The six swordsmen fanned out in a semicircle, boots grinding gravel, blades glinting orange in the firelight. Their leader, a tall man with a scar running from temple to jaw, stepped forward.
"Hand over the scroll, boy," he said, voice low and even. "Do that, and I'll let you walk away."
Yeon twirled her daggers with a whisper of steel. "You believe him?" she murmured.
Horyeong tightened his grip on the bamboo case under his robe. "No."
"Good."
The scarred man gestured with his sword. "Take them."
The first two charged—one angling for Yeon, the other rushing Horyeong.
Horyeong's body reacted before his mind did. The warmth was back, flooding his limbs, and with it came that strange, reversed rhythm.
The swordsman's downward slash should have split him from shoulder to hip, but Horyeong stepped into the space where the blade was already finishing its arc. His elbow bent backward, sliding past the man's guard, and his heel caught the swordsman's shin in a stumbling hook.
The man crashed forward, his sword clattering to the dirt. Horyeong barely had time to breathe before another blade hissed toward his ribs.
The Reverse Manual's images flashed: Retreat before the strike exists. Arrive where you already are.
He twisted his torso, not away from the slash, but into the end of the movement, catching the attacker's wrist with an awkward grip that should have been too late. Somehow, it was perfect. A sharp jerk, and the man's own momentum sent him spinning sideways into Yeon's waiting dagger.
Yeon moved like water poured from a tilted jar—slipping past thrusts, flowing around sweeps, and answering with cuts so quick they barely registered as motion. But even she seemed to glance at Horyeong now and then, as if wondering where he'd learned to fight like this.
---
The scarred leader watched without moving, his gaze calculating. Then he stepped forward.
Horyeong felt it before the strike came—a weight in the air, a pressure like the sky pressing down. This was no ordinary swordsman.
The man's slash came not fast, but inevitable, as if the world itself would break to make it land.
The Reverse Manual's rhythm rose inside him, faster, stronger, pulling at his muscles. His vision blurred at the edges.
Step back. No—step before. Begin at the end.
He let his knees bend, his shoulders drop, his body folding into the place after the strike had already passed. Steel sliced air where his chest had been.
The leader's eyes narrowed. "You know the Reverse Path."
Horyeong's pulse spiked. "And if I do?"
"That manual belongs to my alliance."
Yeon's dagger flashed between them. "Funny, I thought it belonged to the one still holding it."
The leader batted her aside with a single slash that forced her three steps back. Then he came at Horyeong again.
This time, the Reverse rhythm roared, drowning out everything else—the crackle of the fire, Yeon's sharp breathing, even the clang of steel. His body flowed in strange, looping motions, meeting each strike not where it began, but where it was already ending.
And then—something new.
A moment of blankness. Like forgetting a word mid-sentence.
He staggered, the warmth in his chest pulsing hard, and for a heartbeat, he couldn't remember why he was fighting.
The leader's blade grazed his shoulder, slicing cloth and skin. The pain snapped him back, and he launched into another reversed sequence, driving the man back a step.
But the blankness lingered, like a shadow at the edge of thought.
---
Yeon slipped back into the fight, catching one of the remaining swordsmen with a feint and a cut across the thigh. "You're bleeding," she said to Horyeong without looking.
"I've got worse problems."
"Then finish him."
The leader's sword whistled down again, but Horyeong stepped past it before it landed, his heel driving into the man's shin in the Crippled Crane's backward hook. The leader grunted, weight shifting just enough for Horyeong to twist the sword from his grip.
The blade spun once in the air before Horyeong caught it, the motion awkward but somehow inevitable.
For the first time, the scarred man's composure cracked. "Where did you—"
Horyeong didn't let him finish. He struck—not forward, but in a strange, half-reversed slash that began mid-motion and finished at the starting position. The steel's path was odd, almost clumsy, yet it cut across the man's chest before he could raise a guard.
The leader fell back, clutching the wound, and barked an order. The remaining swordsmen closed ranks around him, retreating into the dark.
