The high peaks of the Changbai Mountains were not meant for the living, and for the first time in two centuries, Jang Saheon felt the mountain fighting back.

He opened his eyes to a world of jagged grey stone and rhythmic, scraping friction. He was being dragged. His heels furrowed through the thin layer of permafrost and shale, the sound echoing hollowly against damp, cavernous walls. His vision was a blur of torchlight and shadow, but his mind—sharpened by two hundred years of mechanical discipline—snapped into focus instantly.

He didn't move. He didn't breathe. He simply assessed.

Two men in tattered, soot-stained furs were dragging him by his shoulders. A third man walked ahead, his gait lopsided and jerky, like a puppet with tangled strings. In his arms, he clutched the two black scabbards.

Relief, cold and sharp, washed through Saheon. He knew where the iron was. But the relief was shadowed by a profound, gnawing confusion. How? He had never blacked out. His body was a vessel of the Void, an immortal engine that did not tire, did not sleep, and certainly did not succumb to the altitude or the cold. These men—these pathetic, smelling cultists—didn't possess the power to touch him, let alone subdue him.

The cause was external. It was a puncture in the Ledger, a resonance he had felt from the south that had momentarily severed his connection to the world.

Let them play, he thought, closing his eyes to a slit. Let them show me the depth of their delusion.

They dragged him deep into the mountain, a hollowed-out cathedral of rock that stretched at least a hundred meters into the black heart of the peak. The air here was stagnant, smelling of old blood, ozone, and the sour scent of unwashed bodies. Dark drapes of heavy, moth-eaten silk hung from the ceiling like bat wings. The floor was littered with ornaments of bone, stacks of forbidden scrolls, and rusted weapons.

In the center of the cavern, a group of "Hollowed" ghouls—men whose skin had turned the color of ash—were hunched over anvils. They were hammering at shards of dark iron, trying to forge a replica of the Shadow Blade. They were trying to manufacture the divine, unaware that the Void cannot be mimicked by the hammers of men.

The man carrying the blades approached a stone dais where a tall, gaunt figure knelt within a circle of violet chalk.

"High Priest," the man rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves. "We found the ghost collapsed in the pass. He carried the twin. The cycle is complete."

The Priest rose, his eyes glazed with the same oily black tar Saheon had seen in Jin. He took the scabbards with trembling hands, his face contorting into a mask of religious ecstasy. "Finally," he whispered, the sound echoing through the cavern. "The Shadow Blade. With this, we shall summon the Void itself. We shall mend the rift that the Light created."

The Priest drew the muzzled Second Blade. He ignored the Black Blade, dropping it onto the stone like common scrap, and raised the Shadow Blade high into the air. He let out a guttural chant, his body shaking with the effort of holding a weapon that despised him. He swung the blade back around, his muscles bulging, preparing to stab it into the center of the chalk circle to ignite the rite.

He never finished the strike.

The Shadow Blade began to vibrate with a violent, screeching intensity. It didn't pierce the ground; it tore itself from the Priest’s grip. Simultaneously, the Black Blade on the floor erupted into motion.

Saheon was on his feet before the cultists could blink. His hands snapped out, the hilts of the twin blades finding his palms with a magnetic, bone-jarring precision. He spun in a low, sweeping arc, the air whistling as he regained his center.

"It feels good to be whole again," Saheon said. His voice was a low, terrifying rumble that seemed to vibrate the very stone of the cave.

The cultists recoiled, a collective hiss rising from the Hollowed ghouls. The High Priest scrambled back, his face twisted in a mixture of fury and fear.

"Give it back!" the Priest shrieked. "The sacred sword belongs to the faithful! You are a thief of the dark! You don't even know the power you hold! That blade is the key to the Netherrealm!"

Saheon let out a short, dry laugh. He took a step forward, the violet fire of the torches reflecting in his light-drinking eyes. "Nobody in this world, and certainly nobody in the realm of the dead, knows more about what these blades can do than I. You are playing with the ink of a Ledger you cannot read."

The Hollowed lunged as one—a tide of grey flesh and blackened claws.

