THE EUNUCH'S GHOST

The palace at dawn was quieter than any grave.

Mist clung to the tiled roofs, sliding down the eaves like pale fingers. Drums had beaten the morning call, but the courtyards were not yet alive with chatter. Eunuchs shuffled in pairs, heads bowed, carrying basins of water. Court ladies swept the paths with long-handled brooms. Their whispers were muted, nervous, as though the walls themselves had learned to listen.

Kim Jae-hwan drifted between them unseen. His body cast no shadow, his feet left no mark on stone. The mist welcomed him as kin, curling around his form before dissolving through him.

It was the same palace he had known in life: the lacquered doors painted with dragons, the lotus ponds rippling faintly in the breeze, the endless hierarchy of halls where even silence had rank. Yet it was not the same. His memories clashed with what he saw—the prince he had once served was now king, the women in the empress’s court bore unfamiliar faces, and whispers of a faction called the Quiet Lotus lingered like perfume in the air.

Jae-hwan passed a column carved with clouds. His fingers brushed it, but the sensation was wrong. The grain did not push back. It was like touching memory, the echo of wood rather than the wood itself. He withdrew his hand.

Voices drifted from the veranda of the main audience hall.

Lady Seo stood there, lantern dimmed but still glowing faintly with its talisman-thread. Beside her, the Empress Min-kyung leaned against a painted pillar, her veil lifted to sip a cup of morning tea. A court lady hovered nearby, ready to fetch whatever she needed.

Jae-hwan paused. The young woman’s posture was composed, but her eyes betrayed fatigue. Purple shadows clung beneath them. She had not slept after the attack.

Lady Seo’s voice was a low murmur. “The assassin chose poison rather than interrogation. The Quiet Lotus leaves no witnesses. Whoever directs them knows the court’s secrets well. Too well.”

Min-kyung lowered her cup, fingers tightening. “Do you suspect a minister?”

“Which one do I not suspect?” Lady Seo sighed, then gestured faintly to the palace grounds. “The Lotus has roots here. Its tendrils are in your walls, your staff, perhaps even your own court ladies. Trust is a luxury, Your Majesty.”

The empress’s gaze turned to the mist curling across the courtyard. Her voice was steady. “Then let us turn suspicion into strategy.”

Jae-hwan felt a flicker of something deep in his chest. Respect. Fear. She was young—no more than twenty—but her eyes did not waver.

He moved closer, standing just beyond the lantern’s glow. He traced words into the condensation that clung to the railing:

SILENCE HIDES ENEMIES.

Lady Seo noticed first. Her eyes narrowed. “The ghost speaks.”

The empress leaned forward, reading the faint strokes. She inhaled sharply, then nodded. “Yes. Silence is the enemy’s ally. The Lotus thrives in shadow.”

She set down her cup, the porcelain clicking faintly. “Lady Seo. Summon the record keepers. Every eunuch and court lady who served during the former crown prince’s household—I want their names reviewed. Start with those who disappeared the year Kim Jae-hwan was executed.”

The sound of his name on her lips struck him like a bell. He bowed deeply, though she could not see it.

As the morning grew brighter, the palace stirred.

Officials arrived for the king’s audience, their robes brushing the stone like waves of ink. Servants bustled with trays of rice and soup, though their chatter was strained. Rumors spread fast in places where walls had ears. Already, whispers of “an intruder” and “a death in the night” coiled like smoke through the courtyards.

Jae-hwan drifted among them. The whispers cut into him like blades:

“They say the empress was targeted.”

“By who?”

“A servant swallowed poison before she could speak.”

“Strange smells last night… like plum blossom.”

“Plum? Then it must be—”

The voices always dropped into silence before naming names.

He moved toward the outer gate, curious to see how far the rumors had traveled. Soldiers stood stiff at their posts, spears gleaming. Beyond them, the city’s morning noise carried faintly: merchants calling, wheels clattering on cobbles, dogs barking. Normal life, blind to the storm brewing inside the palace walls.

