The sun disappeared behind the cliffs. The Dig grew dark except for a few torches along the wall.
Then the shouting started.
The guards gathered near the far shed, where the captain kept his bottles. Their voices loud slurred, laughing at something the girl could not hear. A jug passed from hand to hand. Someone smashed an empty one against the rocks. No one came to check the chains.
She sat still. Waiting.
The party grew louder. A guard stumbled past her corner, too drunk to see her, and joined the others. The singing began rough, off-key, the words of some old marching song.
Now.
She grabbed the rusted ring around her ankle. Her fingers were small, her palms sweaty, but she gripped the metal and pulled.
Nothing.
She pulled again, harder, twisting the ring against the worn spot. Her wrist ached. Her knuckles scraped against the dirt.
A crack.
The ring split. The chain fell away.
She almost cried from relief, but there was no time.
Pushed herself up, legs numb from sitting so long, and ran.
Bare feet on cold stone. Past the sleeping bodies of other slaves. Past the stack of crates. Toward the gap in the cliff wall that the voice had shown her in her dreams.
Behind her, a guard laughed. Another joined him. Neither called out. Neither saw her.
She reached the gap and slipped through, sharp rocks cutting her arms, and then she was outside.
The mountain air hit her face. Cold. Clean. She had never breathed anything like it.
She ran east. The voice was silent now, but she did not need it to speak. She knew where to go.
Down the pass through the trees going away from the Dig.
She ran until her lungs burned and her feet were cut and bleeding. The trees thinned. The moon came out.
She stopped behind a large rock and pressed her back against the cold stone. Her chest heaved. Her heart pounded. But her lips curled into something that was almost a smile.
I'm out. I'm actually out.
She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. Instead, she just breathed the cold air and let the relief wash over her.
Then the voice returned.
Don't relax yet. Front. There's a person. A bright person. Follow him. Ask him to help you.
She blinked. Her smile faded.
"A person?" she whispered. "How can I trust a person? After everything?"
The voice did not answer immediately. Then, softer than before:
You don't have to trust him. Just follow him. Let him see you. What happens next is up to him.
She wanted to argue. Every memory she had of people was pain. Hands grabbing. Teeth smiling. Eyes that looked at her like meat. How could any person be different?
But the voice had never lied to her. It had kept her alive when she wanted to die. It had shown her the rust on the chain.
She pushed herself off the rock and looked ahead.
Through the trees, barely visible in the moonlight, was a path. And on that path, walking alone, was a boy.
She peeked from behind the tree.
Yeon Gaon stood in the small clearing. He was fifteen now, his shoulders broader, though still lean. One hand was raised over a patch of wild herbs. His eyes were closed while that a faint glow drifted from the air around him, flowed down his arm, and sank into the leaves below. The herbs straightened, their color deepening from pale green to a rich jade.
What is he doing?
She had never seen anything like it. The guards at the Dig had no such power. The slaves had nothing. But this boy ulling something out of the air and pushing it into the ground.
Is this the person? The one the voice meant?
Her stomach turned. What if he worked for the Dig? What if he was a hunter sent to catch runaways? She had heard stories. Slaves who escaped were sometimes brought back and punished worse than before.
She pressed herself tighter against the bark. Her cut feet throbbed. Her rags did nothing against the cold.
What if he takes me back?
Gaon lowered his hand. He knelt beside the herbs, inspecting them with a calm expression. He hadn't noticed her yet.
She wanted to run but the voice had said to follow. The voice had never been wrong.
She tried to step forward her legs were weak, her bare feet cut and raw. She did not see the rock in front of her toes.
Her ankle caught.
The impact knocked the air from her lungs. Her palms scraped against the dirt. She lay there for a moment, too tired to move, too scared to look up.
Gaon looked up from the herbs.
His eyes found her a small figure in torn rags, thin arms, matted hair, curled on the ground like something thrown away.
Homeless? A child... she's younger than me.
She tried to push herself up. Her arms shook. They gave out. She collapsed back onto the dirt and stayed there, her face pressed against the cold ground, her shoulders shaking.