Saheon didn't even use the edges of his blades at first. He moved with a brutal, rhythmic grace, using the pommels and the scabbards to shatter ribs and crush skulls. He was a whirlwind of mechanical violence, breaking the ghouls apart until the cave floor was littered with twitching, broken forms.

He stopped, his breath steady, looking at the cowering survivors. "Now," he whispered. "Let me show you the true meaning of the Black Blade."

He pointed the black iron at the remaining cultists. He didn't swing. He simply willed the "Friction" to cease.

The effect was instantaneous and horrific. The souls of the living cultists were ripped from their bodies in translucent, screaming ribbons of grey light, rushing headlong into the Black Blade like water down a drain. They were left as empty, withered husks of skin and bone. The Hollowed ghouls, those who had been held together by Yuji’s lingering magic, didn't even leave bodies; they simply collapsed into piles of fine, grey ash as the Void reclaimed its energy.

The High Priest fell to his knees, the only one left. He stared at the piles of ash that had been his congregation, his mind shattering.

Saheon walked up to him, the tip of the Black Blade hovering inches from the man's throat. "I have exercised the fallen," Saheon said. "But you are still breathing. You have knowledge of what my brother started here. Tell me everything he did, and I might let you keep your soul."

The Priest’s voice was a broken whimper. "He... he appeared in the steppes like a god of the winter. He gave us the Rite. He told us that the world was a mistake. We have camps... three more in these peaks, and two more in the southern valleys of Goryeo. He wanted the shadow to spread. He went to the Emperor... he gave him the Book of the Void. He told the Emperor it was the only way to bring the true Master into this world."

Saheon felt a sudden, violent pulse from the blades. His chest tightened, his breath shortening as a wave of nausea hit him. His heart, usually a silent stone, began to thud against his ribs with a frantic, uneven rhythm.

The Priest saw the momentary weakness. His eyes gleamed with a final, jagged spite. He reached into his robes, pulling a short, serrated knife and lunging for Saheon’s throat.

Saheon didn't even look. His blades moved in a blur.

In two clean, rhythmic strokes, the Priest’s hands were severed at the wrists. A third swipe took his head. The body slumped forward, the blood soaking into the violet chalk.

Saheon stood in the silence of the cave, his hands trembling. Something was wrong. The "Friction" of the world was changing. The connection he had felt earlier—the rift in the south—was growing wider, pulling at the iron in his veins.

"The Emperor," Saheon whispered. "The Book."

He had to destroy it. He had to go back to Shangjing and erase every trace of the Shadow Rite. If the Book of the Void was capable of pulling the "Void" into this realm, it was a disaster that would drown the world in both dark ink and shadow itself.

Suddenly, the Black Blade spoke. Its voice wasn't a murmur this time; it was a resonant, metallic roar that echoed inside Saheon’s skull.

...The Void is here, Saheon...

"What?" Saheon gasped, clutching the hilt. "Does it want my blades? What does it want?"

...Do not worry, little ghost... the blade hissed, its vibration turning into a soothing, cold caress. You have been one with my iron for two hundred years. We have eaten the souls of kings and peasants together. We are of the same iron now. I have no interest in switching owners. But the Void has come to claim the world. The presence you felt... the one the Emperor summoned... he is the original ink.

Saheon’s face hardened. He sheathed the blades with a double clack that sounded like a coffin closing. The tremors in his hands ceased, replaced by a cold, singular focus.

"If the Void wants the world," Saheon said, looking toward the mouth of the cave, "it will have to go through me. I am the Law of this land, and I do not permit unauthorized entries."

He turned and sprinted out of the cave, his boots barely touching the stone. He descended the Changbai Mountains not as a hunter, but as a storm. He found his horse at the base of the ridge and set his course back toward Shangjing.

The sky over the North was turning a bruised, unnatural purple. The wind carried the scent of wet silk and ancient temples. Jang Saheon rode with the thoughts of a man who realized that his two hundred years of solitude might have been coming to an end, and he was not ready to accept such a possibility. 

The Immortal was about to find out what made him immortal in the first place, and he wasn’t sure how the story would unfold.