Jae-hwan could not pass beyond the gates. The tether of Lady Seo’s lantern pulled him back, gentle but firm. He was bound to palace grounds, and to those who bore the lantern’s light. He turned back reluctantly, drifting through the gate as if through water.

Near the kitchens, he heard laughter.

It was a jarring sound in the tense palace. Two young eunuchs huddled together behind a wall, passing a clay cup of rice wine. Their robes were stained with soot, their hands raw from scrubbing pots.

“You’re bold,” one whispered, laughing nervously. “If the overseer catches us—”

“He won’t. He’s too busy bowing to ministers. Besides, haven’t you heard? The palace is haunted now. Everyone’s talking of a eunuch’s ghost.” The boy grinned, though his eyes flicked nervously at the shadows.

Jae-hwan froze. His death had not been forgotten after all. Not completely.

“What do they say?” the other asked.

“That the ghost roams the halls, looking for the ones who framed him. Some say he whispers to the empress now. Others say he drags traitors into the well.”

The boys laughed, but the sound was brittle.

Jae-hwan’s hands curled. He wanted to step forward, to demand the truth, to ask if they remembered him. But when he moved, the lantern’s tether tugged, reminding him of his oath: no touch without consent, no crossing lines.

He withdrew, leaving only a chill in the air. The boys shivered, glancing around before fleeing back to the kitchen.

By late afternoon, Jae-hwan drifted back toward the inner court. The empress had summoned a small council: Lady Seo, two record keepers, and the head of palace guards. Scrolls lay spread across a low table, names inked in neat columns.

Min-kyung sat with perfect posture, veil lowered again. “Begin with the eunuchs who served my husband when he was crown prince.”

The record keeper bowed low. “Yes, Your Majesty. Of the twenty-two eunuchs assigned during that year, nine have since died, six remain in service, and seven… vanished without notice.”

“Vanished?” Lady Seo’s eyes narrowed.

The man’s voice trembled. “They were reported as dismissed. No records of transfer exist.”

The empress’s hand tightened on her lap. “And of the vanished?”

The keeper unrolled another scroll. “Three were last seen near the kitchens. Two in the library. One was assigned to the prince’s chambers… and one, Kim Jae-hwan, executed for treason.”

The air chilled. Jae-hwan stood over the scroll, staring at the neat strokes of his name. The ink was faded, but the accusation had not dimmed.

He traced a word in the condensation on the floor:

FALSE.

The empress’s gaze flicked to the letters. Her voice was firm. “Yes. False. His name remains on record, but his guilt was never proven. That must be noted.”

The record keeper gaped, scandalized, but scribbled quickly. Lady Seo smirked faintly at his discomfort.

Min-kyung’s voice dropped, soft but sharp. “The truth will return, just as the dead do.”

That evening, Jae-hwan drifted through the moonlit courtyards. Lanterns glowed faintly along the corridors, their light trembling against the mist. He paused by the lotus pond, staring at his reflection—or the lack of it. The water rippled, showing only reeds and moonlight.

Behind him, footsteps. Lady Seo emerged from the shadows, lantern swinging faintly.

“You’re restless,” she said.

He turned toward her, silent.

She studied him with sharp eyes. “You were executed unjustly. That much is clear. But ghosts do not wake for injustice alone. What binds you here?”

He raised his hand, tracing letters in the air. LOYALTY. DUTY.

“Duty to whom?” she pressed. “The king who let you die? Or the empress you barely know?”

He hesitated. His form wavered faintly in the lantern’s glow. Finally, he traced: TRUTH.

Lady Seo nodded slowly. “Good. Because truth is the most dangerous duty of all.”

The night deepened. Somewhere in the palace, drums beat twice. The guards changed shift.

And in the silence that followed, Jae-hwan heard it—faint footsteps in the library wing. Too careful. Too slow.

He drifted swiftly through the halls, passing under carved beams and across courtyards until he reached the library. The doors were slightly ajar. Inside, a lantern burned low.

