Gaon did not move.
"Can you at least give me a book about the same thing? About a power with that name?"
Scholar Hwang sighed. He didn't look up from his book this time.
"Power section. At the back. Left shelf, third row. Go there if you want to know."
He turned a page.
"That's all I can give you, boy. Read what you find. Or don't."
Gaon turned and walked toward the back of the library.
The shelves.
Gaon ran his fingers along the left shelf. Third row. His eyes scanned the titles.
Foundations of Internal Energy. A Farmer's Guide to Ki. The Five Elemental Palm. Rumored Styles of the Northern Region.
Nothing about a Titan.
His hand stopped.
What am I even looking for?
The thought sat heavy in his chest. He had wished for a power that scales. That was the deal. The faceless woman had nodded. She had said Titan's Mantle like it was real. Like it existed.
But that was just a name. A word from a gate between worlds.
Now he was here. Eleven years old. Weak arms. Soft legs. A body that couldn't punch a wooden post without bleeding.
If the power is inside me, why can't I feel it?
He pulled a random book from the shelf. Strange Energy Phenomena of the Eastern Provinces. Flipped it open. Words blurred together.
Maybe I was tricked. Maybe the wish was a lie. Maybe I'm just a normal boy in a normal town with normal parents and nothing will ever happen.
Jaw tightened.
He put the book back. Looked down at his own palm.
He kept wandering, shelf after shelf his fingers trailed across spines. Most were useless poetry, farming guides, local tax records.
Then near the end of the third row, a thin volume wedged between two larger books. The cover was plain. No title on the spine. Pulled it out.
Basics of Ki Flow for Intermediate Students.
Flipped it open. The first page showed a diagram of a human body. Lines drawn through the chest, down the arms, circling the stomach. Labels in old script.
How to feel internal energy.
How to draw it from the dantian.
How to let it move through the meridians.
This was what the older kids at the Crimson Bamboo Sect probably studied. Not beginner. Not advanced. Just the middle step between knowing nothing and doing something.
Gaon sat down against the shelf. Read the first chapter.
Then read it again.
The words were dense. Too many metaphors. "Energy flows like water finding a dry riverbed." "The dantian is a furnace. Stoke it with breath."
He didn't understand half of it. But he kept reading.
Again.
And again.
Trying to hold the theory in his head. Trying to see the shape of it. If he couldn't feel the power yet, at least he could understand how it was supposed to work.
The afternoon light shifted through the library window. He didn't notice.
He reached the last chapter.
A handwritten note was pressed into the margin. Small, neat script. Different from the printed text.
—Jeong Ha-yoon
Below it, a single sentence:
"Power will not appear on its own the first time unless the person is in a life-or-death situation."
Gaon stared at the words.
Read them again.
Then closed the book.
That's why.
His mother said let it come. She was right, but not the way she meant.
It wasn't about patience. It was about the edge. The moment when his body decided to live or die.
He sat there on the dusty floor.
So I can't practice it. I can't summon it. It only shows up when I might actually die.
He looked at his palm again.
That's annoying.
He ran for the door.
Behind, the old scholar looked up. Watched the boy disappear into the street. Then shrugged and went back to his book.
The sun dropped. Shadows stretched between buildings. Hwagok grew quiet.
By night, the market stalls were empty. One remained a weapon vendor at the south end of the main road. Iron knives, rusted swords, a few hunting bows. The vendor was asleep on a stool, head back, mouth open.
Gaon crept close.
His hand reached out. Fingers wrapped around a short blade. Small enough for a child. Sharp enough to cut.
Pulled it free. The vendor didn't move.
Turned and ran toward the city edge.
The outer gate. Two guards. One sitting, one standing. Both half asleep. Their torches flickered.
He pressed his back against a cart. Watched. Waited.
The sitting guard yawned. Turned his head.
Now.
Gaon slipped through the gap. Silent. Fast enough.
Grass under his feet. Darkness ahead.
Stak! Stak! Stak!
He ran until the trees swallowed the torchlight, then stopped and bent over with his hands on his knees, chest heaving. The small sword hung from his right hand, cold and useless without the strength to properly swing it.
The forest was dark. The moon was thin, barely a sliver behind passing clouds. He could hear his own breathing, too loud, and somewhere distant an owl called once and then fell silent.
Gaon straightened his back and looked up at the branches.
"I need this power," he said. His voice came out hoarse, barely a whisper, but he said it again louder. "I need this power. I need it."
His fingers tightened around the sword's grip until his knuckles went white.
"I belong to this power."
The words hung in the cold air. Nothing answered. No hum rose from his chest. No warmth spread through his limbs. The forest just stood there, indifferent, as if he were nothing more than a lost child playing pretend.
He waited.
A minute passed. Then another.
The sword felt heavier now. Stupid. He had stolen it for nothing. He had run out here for nothing. The note from that girl—Jeong Ha-yoon—said power only comes in life or death. But how was he supposed to find life or death alone in the woods? Stab himself? Let a wolf find him?
He sat down against a tree trunk, pulled his knees to his chest, and stared at the blade in his lap.
Maybe I really am just a normal boy.
But he didn't believe that. He couldn't. Because somewhere deep in his gut the same gut that had made him ask for a scaling power, the same gut that had led him to this world he knew he wasn't wrong.
He closed his eyes and pressed the back of his head against the bark.
Think. Think. Think. Think.
But he couldn't just sit here waiting for death to wander by. He had to go somewhere death already lived.
Somewhere the villagers warned children never to go.
Somewhere the guards didn't patrol because even they were afraid.
His eyes snapped open.
"RUN!"
The word tore out of him before he knew he was going to shout it. He shoved himself off the ground, almost dropping the sword, and then he was running not back toward Hwagok, not toward the safety of the gate, but deeper into the forest, past the old oak where the village children left offerings of rice cakes, past the fallen log that everyone said marked the boundary of cursed land.
The moonlight disappeared entirely under the canopy. Branches whipped at his face. His feet caught on roots and he stumbled twice, nearly fell, kept going. His lungs burned. His stolen sword banged against his thigh.
He knew where he was going. Not because he had ever been there. Because every adult in Hwagok had told him the same story since he was old enough to listen.
The Hollow Ridge. Don't go near the Hollow Ridge. That's where the Crimson Bamboo Sect lost a dozen disciples twenty years ago. Something still lives there. Something that eats people who wander too far.
That was where death lived.
Then something felt before he saw it. A weight of something watching on his back. The kind of watching that made the hairs on his arms stand straight.
He stopped running.
His breath came in ragged gasps. The sword trembled in his grip. But he didn't turn around. He didn't run.
Instead, he straightened his small shoulders, lifted his chin, and opened his mouth.
"COME FACE ME!"
His voice came out high and thinned the voice of an eleven-year-old boy.
But he kept going.
"I'M NOT SCARED OF DEATH! I'VE BEEN DEATH ONCE!"
The forest went completely silent. Even the wind stopped.
Something moved behind him. Slow. Deliberate. The crunch of leaves under a heavy paw or something worse than a paw.
Gaon turned around.
Twenty feet away, two yellow eyes floated in the darkness. Low to the ground. Too low for a wolf. Too steady for a bear.
The eyes blinked.
Then a growl started. Deep. Rumbling. The kind of sound that vibrated in the chest before it reached the ears.
Gaon didn't step back.
His heart pounded. His palms sweated. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to flee.
But he had wished for this. He had died once. He had sat in a white room with a faceless woman and chosen this world.
If he ran now, he would be running for the rest of his life.
So, he raised the stolen sword with both hands and waited.
To Be Continued.