The world, for ten-year-old Han Muryang, had always been a simple thing. It was the scent of drying herbs hanging from the rafters of their secluded forest home, the bitter taste of medicinal tea on his tongue, and the warm, solid sound of his father's laughter echoing against the ancient trees. It was the gentle touch of his mother's fingers, cool and sure, as she smoothed the hair from his forehead after a long day of lessons.
That world ended on an evening that smelled of rain and pine.
They had been sitting by the low, wooden table, the remains of a simple stew between them. Muryang had been chattering about a rare root he'd found near the creek, its shape curiously like a dancing man. His father, Han Sojin, a man whose broad shoulders seemed carved from the very mountains they lived in, listened with a quiet smile. His mother, Li Mei, whose beauty was like the first frost—delicate and sharp—added a correction about the root's proper preparation, her voice a soft melody.
It was a perfect, ordinary moment. A moment Muryang would clutch at in the years to come, a fading ember in an endless sea of cold.
His father's smile vanished. It didn't slip away; it was extinguished. One second, his eyes were crinkled with warmth. The next, they were chips of flint, scanning the darkening forest beyond their open door. The air in the room didn't just grow cold; it grew thick, heavy with a silence that was louder than any thunder.
"Muryang," his father said, his voice low, stripped of all its familiar warmth. It was a command, the kind a general gives on a battlefield. "The cellar. Now."
"Father, wha—?"
"Now!" The word was a whip-crack, so sharp and final it left no room for question. The fear that blossomed in Muryang's chest was a living thing, cold and squirming. He saw his mother's face. The color had drained from it, leaving her pale as moonlight. Her eyes met his father's, and in that single, silent exchange, a universe of understanding passed between them. It was a look of utter finality.
Trembling, Muryang scrambled from the table. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He pulled up the hidden trapdoor in the floor of the storage room, the rough-hewn wood scraping against the frame. He threw one last, desperate look over his shoulder. His father was already on his feet, his posture that of a mountain cat ready to spring. His mother had a small, sharp dagger in her hand, its blade no longer than her palm. She gave him a smile. It was a fragile, broken thing, but it was filled with more love than he had ever seen.
"Be silent, my heart. No matter what you hear," she whispered.
He dropped into the darkness.
The cellar was a pocket of earth and shadows, smelling of damp soil and preserved roots. He pulled the door shut above him, plunging himself into an absolute blackness that pressed against his eyes. He curled into a ball in the farthest corner, his arms wrapped around his knees, trying to make himself small, to become part of the earth itself.
Then the sounds began.
It started with the splintering of their front door. Not a kick, but a sound like the very forest had struck their home. Then came the voices—cold, flat, and utterly devoid of emotion. He couldn't make out the words, only the tone. It was the sound of men discussing livestock, not lives.
His father's voice roared, a sound of pure, defiant fury. It was met with the sharp, metallic ring of steel leaving a scabbard.
The world above became a symphony of violence. The clash of metal on metal, the grunts of effort, the sickening thud of a body hitting the floor. He heard his mother cry out once—a short, sharp sound that was cut off with terrifying abruptness.
Then, a silence more horrifying than all the noise that had come before.
Muryang pressed his face into his knees, his entire body shaking. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, obeying his mother's last command. He didn't make a sound. Tears streamed down his face, hot and silent, soaking into the rough fabric of his trousers. He lost all sense of time. The darkness became his entire existence, a coffin of sound and terror. He prayed to gods he didn't know, begged for it to be a nightmare, for the door to open and his father's face to appear, telling him it was all a test.
The ten hours he spent in that hole were a lifetime. A lifetime spent in the space between one heartbeat and the next, listening to the silence of a world that had just been murdered.
When the faint grey light of dawn began to filter through the cracks in the trapdoor, the silence outside was absolute. No birds sang. No wind rustled the leaves. It was the silence of a grave.
His limbs were stiff, his body aching with a cold that had seeped into his bones. With a trembling hand, he pushed against the heavy door. It groaned in protest. He pushed harder, the sound unnaturally loud in the dead quiet. He hauled himself out, his legs buckling as he stood on the floor of his home.
The first thing that hit him was the smell.
It was the coppery, thick scent of blood. It filled the air, clinging to the back of his throat, making him gag.
Then he saw.
The main room of their home was destroyed. The table was shattered. The herbal bundles were scattered and trampled. And there, in the center of the ruin, lay his parents.
His mother, Li Mei, was on her side, her long, dark hair fanned out around her like a shattered halo. Her throat was a single, clean, terrible line of crimson. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing, their usual sharp intelligence replaced by a dull, waxy film. The delicate beauty of her face was frozen in an expression of surprise, as if death had been an concept she had never quite managed to solve.
A low, wounded animal sound escaped Muryang's lips. He stumbled towards her, falling to his knees. He reached out a shaking hand and touched her cheek. It was cold. So cold. The finality of that coldness was a physical blow. This wasn't his mother. This was the shell she had left behind.