A figure moved between shelves—hooded, robes dark. In his hand, a small sachet embroidered with plum blossoms.

Jae-hwan froze.

The scent hit him like a blade. Plum blossom. The same as the night of his execution. The same as the assassin’s last breath.

The figure slipped a scroll from the shelf, tucking it into his sleeve. Then he turned, and for a heartbeat the lantern’s glow caught his face.

Jae-hwan’s chest roared with recognition.

It was a man he had seen years ago, standing behind the crown prince during his trial. A tutor’s robes. A quiet smile. A man whose voice had murmured in the young prince’s ear when the verdict was signed.

The royal tutor.

Jae-hwan lunged forward, but the man was gone—vanished into the shelves, leaving only the fading scent of plum blossom.

The ghost hovered in the silence, trembling with fury and fear. His hands shook as he wrote on the condensation of the door.

TUTOR.

Behind him, Lady Seo’s lantern flickered into view. She read the word, her expression grim. “So the ghost remembers.”

And somewhere deep within the palace, the night drum beat thrice.

The palace was not silent anymore. It was listening.

The library exhaled dust as Lady Seo pushed the door wider. Shelves rose like dark trees, their scrolls bound with silk and labeled in a precise hand. The shaman’s lantern threw a careful circle of light that refused to spill beyond where she willed it. Jae-hwan hovered at the edge, his finger already carving thin letters into the chill that filmed the lacquered door.

**TUTOR.**

Lady Seo followed the direction of his gesture. “He took something,” she said softly. “What shelf?”

Jae-hwan slid between the stacks, the air cool on his skin that wasn’t skin. He remembered the man’s path the way fishermen remember currents—by how the lantern shadow bent, by the sway of silk. He stopped at a section of histories—*Ceremonies of the Ancestral Tablet, Volumes I–IV*. The silk binding of *Volume II* hung newly disturbed, a thread snapped where a careful hand would never leave one frayed.

He pointed.

Lady Seo drew the scroll free and weighed it in her palm. Her brows pinched. “Still here,” she murmured. She unrolled the first arm’s length. The paper was untouched, ink steady. “And yet—no. Feel.” She set the lantern on a stool and laid her palm against the remaining roll. “He took nothing. He *added*.”

Jae-hwan leaned closer. The faintest dusting of powder clung where the paper wound tight—pale, nearly invisible. He could smell it before he knew the name.

Plum.

Lady Seo lifted a breath, held it. “They’re bold. The tutor leaves perfume on parchment like a seal.”

The shaman did not unroll further. Instead, she lifted the scroll to her lips and breathed softly along the edge. Powder lifted and chased her breath, gathering like mist until it formed a line as thin as thread. That line curved in by the next turn of the scroll’s roll, then disappeared.

“A thread that only appears when warmed,” she said. “Ink that rises to perfume. He’s marked the place he altered within.” She rewrapped the scroll carefully, set it beneath the lantern, then turned to the door. “Fetch the empress.”

A court lady already waited there, fingers white on the doorframe, eyes large in the gloom. She bowed to the floor and ran.

Jae-hwan remained motionless. His chest—the idea of it—tightened. *Ceremonies of the Ancestral Tablet.* The tutor had guided the prince to the rites as a boy. He would know where a misstep could kill without anyone seeing a hand behind it.

Footfalls. Min-kyung entered with the quick economy of someone used to carrying porcelain without spilling it during an earthquake. She did not take the chair proffered. “Show me.”

Lady Seo breathed across the scroll once more. The plum thread rose, soft as smoke.

“It marks the fold where the page will stop when the reader turns,” the empress said, reading the curve as if she’d seen such tricks before. “So the tampering hides on the underside.”

“Then we open it with care.” Lady Seo used two slips of tortoiseshell to tease the roll forward, breath warming each turn until the ghost-thread reappeared and guided her to a particular page. The calligraphy there—official, beautiful—described the sequence of offerings to the royal ancestors during the autumn rite.

