The silence inside the damp catacombs was heavy
broken only by the ragged, empty gasps of three kids who had just watched their world end.
Beixin was gone.
Truly gone this time.
The loyal guard sat slumped against the wall, his dead face frozen in that infuriating, triumphant smile.
Before Rika could even open her mouth to speak, Hanjun moved.
His movements weren't frantic or panicked; they were terrifyingly deliberate.
He walked over to Beixin's cooling body, his big gray eyes wide and entirely vacant.
Without a word, he knelt in the pooling blood, reached down, and pulled her into a tight,
crushing embrace. His face remained completely expressionless, resting against her shoulder.
"You always hugged me,"
Hanjun said, his voice a flat, hollow monotone that echoed chillingly against the stone.
"You said I was cold and needed warmth. But I never got to hug you back. You are very cold now, Beixin.so why, I'm hugging you now, why are you not getting warm,why did I get warm when you hugged me but now when I do it, it's not working "
Jayhon sat in the far corner, his knees pulled tightly to his chest.
He didn't cry.
He didn't scream.
The sheer, brutal trauma of seeing Beixin pierced through the chest had completely broken something inside him.
He was entirely silent, staring blankly ahead, a hollow shell of a boy.
Rika, clutching her burned shoulder, watched Hanjun hug the corpse with a mixture of pity and growing unease.
"Get away from her,"
she rasped, her voice trembling with pain and frustration. "We have to move. The King's men will—"
"We need to take her shoes,"
Hanjun interrupted flatly, releasing the body and standing up.
He looked down at his own dirty, oversized boots.
"I don't want to leave her like that, I'll at least take her shoes and wear them to never forget her.
It is a waste to leave them for the rats."
Rika blinked, momentarily derailed into sheer bewilderment. Is this guy serious? He was just hugging her like a grieving brother, and now he's talking about shoe logistics? She gritted her teeth.
"You... you're a freak. Let's go."
Rika led the two boys deeper into the forgotten subterranean aqueducts beneath Morvane.
eventually slipping through a concealed iron grate into an abandoned, overgrown bathhouse hidden beneath a ruined estate. Warm, mineral-rich water still naturally pooled into a large stone basin, steam rising to coat the crumbling pillars.
"Strip,"
Rika commanded bluntly, dropping her scorched light armor to the stone floor.
"We are covered in sewage, blood, and ash. If we walk into the lower districts looking like this, we're dead."
Jayhon didn't move.
He simply slid down against a stone pillar, staring blankly at the water, completely catatonal.
Hanjun, completely unfazed by Rika's presence, shed his dirty garments.
His ribs were visible from years of starvation, and his skin was caked in grime and dried guard blood.
He walked into the water like a machine being placed in a refueling station.
Rika watched him from across the pool.
Her initial impression of him in the throne room—when he casually murdered a royal guard by "tripping"—had deeply unnerved her.
She thought he was a cold-blooded, genius assassin acting dumb to lower his enemy's guard.
Hoping to crack his icy exterior, Rika grabbed a rough cloth, stepped closer to him through the steam, and reached out.
"Turn around. Let me wash your back. The blood is drying into your—"
Before her hand could even graze his shoulder, Hanjun pivoted with alarming speed, slapping her hand away with a dull smack.
His gray eyes locked onto hers, completely deadpan.
"Do not touch my dorsal region,"
Hanjun said flatly.
"I am perfectly capable of scraping off the biological residue myself using the friction of the stone wall. Interpersonal touching without a formal contract makes me uncomfortable."
Rika stumbled back a step, her hand stinging.
He deflected my approach without even looking, she thought, her heart hammering. He's keeping his guard up.
He doesn't trust me at all.
As the steam cleared slightly, Hanjun's vacant eyes drifted to the intricate, glowing green marks etched permanently into her skin,
tracing down her spine and curving elegantly between her chest.
"Your tattoos are glowing,"
Hanjun observed, pointing a blunt finger toward her chest.
"Is that a structural defect, or did you eat a glowing mushroom?"
Rika instantly threw her hand over her chest, her emerald eyes flashing with dangerous, royal authority.