"Mother…" he whimpered, his voice a broken reed. He tried to wipe the blood from her neck, but his small hands only smeared it, staining her pale skin and his own. "Mother, please…"
He wept then, great, heaving sobs that wracked his small frame. He buried his face in her shoulder, the fabric of her robe still holding the faint, familiar scent of her, now mingled with the horrific stench of death. He cried for the stories she would never tell, for the teas she would never brew, for the touch of her hand that would never again soothe his fears.
His grief was a tidal wave, and he was drowning in it.
It was through this blur of tears that he saw movement.
His father.
Han Sojin was lying a few feet away, his massive body a testament to the battle he had fought. His clothes were in tatters, and his body… his father's body, which had always seemed as solid and unbreakable as granite, was a canvas of violence. Dozens of sword wounds crisscrossed his torso and arms, each one a dark, ugly mouth. The floor around him was a deep, sticky pool of red.
But his chest… it moved. A faint, shallow rise and fall.
A spark of impossible, agonizing hope flared in Muryang's chest. He scrambled over, slipping in the blood, his small hands fluttering over his father's ravaged body, not knowing where to touch, where it wouldn't cause more pain.
"Father?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "Father!"
Han Sojin's eyelids fluttered. With a supreme effort that seemed to draw from the last dregs of his soul, he opened his eyes. They were clouded with pain, the light in them guttering like a candle in the wind. They focused, slowly, on his son's face.
A tremor went through the big man's body. He tried to speak, but only a wet, bubbling sound came out. A trickle of blood escaped the corner of his mouth.
"Don't… don't speak, Father. Save your strength," Muryang begged, tears streaming down his face, dripping onto his father's chest. "I'll get the medicines, I'll—"
"Muryang…" His father's voice was a ragged whisper, a breath of sound that cost him everything. "My son…"
"I'm here, Father! I'm here! Don't leave me! Please, don't leave me alone!" The words were a desperate plea, torn from the very core of his being.
His father's hand, trembling violently, lifted a few inches from the floor. Muryang grabbed it, holding the cold, calloused fingers tightly, trying to pour his own life into the fading vessel of his father.
"Listen… to me…" each word was a struggle, a battle fought with his last breath. "Live… live peacefully… Do not… do not seek revenge."
The words hung in the bloody air. A final command. A father's last wish for his son's safety, for a life free of the hatred that had just consumed his own.
Han Sojin's eyes held his son's for a moment longer, a universe of love and regret swirling in their fading depths. Then, the light within them went out. The hand in Muryang's grasp went limp, its weight suddenly, terribly final.
He was gone.
"No…" Muryang shook his head, denial a fire in his veins. "No! Father! WAKE UP!"
But the mountain that was his father did not move again. The silence returned, deeper and more absolute than before. He was alone. Truly, utterly alone.
He knelt there, holding his father's lifeless hand, staring at the face that would never again smile, the eyes that would never again see him. His father's last words echoed in his mind. Live peacefully. Do not seek revenge.
A strange calm began to settle over him, a coldness that started in his heart and spread outwards, freezing the tears on his cheeks. The raw, screaming agony of his grief was being forged in this cold fire, hammered into something else. Something hard. Something sharp.
He looked at his mother, her life stolen by a single, merciless cut. He looked at his father, a hero brought down by a swarm of lesser men, his body turned into a pincushion for their blades.
Live peacefully.
The words were a lie. There was no peace in this world. There was only power and the lack of it. His parents had lacked it. They had chosen the path of healers, of peace, and the world had devoured them for their kindness.
He gently laid his father's hand down on the blood-soaked floor. He stood up. His legs, which had been trembling moments before, were now steady. The sorrow in his heart was still there, a vast, black ocean, but on its surface now floated a new emotion. A purpose.
He walked to a shattered piece of a ceramic vase, its surface slick with red. He picked it up and looked at his reflection.
The face that stared back was his, yet it was not. It was still the same beautiful, almost delicate features he had inherited from his mother—the large eyes, the fine nose. But the boy who had hidden in the cellar was gone. The eyes that had once been filled with wonder and innocence were now the color of dried blood. They were no longer windows to a soul; they were shields of polished stone. They were hard. They were dry. They were dead.
His father, in his final moment, had not known. He had not seen the transformation happening behind the veil of his son's tears. He had not seen the boy's heart being carved out and replaced with a shard of obsidian.
Han Muryang looked from his reflection to his dead parents, and then back again.
"I am sorry, Father," he whispered into the silence, his voice flat and cold, devoid of the childish pitch it had held just hours before. "I cannot obey your last wish."
He dropped the shard of pottery. It shattered on the floor, the sound a period at the end of his childhood.
"There will be no peace for me," he vowed, the words a oath spoken not to the heavens, but to the hell that now lived within him. "Only vengeance."
And in the bloody dawn, surrounded by the ruins of his life, ten-year-old Han Muryang began to plot his path into the darkness.