Min-kyung read silently, eyes moving. Jae-hwan watched the muscles at her jaw flicker when her gaze reached a line that seemed harmless.

“Here.” She tapped the character for *juniper*. “This is wrong.”

Lady Seo peered. “It says juniper must be mixed with plum ash for the third censer. That would sweeten the smoke.”

“It would thicken it,” the empress said, “and numb the tongue. If the ash has been prepared a certain way, the smoke will not kill the officiant—but the person who kneels one step behind will lose breath.”

“The empress,” Lady Seo finished.

They did not move for a heartbeat. The lantern hummed. Outside, a guard coughed.

“It’s not a dramatic method,” Min-kyung said at last. “No blade. No blood. I would grow faint. A physician would be called too late to prevent the damage. The court would weep for my frailty. And those who planned it would never be seen.”

Lady Seo set the scroll down, mouth a thin line. “The rite is tomorrow night.”

Jae-hwan drew the characters in mist: **STOP RITE?**

Min-kyung shook her head. “If I refuse the ancestral table, I will give the ministers truth to clothe their rumor. They will say I disrespect the king’s line. I will not kneel to their fear.” She looked to Lady Seo. “We alter the smoke.”

“We could substitute ash,” Lady Seo said. “Or lace the censers with protections. But better is trap.”

The empress’s gaze sharpened. “Let them come to harvest what they have sown.”

Lady Seo lifted the scroll and slid it into a travel tube. “We leave this where it lay. And we leave a second text the tutor cannot resist.” She looked up. “Ghost—can you thin a perfume the way you squelched the noose?”

Jae-hwan concentrated. The room cooled, faint frost forming on the lacquered stool beneath the lantern. He thought of the moment his palms had stripped heat from silk. He thought of plum ash breathed through a woman’s last prayer. He reached toward the roll and pulled at warmth where it met powder.

The thread of scent dimmed.

Lady Seo’s eyebrows rose. “Useful.”

Min-kyung nodded once, then turned to the court lady who’d come with her. “Do not speak of this page. Not even in your sleep.”

The girl swallowed and pressed her forehead to the floor.

As they left, Jae-hwan trailed the plum edge within the stacks. One shelf over, a small gap showed where a slim ledger might stand. He slid his hand along the plank. His fingers met a resistance unlike wood—like oil.

When he drew back, the pad of his palm glistened with a slick black that refused to fall. It clung as if the substance had decided he had weight, and therefore, it would honor him with stain.

Lady Seo looked over. “What is it?”

Jae-hwan rubbed thumb to forefinger; the film stretched, then snapped. He traced on the shelf with what remained: **INK. SECRET.**

The shaman bent and squinted along the underside of the plank. There—a shallow groove where an extra board had been glued: a false lip. She tapped. The panel clicked, dropped, and a narrow drawer slid forward, silent as breath. Inside lay a simple brush tube, its cap carved with waves. She unscrewed it and frowned.

No brush. Only a roll of silk ribbon, thin as a spider’s thread and dyed the color of dried plum blossom.

“Ink that shows only when warmed,” she said, glancing toward the scroll case. “And ribbon that answers only to perfume.” She slipped the tube into her sleeve. “We will let him think he still hunts unwatched.”

Min-kyung’s gaze was distant, already mapping tomorrow’s ceremony. “How many censers?”

“Three close to the altar,” Lady Seo said. “And two along the western aisle, to carry smoke beneath the high beams.”

The empress nodded. “The western aisle is where the women kneel. The third censer is placed behind the officiant at the moment he intones the second bow. The smoke rises past the kneeler.”

“And into your lungs,” Lady Seo finished.

Jae-hwan’s hand moved quickly. **LET ME GO AHEAD.**

“Where?” Lady Seo asked.

**STOREROOMS. INCENSE.**

Min-kyung looked to the shaman. Lady Seo untied a new knot on the lantern’s handle, pricked her finger, and wet red thread with blood. “Go,” she told the air. “In the empress’s name.”

