The rain drumming against the tiled roof of the Shangjing palace was drowned out by the sudden, violent rupture of the hallway’s silence.

"Stab him!" the Captain roared, his voice cracking with a fear he tried to bury under the weight of his command. "Kill the ghost! Send him back to the hell he crawled from!"

The Royal Guards lunged. Their spears were long, tipped with cold Jin steel, designed to pierce the thickest of nomadic furs and iron plates. But Jang Saheon did not move like a man. He moved like a tear in the fabric of reality. Before the first spearhead could even graze his silk tunic, Saheon was inside the guard's reach. His hand, as fast as a striking viper, caught the shaft of the spear. With a sickening crack, he snapped the seasoned wood. He didn't drop the jagged remains; he drove the splintered point directly into the guard’s throat.

The fountain of dark red was still in the air when Saheon’s boot connected with the chest of a second soldier. The man didn't just fall; he was launched, his body a projectile that flew five meters back, smashing into a decorative lacquer screen and splintering it into a thousand pieces.

A third guard, a veteran of the tribal wars, managed to find a gap. He swung his heavy dao, the blade biting deep into Saheon’s left forearm.

Saheon didn't flinch. He didn't even grunt. He reached out with his right hand, wrenched the spear out of the throat of the dead man he had just killed, and in one fluid, rhythmic motion, he pinned the swordsman to the wall. The iron tip punched through the soldier's heart and anchored him to the timber.

The Captain’s eyes widened to the size of coins. "What are you waiting for? More of you! All at once!"

Saheon was a blur of mechanical efficiency. He caught the next spear by the shaft, circling around the strike like water around a stone. With a twist of his torso, he beheaded the owner with the man’s own side-blade. As the headless corpse began its slow descent, Saheon caught the falling spear and hurled it with the force of a ballista. It streaked through the air, burying itself into the chest of a guard standing inches from the Captain, the impact pinning the man’s lungs to the masonry behind him.

In the span of five heartbeats, the hallway had become a slaughterhouse. Saheon now held two blood-slicked Jin swords, their steel flickering in the candlelight.

"You should be grateful," Saheon said, his voice a low, vibrating rasp that carried over the gurgling of the dying. "Be happy it is not my own iron I hold right now. These are mere toys. Tell me where my blades are, and I will let you keep your lives. I will let you walk out of this tomb."

The guards faltered, their hands trembling on their weapons. They looked at the Captain, their eyes begging for a retreat.

"Do not listen to his twisted words!" the Captain shrieked, backing away toward the shadows. "He is a Goryeo demon! He has no honor! Kill him! Kill him now or I will have your families flayed!"

The threat of the Emperor’s wrath was greater than the fear of the man. The remaining guards let out a desperate, collective cry and charged from all sides. It was a forest of iron. Eight spears converged on a single point. They struck home.

The tips punched through Saheon’s chest, his stomach, and his thighs. The force was so immense it lifted his lean frame off the ground. He was suspended in the air, a macabre puppet held aloft by eight wooden poles. Thick, black blood—blood that looked like concentrated ink—began to drip down the shafts, pooling on the floor in a dark, viscous puddle.

The Captain let out a long, shaky breath. He began to laugh, a high-pitched, hysterical sound. "You see? Even a god bleeds! You see, men? You have done it! You have slain the menace that Goryeo was too weak to finish. The mighty Jin Empire shall be celebrated! The Emperor will reward us all!"

He stepped forward, puffing out his chest, looking at the "corpse" hanging in the air. "Goryeo should thank us. We have ended the Immortal Jang once and for—"

A sound cut through the Captain's triumph.

It was a laugh. Low, dry, and terrifyingly rhythmic.

The "corpse" tilted its head. Saheon’s eyes snapped open, and they were no longer brown; they were pits of absolute, swirling void. The black blood on the spears didn't just drip; it began to hum.

"Is that all?" Saheon asked, his voice echoing from within his own chest.

In a display of raw, physical impossibility, Saheon reached out and grabbed the spearheads protruding from his torso. With a violent jerk, he snapped the iron tips off with his bare hands. He slid himself down the shafts, the wooden poles grating against his ribs as he forced his feet back onto the floor.