"Don't..." Her voice came out broken, barely a whisper. "Don't take me back. Please. Don't take me back to the Dig."
She started crying. Softly at first, then harder, her whole body trembling with each sob. The tears ran down her dirty cheeks and soaked into the earth beneath her.
Gaon stared at her. He did not move.
The Dig.
Gaon's thought stopped cold.
The Dig? The one people whisper about? The slave market hidden in the mountains?
He had heard merchants talk about it in Hwagok. Always in low voices. Always looking over their shoulders. A place where humans were sold like cattle. Where children disappeared and never came back.
His eyes moved over her again. The torn rags. The scabbed knees. The ribs showing through her skin.
She escaped from there.
He got up. His legs moved before his brain finished the thought. He crossed the clearing, knelt down, and put his hands on her shoulders.
"Get up," he said quietly. "Let's move away from here."
She flinched at his touch, but she was too weak to pull away. He lifted her she weighed almost nothing and carried her behind a large boulder at the edge of the clearing, hidden from the path.
He set her down gently against the stone.
Then he raised his hand again. The same faint glow appeared, drifting from the air, from the leaves, from the grass around them. He guided it toward her feet first the cuts on her soles began to close, the bleeding stopping, the skin knitting together. Then her palms. Then the bruises on her ribs.
She watched him with wide, red eyes. She did not speak. She did not understand what he was doing or why.
He just kept healing her, his face calm, his breathing steady.
The Dig, he thought again. She came from the Dig.
He would ask her about it later. For now, she needed to be alive to answer.
She felt the warmth spreading through her feet, her palms, her ribs. The pain faded. The burning stopped. She looked down at her soles and saw smooth skin where open cuts had been a moment ago.
"No more hurt," she whispered, almost not believing it.
Gaon lowered his hand. "It's healing from external force since I can't use qi."
She blinked at him. Her voice was small and hoarse. "Qi... that means you're a cultivator?"
He laughed a little. Not a mean laugh. Just tired, maybe. He bent down and lifted her with both arms, cradling her against his chest. She was light. Too light.
"You forgot the word 'can't,'" he said, adjusting his grip. "I'm not a cultivator. I can't use qi. This is external life force. People can use it easily if they learn the technique."
He started walking, away from the clearing, away from the path, into the deeper woods.
"It's safe now, I'll bring you to my place. I live alone, far away from here."
She said nothing. She just let her head rest against his shoulder and closed her eyes. The voice in her head was quiet. For the first time in her life, she felt something close to safe.
Then she woke to sunlight.
Not the grey crack of light through a cave ceiling. Not the flicker of torches on wet stone. Real sunlight, warm and yellow, slipping through a small window cut into a wooden wall.
She was lying on soft bed with a straw mattress and a cotton blanket that smelled like dried herbs and woodsmoke. She had never slept on a bed before. The Dig had given her dirt and old straw that bit into her skin.
She sat up slowly. Her body ached, but the cuts were gone. The bruises were gone. Even the deep soreness in her bones had faded to a dull throb.
She looked down at herself. Still in the slave rags the torn linen around her chest and waist, stained with dirt and old blood. But on the edge of the bed, folded neatly, was a set of clothes. A simple brown tunic and a pair of cotton trousers, both too big for her but clean. Soft.
From somewhere beyond the room, she heard a sound she did not recognize at first.
Cooking. The sizzle of something in a pan. The smell drifted toward her rice, vegetables, a hint of roasted meat. Her stomach growled so loudly that she flinched.
She reached out and touched the folded clothes. Her fingers trembled.
Where am I?
Then she remembered. The boy. The clearing. The healing light. His arms lifting her. I live alone, far away from here.
She pulled the tunic toward her and held it against her chest. The fabric was rough but warm.
She wanted to cry again, but no tears came. She was too tired, too hungry, too confused. So she just sat there on the soft bed, holding the clean clothes, listening to the sound of someone cooking food for her.
To Be Continued.