The tether lengthened. The circle of permissible space widened like a pool spreading over cool stone. Jae-hwan surged through hallways he only half remembered from life—places eunuchs entered only with lists and eyes lowered: the high storehouse where temple oils were kept, the covered courtyard where sacrificial rice was weighed, the long, dry room where resins lived in clay—frankincense, aloes, pine, and plum.

The plum jars were sealed with wax discs stamped by the Ritual Office. All five sat in a row—four with seals unbroken, the fifth with its wax pressed neat and new.

Jae-hwan bent. Faint powder crusted the jar’s neck—too fine for resin. He pulled at warmth until it released scent. Plum, yes, but—beneath it—a bitter line a tongue would not catch in time.

He wrote on the floor with frost: **FIFTH JAR.**

Boot soles scuffed behind him. Lady Seo’s lantern rounded the door, Min-kyung two steps behind.

The shaman examined the wax. “They replaced the jar after the page was altered. That required access and quiet hands. Someone in the Ritual Office or a messenger who could pass their checks.”

“Or an officer who outranks their caution,” Min-kyung said. “Someone whose seal makes men bow before they notice the scent.”

“The tutor’s does not carry such weight,” Lady Seo replied. “But his patron’s does.”

Min-kyung’s eyes cooled. “Then we bait them.”

Lady Seo unsealed the jar with a heating pin the length of a hairpin. The lid lifted with a sigh. Inside lay ash black as lacquer. She stirred it with the thin bone of a phoenix feather and watched the surface shine where liquid pooled.

“A wash,” she murmured. “They steeped it in decoction.”

“Can you draw the venom?” Min-kyung asked.

“No. But we can starve it.” She tipped a vial of coarse salt into the jar and stirred—slow, patient circles until the black dulled and the scent thinned. “Salt steals hungers. It will weaken the smoke. Not enough to show our hand. Enough to spare a life.”

Jae-hwan hovered, half in the jar’s rising chill, half in memory. He saw his own hands decades ago, grinding resins for a winter rite, the overseer’s cuff on his ear when he ground too fine. He remembered the pride that bloomed when the officiant had nodded at the evenness of the smoke. No one had known his name then. How simple and clean the obscurity had seemed.

Lady Seo replaced the lid, pressed new wax, and stamped it not with the Ritual Office seal, but with a moon-shaped stamp she drew from her sleeve—the sign of a shaman working under royal mandate. “If they check, they will read this as blessing,” she said, sly and tired both. “Men who fear spirits never sniff salt.”

Min-kyung exhaled. “One knife dulled. But the hand that held it still waits.”

Jae-hwan wrote: **WHO DELIVERS CENSERS?**

“Eunuchs,” Lady Seo answered grimly. “And court women for the aisle burners. They are told to carry smoke, not to question its meal.”

“Then we choose the carriers,” Min-kyung said. “I will name the women myself. And the aisle burners will be moved one pace farther than the Ritual Office advises.”

“That will make the old men grumble,” Lady Seo said.

“Let them.” The empress’s veil stirred with a small, private smile. “Let them say that because I am young I cannot count paces. Let them fix my error while their eyes turn away from the censer that would have killed me.”

Lady Seo glanced at Jae-hwan. “You will walk the beams.”

He wrote, quick and eager: **YES.**

“Remember your law,” she warned without heat. “No touch without permission, no trespass past my light, no taking of life. If a fall will break a traitor’s neck, you will not push.”

Jae-hwan’s answer came steady: **I SWORE.**

They returned from the storerooms by quieter corridors. The palace held its breath the way a patient holds still before the surgeon cuts. Jae-hwan flowed ahead to the empress’s apartments, testing the chill of thresholds, the taste of air. Plum did not linger here. Jasmine, yes. Ink. The faint metal of new pins. He eased his form through the patterned screen into the antechamber where attendants folded silks.

