The stench reached them first.
Sejin stood at the bow of the ship, wind whipping his torn coat, and smelled it before he saw it—charred wood, rotting flesh, and something sweeter underneath. The smell of Uras. The smell of feeding.
Mira stood beside him, her Lux aura dimmed to a faint glow. Her face was stone.
"We're three hours early," she said. "The scouts were supposed to signal if anything changed."
"Something changed."
She didn't argue.
The village was called Haeju. Sejin had never heard of it. A fishing town, maybe two hundred people, too small to matter to the Lords, too poor to afford Vessel protection. The kind of place that existed on maps as a dot and in reality as a graveyard.
The ship docked at a broken pier. No one greeted them. No one ran. No one screamed.
Because no one was left alive.
---
Sejin stepped onto the wooden planks. His boots crunched on something that might have been bone. He didn't look down.
"Thirty-seven bodies," The Other said. "Maybe more. The Uras took the rest."
"Can you feel them?"
"Yes. They're gone. Moved east. Toward the mountains."
Mira signaled her crew. Six Vessels fanned out, weapons drawn, Source flickering. She turned to Sejin.
"Can you fight?"
"My arm is still useless."
"That's not what I asked."
Sejin looked at his left hand. The bandages were fresh—Mira's healer had replaced them that morning. Underneath, the black veins had spread to his shoulder.
"I can fight," he said. "But if I use too much Source, The Other wakes up."
"Then don't use too much."
She walked past him into the village.
Sejin followed.
---
The bodies were arranged in a circle.
Not scattered. Not piled. Arranged. Laid out in a spiral pattern, heads facing inward, hands folded across chests. Someone had taken the time to pose them. Someone had cared about the presentation.
Mira knelt beside the nearest corpse. A woman, maybe thirty, her throat torn open. But her hands were clean. Her clothes were straightened. Her hair had been combed.
"This isn't Uras work," Mira said.
Sejin looked at the spiral. Thirty-seven bodies, arranged with precision, radiating outward from a central point.
"Uras don't arrange bodies," he agreed. "They eat and move on."
"This was a message."
Sejin walked toward the center of the spiral. The bodies were fresher there—less decay, less scavenger damage. The innermost ring held children. Seven of them. The youngest looked three.
His hands began to shake.
"Don't," The Other said. "Don't feel this. It's what he wants."
"Who?"
"Kang. This is his signature. He did this. Not Uras. Him."
Sejin stopped at the center of the spiral.
A single body lay there, different from the others. A man, middle-aged, dressed in the grey robes of a Silvercrest scout. His eyes were open. His mouth was frozen in a scream. And carved into his chest, deep enough to reach bone, were four words:
TELL THE SHADOW BOY
I'M HOME.
---
Mira read the words over Sejin's shoulder. Her Lux aura flared—bright, violent, then immediately suppressed.
"He knows we're coming," she said. "He's been waiting."
"Obviously."
"Don't be clever. This changes things."
Sejin turned away from the body. His stomach was empty—he hadn't eaten since breakfast—but it still tried to rebel. He swallowed the bile and forced his voice steady.
"How does it change things?"
Mira walked to the edge of the spiral. Her crew had stopped searching. They were watching her, waiting for orders.
"Kang never leaves witnesses. Never leaves messages. He kills cleanly, efficiently, and disappears." She looked back at the carved chest. "This is theater. He wants us to know he's not afraid. He wants us to feel hunted before the hunt even begins."
"She's right," The Other said. "Kang is playing with you. Testing your reaction."
Sejin looked at the children's bodies. Their small hands. Their closed eyes. Someone had folded their arms across their chests like they were sleeping.
"What kind of man kills children?" he whispered.
"The kind who stopped seeing them as children. Kang sees only vessels. Empty containers waiting to be filled with Uras."
Sejin's left hand pulsed. The bandages tightened.
"Don't," The Other warned. "Don't give in to rage. That's what he wants. He wants you angry, sloppy, predictable."
Sejin closed his eyes. Took a breath. Opened them.
"I'm not angry," he said. "I'm something else."
"What?"
"I'm curious."
---
He walked past the spiral, past the bodies, past Mira's confused stare. He walked to the eastern edge of the village, where the dirt road led into the mountains. The ground was churned with footprints—hundreds of them, heading east. Uras footprints. And among them, one set that was different.
