't. Not anymore.

"What should we do?" Eunchae's voice was soft, almost hesitant.

Sanwu took another deep breath, trying to steady the whirlwind in his chest. He didn't have an answer. Not yet. But he knew one thing now—sealing was not enough. It never had been.

"I don't know," he said quietly, his voice heavy with the weight of the truth that was beginning to settle inside him. "But we can't let it continue like this. We can't keep running from what's happening."

He turned and began walking, slowly, his steps firm but unsure. Eunchae followed, her eyes still heavy with the images of the child, of the market, of the world.