A dozen women worked there, hands precise, eyes lowered. The empress’s norigae lay on a tray—jade clouds, a crane charm carved from bone, a small bell. No lotus. He drifted past, watching fingers, watching sashes, watching the way breath moved in throats. One girl miscounted pleats, corrected without looking up, then glanced toward the inner door with the restlessness of a heart that listens for a footfall it fears to love.

Her sash fringe shifted. For a breath, a charm flashed in the lantern’s far reflection—ivory, petaled.

Upside down.

Jae-hwan froze.

The girl felt the room turn cold. Her hands tightened, then smoothed the silk as if silk could swallow panic. She did not touch the charm again. She did not need to. Its shape was cut into Jae-hwan’s sight now the way rope scars a man’s neck.

He did not lunge. He did not howl. He wrote on the lacquer of the serving stand where steam had left a fine dew:

**LOTUS.**

Lady Seo’s lantern slipped through the screen a heartbeat later. She followed the ghost’s look as neatly as if he had pointed with a knife. Her eyes found the girl and did not blink.

“Name,” she said casually to the room, as if inventory bored her and she wanted conversation. “Each of you. Beginning there.”

The women recited down the line. When the girl spoke—“Cho Yeon-su”—her voice held the minute quaver of someone whose name tastes different on the day she expects to die.

“Good,” Lady Seo said mildly when they finished. “The empress will change her veil for evening. Yeon-su, you will bring it.”

The girl bowed. “Yes, honored lady.”

Jae-hwan followed as she carried a tray to the inner door. She moved with care learned from long practice: heel, ball, toe, weight split evenly, tray level. Inside, Min-kyung stood by the window, veil unfastened, hair in a simple coil that any aunt in any market would envy for its practical grace. She turned with a smile that would have eased a cleaner conscience.

“Yeon-su,” she said kindly. “Your hands are always steady. Thank you.”

The girl’s shoulders twitched. A tremor ran down the tray’s edge and disappeared.

Lady Seo entered behind with a servant’s bow that fooled nobody. She set the lantern on the stand. Its light slid along silk and across Yeon-su’s sash fringe. The charm did not gleam. It had been tucked deeper.

“Will you walk with me, Your Majesty?” the shaman asked. “I wish to try a prayer in the west veranda light.”

“Of course,” Min-kyung said.

They left the inner room together. Yeon-su set the tray on the stand and turned to go, her face a careful bowl of calm.

“Yeon-su,” Lady Seo said without turning her head, “what perfume do you keep?”

The girl’s hand paused on the doorframe. “Jasmine, honored lady.”

“And in winter?” Lady Seo’s voice was idle. “Many change then.”

“Pine,” Yeon-su said.

“Not plum?”

Yeon-su lowered her eyes. “I do not like plum, honored lady. It smells like mourning houses.”

Lady Seo smiled so gently it could have braided a child’s hair. “How wise.”

When she and the empress reached the veranda, her mouth thinned. “We do not pluck a fish with many hooks,” she murmured to Jae-hwan without moving her lips. “We let it swim to its net.”

He wrote on the rail, where only she could lean and see: **SHE WILL CARRY ASH.**

“Yes,” Lady Seo whispered. “Or she will carry messages to the hand that does. The charm is a *sign*, not a blade. Better the blade.”

Min-kyung had been watching the pond’s skin. “When dawn comes,” she said, “I will ask the Ritual Office to recite the ceremony for me as if I were a child. At the third censer we will err, and I will apologize, and they will put their hands where they longed to place them. The net will tug.”

Lady Seo’s smile reached her eyes this time. “You will be called foolish.”

“I will be called alive,” Min-kyung replied.

The day folded itself into the red waistband of evening. Servants lit lanterns. The king’s drums called ministers to their offices and then dismissed them. The palace ate, exhaled, settled. The quiet deepened into the sort of silence that forgets its purpose and begins to listen to its own breathing.