The guards stumbled back, their faces turning the color of ash. They dropped their broken weapons, staring in primal horror as the holes in Saheon’s tunic began to close—not with flesh, but with a weaving of dark smoke.

Saheon smiled, wiping a smear of black ichor from his cheek. "I will give you another chance at life," he said. "A life you were so eager to remove from my belonging. Tell me where the Void has been taken."

The men fell to their knees, their spirits broken. The Captain collapsed onto his backside, scrambling away like a crab. "How... how are you still standing?" he stammered. "I saw the iron pass through your heart! No man... no man survives that!"

"For you, it is impossible," Saheon replied, stepping over the piles of the dead. "For me... it is just a scratch. A momentary discrepancy in the Ledger."

The Captain, driven by a final, suicidal impulse, ordered the men to attack again, but they wouldn't move. Saheon didn't wait for them to decide. He moved through them like a reaper through wheat. It wasn't a fight; it was a systematic erasure. He used the broken spear-tips, the discarded swords, and his own bare hands to tear through the room until only the Captain remained.

The Captain was crawling, his boots slipping in the black blood of his subordinates. Saheon reached down, his fingers locking into the man’s collar like iron talons. He hoisted the Captain up and slammed him into a stone pillar, holding his entire weight off the ground by the neck.

"The location," Saheon whispered. "The twin blades. Where are they?"

The Captain spat a mouthful of blood into Saheon’s face. "Go to Hell, ghost!"

Saheon’s expression didn't change. "I will meet you there," he said, "once my job ends here on Earth."

Snap.

The sound of the neck breaking was like a dry branch snapping in a winter forest. Saheon dropped the body and turned his gaze toward the end of the hall. He saw a flicker of movement—a thin, bird-like silhouette darting around a corner.

The Eunuch.

Saheon moved with the speed of a shadow casting itself. He caught the old man at the end of the gallery, tackling him to the floor. The Eunuch was a creature of scrolls and secrets, his body brittle and weak. After seeing the carnage in the hallway, his resolve evaporated like mist in the sun.

"Please!" the Eunuch shrieked, his spindly hands clawing at the floorboards. "I was only following orders! The Emperor... he commanded it!"

Saheon knelt on the old man’s chest, his weight making the Eunuch’s ribs groan. "The blades. Now."

"The Emperor... he knew you were coming," the Eunuch wheezed, his eyes bulging. "He used the Captain to lure you into the audience. He had a box crafted... in the south of the kingdom. A box of lead and ancient heartwood, treated with the oil of the Great Grave. It was made specifically to store artifacts of the Gods... things that vibrate with the power of the Void."

The Eunuch coughed, blood flecking his pale lips. "The box... it masks the 'friction' of the metal. He knew you wouldn't be able to sense them once they were sealed inside. He wants the power for himself, Commander! He wants to be more than a man!"

Saheon tilted his head, a look of mock-admiration crossing his face. "An elaborate plan. Truly. You give excellent advice, old man."

The Eunuch felt a flicker of hope. "Then... you will spare me?"

"You should have used that brain for advancing the Empire," Saheon said, his voice dropping to a deathly chill. "Instead, you decided to spill it all over the floor of the palace."

The Eunuch’s eyes widened as the realization of his fate hit him. He tried to scream, but Saheon’s hand moved. He didn't use a weapon. He simply drove the Eunuch’s head into the dais with a singular, downward thrust. The sound was wet and final. Brain matter and bone fragments sprayed across the red lacquer of the floor, a messy end to a man of clean secrets.

Saheon stood up, his youthful face splattered with red and black. He didn't bother to wipe it away. He looked toward the heavy, gold-leafed doors that led to the Emperor’s inner sanctum—the hive where the rot had started.

He felt a faint, distant hum. Now that the Eunuch was dead and the "friction" of the palace was stained with fresh blood, the mask of the box was beginning to fail. The Black Blade was screaming for its master.

Saheon took a step toward the doors. With every stride, the "ink" in his veins pulsed with renewed vigor. He wasn't just a man seeking his property; he was the Void reclaiming its center.

The Emperor of Jin had stolen the night, but he had forgotten one simple truth: you cannot hide the darkness from the shadow.