Days Passed.
Nothing changed in the cell—the walls still confined him, and silence still breathed over his skin. But Jang Hun was no longer the same.
His movements had grown quieter, his eyes sharper. He observed... memorized... counted the steps, the keys, the number of times the guard opened the door to toss in food. Nothing escaped his memory now.
On the fifth night, when one of the guards came closer than usual, and turned his head for a second toward a distant scream... Jang Hun reached through the slot in the door, drew a thin string he had made from torn cloth, looped it deftly, and pulled the ring of keys without a sound.
The guard heard nothing.
Jang Hun returned to his corner, sat for a long time, the keys in his hand like a beating heart. Then, with tense calm, he tried one key on the metal shackle around his wrist. The joint was rusted, but it opened with effort after two tries. He did the same with the other chain, and it finally slid off his cracked skin.
At last… his hands were free.
At first, he decided to escape alone. There was no room for burdens on a path with no known end.
But the next day, when he neared the iron bars, he saw the two children sitting on the cold floor, their bodies thin, their eyes vacant, staring at nothing. He remembered himself when it all began… when everything was taken from him.
That night, he made his decision.
When darkness fell and the guards' footsteps above the cells grew distant, he turned the key in the door's lock slowly. He heard a soft click, like the sigh of an old wall.
The door opened. No creak. Just heavy silence.
He moved like a shadow, slipped into the opposite cell, inserted the key and turned the lock. The door opened slowly.
The children were awake, staring at him with a mix of fear and wonder.
He knelt, reached out, and undid the shackles from each of their wrists, then whispered:
"If you want to survive… follow me."
The older child hesitated, looked at his brother, then back at Jang Hun, as if every choice was worse than death. But at last… he nodded.
The three moved like ghosts through the stone corridors. Jang Hun no longer moved like he once had. His feet knew the ground, and his eyes mapped the shadows.
They passed near the armory. He paused, stared at the door, but recognized the truth:
Swords are useless… if you don't know how to wield them.
They continued on.
At one turn, they heard a guard approaching, speaking to another.
They froze.
Jang Hun's heartbeat surged. But inside him… something awakened.
It wasn't the pulse of the Void Core—it rippled. A strange sensation spread in his chest, as if he were pulling the sounds toward himself… and then denying them.
Silence.
The footsteps vanished—or seemed to drift away on their own.
He looked at the children and nodded. They moved again.
They reached a decaying back gate. He pulled out the right key, turned it, and the creak of the door nearly shattered the silence—but a sudden gust of wind masked the sound, as if nature itself stood with him.
They stepped out.
The outside air struck their faces like a slap. Cold, damp… alive.
They walked through tall grass, past silent trees, then over rocks that separated the prison from the sect's borders.
In front of them… a wall.
Tall, rough, built as if it were meant to keep even dreams from escaping.
Jang Hun took a deep breath, planted his feet into a crack in the stone, lifted the first child slowly, then the second. Each step tore at his palms. The jagged edges scraped his fingers. His knee slipped once, but he held on—by his teeth if he had to.
He reached the top.
He stood there, panting, and looked to the horizon… then he saw it.
The first threads of light slipping past the mountains, faint… as if uncertain of birthing a new day.
But they were there.
They lit his face.
His face—pale, sunken eyes, skin darkened by shadow—but he was standing.
And in his eyes… a fire without sound.
He breathed slowly.
"The air… it's different."
He climbed down the wall, helped the children, then turned to face the sect behind him—the one that tore everything from him.
He muttered in a hoarse voice:
"I'll come back… and make them wish I had died in that cell."
Then they ran.