Human boots. Deliberate. Slow. Walking, not running.
Kang had walked through his own massacre. He had taken his time. He had enjoyed it.
Sejin knelt and touched the boot print. The mud was dry. Three days old, maybe four.
"He left after the message," Sejin said. "He's not waiting here."
Mira appeared beside him. "How do you know?"
"Because he wants us to chase him. He wants us deeper into his territory. Away from the sea. Away from reinforcements."
"That's exactly what he wants."
"Then let's give it to him."
Mira stared at him. Her cold blue eyes searched his face—for madness, for reckoning, for something.
"You're not afraid of him."
"I'm afraid of everything," Sejin said. "That's not the same as running."
---
They buried the bodies.
Not all of them—there were too many, and the ground was hard, and the sun was setting. But they buried the children. Sejin dug the graves himself, one-handed, his left arm hanging useless, his right arm blistered by the shovel.
Mira offered to help. He refused.
"Why?" The Other asked as Sejin lowered the third child into the earth. "They're dead. They don't care if they're buried."
"Because I'm not doing it for them."
"Then who?"
Sejin piled dirt over the small body. His voice was quiet, almost inaudible.
"I'm doing it for me. So I don't forget what Kang is."
"You think you could forget?"
"I think it's easy to turn enemies into monsters. Dehumanize them. Make them symbols instead of people." Sejin patted down the grave. "Kang isn't a monster. He's a man who chose to do this. That's worse. Because it means anyone could become him. Even me."
The Other was silent.
Then, softly:
"You are nothing like him."
"You don't know that."
"I know you. Better than anyone. You've had every reason to become cruel. Every reason to hate. Every reason to burn the world and salt the ashes." The Other's voice was strange—not mocking, not amused. Almost gentle. "And instead, you're burying children you never met. With one arm. In the dark."
Sejin stood. His back screamed. His shoulder wept blood. His left hand pulsed with black light.
"So?"
"So you're nothing like him. And you never will be."
---
Night fell.
The Silvercrest crew set up camp on the outskirts of the village—watch fires, patrol rotations, a perimeter of Lux Source to deter Uras. Mira gave Sejin a tent. He didn't use it.
He sat on a rock at the edge of the light, staring east toward the mountains. The path Kang had taken. The path Sejin would follow.
"You should sleep," The Other said.
"I'm not tired."
"You're always tired. You just refuse to admit it."
Sejin pulled his knees to his chest. The gesture made him look younger. Smaller. More like the seven-year-old who had watched his mother turn to dust.
"Do you think Kang is right?" he asked.
"About what?"
"About the Ura King. About reaching the Abyssal Expanse. About becoming something more than human."
The Other was quiet for a long moment.
"I think Kang is wrong about everything. But I also think he's closer to the truth than anyone else."
Sejin looked at his left hand. The bandages glowed faintly purple.
"Will you help me kill him?"
"I will help you survive. Killing him is your choice."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer I have."
Sejin closed his eyes. The wind carried the smell of ash and the distant howl of Uras.
He didn't sleep.
But he didn't move either.
---
Mira found him there at dawn.
She didn't say anything. She didn't ask if he was okay. She simply handed him a piece of bread, a canteen of water, and a knife.
"The path east leads to a mountain pass," she said. "Kang's fortress is on the other side. Three days' march."
"How many Uras between here and there?"
"Hundreds. Maybe thousands. He's been breeding them for years."
Sejin took the bread. Bit into it. Chewed.
"How many Vessels do you have?"
"Twelve, including me. Thirteen if you count yourself."
"Thirteen against thousands?"
Mira's expression didn't change. "We're not supposed to win. We're supposed to survive long enough for you to reach Kang."
Sejin swallowed. The bread tasted like ash.
"And if I can't control The Other when I get there?"
Mira looked at him. Her cold blue eyes held something that might have been respect.
"Then we all die. And Kang becomes a god."
She walked back toward the camp.
Sejin sat on the rock, watching the sun rise over the mountains, feeling the weight of thirteen lives on his shoulders.
"No pressure," The Other said.
Sejin laughed. It was a broken sound, hollow and sharp.
"No pressure at all."