"You can't run forever, beggar!" the leader shouted before vanishing into the night.
---
Silence fell, broken only by the pop of the fire.
Yeon wiped her blades on a fallen attacker's robe. "You fought like a drunk man dancing. And it worked."
Horyeong sank onto a rock, the borrowed sword still in his hand. "It's not a dance. It's… something else."
"Something that made you go pale halfway through."
He hesitated. "I… forgot something. In the middle of the fight. Just for a second."
Her gaze sharpened. "Forgot what?"
"I don't know. That's the problem."
Yeon sheathed her daggers. "Then we move now. If that leader was telling the truth, more will come."
---
They traveled through the night, sticking to goat trails and riverbanks. By dawn, they reached the edge of a dense pine forest.
Horyeong's legs ached, but his mind was more unsettled than his body. That moment of forgetting—it hadn't felt like distraction or fear. It had felt… taken.
When they stopped to rest, Yeon finally asked, "How much of the manual have you read?"
"Just the first scroll."
"And you already fight like that?"
"I don't know how. It's like… the moves are already in me. The scroll just shows me how to rewind them."
She studied him for a long moment. "Then you need to decide something now, Horyeong. Do you want to master it?"
He looked at the bamboo case in his lap. "Pung died to give me this. I don't think I get to choose."
"You always get to choose," she said. "But understand—people chase that manual for power. They don't care about what it costs."
"What does it cost?"
Yeon's eyes flicked to the fresh cut on his shoulder. "If you've already forgotten once, you know the answer."
---
They set up camp deep in the forest that night. Horyeong practiced the Returning Step until his calves burned, then studied the second technique on the scroll:
"The Withdrawing Palm of the Last Breath."
It described meeting an enemy's killing blow not with a block or a dodge, but by arriving at the moment after they had already failed. The illustration showed a man standing behind his opponent, palm lightly resting on their spine, as if the fight were already over.
The idea made no sense. And yet, when Horyeong pictured it—really pictured himself in that moment—his feet seemed to find the path naturally, each step feeling like it was retracing invisible footprints.
---
Just before midnight, Yeon woke him with a shake. "Up. Someone's here."
The moonlight filtering through the pines showed five figures moving between the trees. Not the Eastern Blade's blue robes this time—these men wore black, faces hidden by cloth.
Horyeong reached for his sword. "Who—"
"Not sure," Yeon said. "But they're not here to talk."
The first black-clad man lunged, twin hooks flashing. Horyeong stepped into the reversed stance of the Withdrawing Palm, feeling the world tilt. His body shifted—not away from the blow, but toward where he would be after it had already missed.
One step, a twist of the hips, and he was behind the attacker, palm pressed to the man's back. The enemy stumbled forward, confused, before Yeon's dagger found his ribs.
A rush of triumph surged through Horyeong—until the warmth in his chest flared too hot. Another blankness swept over him. This time, when it cleared, he realized with a shock that he couldn't remember the name of the street where he'd grown up.
Yeon's voice cut through the haze. "Horyeong! Focus!"
He shook himself and stepped back into the fight. But a cold truth had settled in his gut.
The Reverse Path didn't just erase hesitation.
It erased him.
---
By the time the last attacker fell, the moon was high. Yeon wiped her blades and looked at him. "You're losing pieces already, aren't you?"
Horyeong nodded slowly. "A street. Where I used to steal bread. It's gone. Like I never knew it."
She glanced at the bamboo case. "That manual's a sword with no hilt. Hold it too long, and it cuts the hand that grips it."
He stared into the fire, the warmth in his chest pulsing in time with his heartbeat. "Then I'd better learn to hold it without getting cut."
Yeon gave a faint smile. "Or find someone who can teach you how."
Somewhere deep in the forest, an owl called. Horyeong tightened his grip on the case, knowing one thing for certain: whatever this Reverse Path was, it was pulling him deeper with every step.
And there was no turning back.