Jae-hwan climbed into the beams. There, among the dust and the sleeping spiders, he wed himself to the wood. He dared a glance toward the long hall where the king’s lamps burned and cut it short. That face—he had seen it last at the end of a rope. He would not seek it tonight. Duty had many threads. He chose this one.

Near midnight, movement in the library again. Jae-hwan slid along the rafters and peered down. A figure glided to the shelf, fingers clean, robes simple. He did not need to see the face to know the gait: the pause at each step as if listening for his own thought to finish before the next heel touched.

Tutor.

The man did not touch the dangerous scroll. He reached instead to the false lip and drew the wave-carved tube. He opened it, breathed the ribbon’s perfume, and smiled as if hearing a song from his youth. He tucked the tube into his sleeve and turned.

Jae-hwan followed, a long cold along the upper beams.

The tutor walked past the outer court where guards pretended not to see him, down a narrow corridor, and into the small, elegant chamber where the royal children once learned to write. He set the tube on the desk and tipped its ribbon across the blank page. Nothing marked the paper until he breathed softly. Plum rose in the warmed air and letters bloomed—no brush, no ink, only perfume guided by thread.

*—Western aisle, second censer. The mistake will be feigned. Hands prepared should guide her virtue two paces back. Smoke will do the rest. If the shaman interferes, touch the bead.*

Touch the bead.

Jae-hwan left frost on the desk to memorize the strokes. He read them twice, then again, letting each curve fall into the place in his mind where he kept the shape of rope and the shape of names. He slid backward into shadow as footsteps approached from the outer hall.

A second figure entered—robes of a scholar, face half veiled in a hood against the night. The tutor lifted the ribbon and breathed across the blank page. The message bloomed a second time. The newcomer read and nodded once.

“Plum for courage,” he said, voice smooth as a priest’s bowl. “How quaint that they still call it that.”

The tutor’s bow was almost invisible. “The empress will kneel where we place her.”

“And the king?”

“Already blind,” the tutor said softly. “He will not smell her death for what it is.”

The second man’s sleeve shifted. A signet flashed—no minister’s crest, no clan flower. A seal of office. No name.

**Tutor**, Jae-hwan wrote to himself on the underside of a beam. **And office.**

They left the chamber as lightly as they had entered, the message drying into nothing behind them. Jae-hwan pressed his palm to the page and drew out what warmth remained, coaxing the letters to linger as shadow. They held long enough for Lady Seo’s lantern to round the door, for Min-kyung to lean and read, for Lady Seo to smile like a person who has counted tigers in the dark and found the number expected.

“Touch the bead,” the empress murmured. “So there is a bead that answers to them among my attendants.”

Jae-hwan thought of Yeon-su’s charm, hidden, the way her shoulders tightened when kindness was spoken. He traced the simplest truth he had.

**I WILL WATCH.**

Lady Seo retied the lantern’s threads and tucked the ribbon tube into a pocket where no perfume could follow. “And I will draw a net of prayers that only a guilty wrist will feel.” She blew upon the lantern’s flame until it leaped blue, then eased it back to gold. “Sleep a little if the dead can sleep, Jae-hwan. Tomorrow is long.”

Min-kyung’s gaze had shifted beyond the desk, beyond the window, to the vast rooflines stretching toward the night. “The palace has been too silent for too long,” she said. “Let it learn to speak.”

The night drum beat thrice. Somewhere a single plum tree, far from season, dropped a withered blossom into the pond as if to mark agreement.

Jae-hwan climbed back into the beams. He curled his incorporeal hands around wood he could not hold and closed the eyes he did not need. For the first time since he clawed from his grave, he did not rehearse his death. He rehearsed a path along rafters, the sightline to the second censer, the arc of a girl’s hand bringing a bead to her lips.

He rehearsed what duty would ask of a man who had nothing left but vows and the light of a lantern.

Dawn would come. Smoke would rise. The Quiet Lotus would reach.

And he—he would be waiting in the silence, ready to give it a voice.