"They aren't tattoos, you ignorant peasant. They are Royal Crest Marks. They regulate the flow of high-tier Wood-Zheki."
She narrowed her eyes, leaning in close, trying to intimidate him.
"And if you tell anyone you saw them, I will personally ensure your tongue is rooted to the roof of your mouth."
"Understood," Hanjun said, not breaking eye contact or flinching. "I will categorize them as 'highly classified glowing skin defects' in my mind."
He's mocking me, Rika thought, a shiver running down her spine. He knows exactly who I am, and he isn't even remotely intimidated by a high elf.
Once they were clean and dressed in discarded linens found in the bathhouse lockers, Rika sat on the edge of the stone basin, binding her burned shoulder with clean cloth. Jayhon still hadn't uttered a single sound, staring mutely at a crack in the floorboards.
"Alright,"
Hanjun said, trying to figure out how to fold a square towel into a perfect triangle.
"Why did you drop through the ceiling? Saving three starving thieves from a tyrannical king carries a zero-percent return on investment. Why are you helping us?"
Rika let out a long, bitter sigh.
"I wasn't trying to save you," Rika said coldly. "I've been tracking King Morvane's treasury movements for months.
I was trying to infiltrate the palace vaults to steal back a stolen artifact belonging to my people.
You idiots just happened to trigger the alarm and get dragged into the throne room, completely throwing off my timing.
I only intervened because the chaos gave me a window to escape."
"Ah," Hanjun said, abandoning the towel. "So we were accidental shields. That makes more sense."
"But," Rika continued, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Hanjun. "I am curious about one thing. In the throne room, you summoned a green light. Everyone thought it was a pathetic attempt at Wood-Zheki.
But when you plunged your hand into that guard, I felt the air grow incredibly cold for a split second before the wood erupted."
She leaned forward.
"Green light isn't always wood, Hanjun. There is a rare, hyper-compressed form of Fire-Zheki—so chemically dense and starved of oxygen that it burns green.
Your Zheki isn't weak.
It's just so fundamentally broken, unrefined, and starved that it manifested as a solid spike instead of a flame. You literally don't even know how to light your own spark."
Hanjun stared at his palm.
"So I am not a tree. I am a broken stove. Good to know."
Rika stood up, turning her back to them.
"Either way, I have a contact in the lower slums, but I travel alone. I'm leaving by morning. You can come with me if you want to survive, Hanjun. But the crybaby stays behind. He's a liability. His water-Zheki is diluted, and he's entirely broken. Leave him here."
THUD.
A sudden, blurring fist connected violently with Rika's cheek, sending her stumbling backward into the stone basin. She gasped, clutching her face, looking up in absolute shock.
Hanjun stood there, his arm still extended, his face completely blank and his voice entirely devoid of emotion.
"Do not speak of leaving Jayhon,"
Hanjun said coldly.
"He is currently the only person who knows how to properly untie the knots on my boots. Furthermore, if I leave him, he will die, which means my investment in our friendship over the past three months will net a total loss. I do not like bad trades.
If you suggest abandoning him again, I will be forced to recalculate your structural durability."
Rika stared at him, her jaw dropping, the iron taste of blood in her mouth. He... he just blitzed me, she thought, her mind racing in absolute terror. He didn't even hesitate to strike a female elf.
He's keeping the weakling around as a psychological anchor or a decoy, and he's analyzing everything through pure tactical profit. This boy is a monster.
"Fine,"
Rika growled, wiping her lip and turning away, genuinely afraid of what he would do next.
"We leave together at dawn. But if he slows us down, it's on your head."
"That is acceptable," Hanjun noted. "My head is structurally sound."
As the night grew deeper, the three children lay on the cold stone floor. Jayhon eventually drifted into a silent, haunting sleep, while Rika kept her eyes glued to the ceiling, utterly convinced she was traveling with a terrifying, blank-faced tactical mastermind.
And Hanjun?
Hanjun just stared at his palm, trying to figure out how to make the green stove-light appear again, completely unaware that his sheer, literal-minded stupidity had just terrified the female elf.