The cobbled streets of the imperial capital twisted like a labyrinth—narrow alleys between towering stone buildings, every path flickering with the glow of hanging lanterns. Music drifted faintly from the heart of the Moonlit Festival, now far behind her, but Rin didn't hear it. Her pulse thundered too loudly in her ears.
She didn't stop running until the palace gates were far out of sight.
Cloak pulled tight around her shoulders, hood drawn low, she slipped into the web of shadowy streets she knew far better than most nobles ever would. Apothecaries like her didn't get to live near the palace. Her workroom—small, cluttered, quiet—waited at the edge of the Scholar's Quarter, nestled between a paper merchant's shop and a teahouse that rarely had customers.
Tonight, it was her sanctuary.
She fumbled with her keys, breath ragged, heart still racing. Behind her, no footsteps echoed. No cloaked figure emerged from the darkness. No blade pressed to her spine.
Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that she wasn't truly alone.
The door creaked open, and she stepped inside. Familiar scents—dried herbs, oils, ink—greeted her like old friends. She locked the door, drew the heavy curtains, and finally, finally uncurled her fingers from the letter.
The parchment was warm again.
It had cooled while she ran, she was sure of it. But here, in her workshop, away from Kael, away from the dead noble, it pulsed softly in her hands. Like breath. Like heartbeat.
She laid it flat on her worktable, brushing aside empty glass vials and half-dried plants. Under the lamp, the symbols shimmered again. Still unreadable, still ancient—but alive in some inexplicable way.
Rin took a slow, steadying breath.
"Alright," she murmured. "Let's see what you're hiding."
She began the way she always did—with ink and paper, scribbling out copies of the glyphs, trying to trace the shapes with the precision of a scholar. Her hands were practiced, her eye keen. She drew out the spiral-thorn sigil, then each rotating glyph, then the strange text surrounding them.
The ink on the original still refused to stay still. Every time she looked away and back again, the characters seemed to shift position, like they knew she was watching.
It wasn't alchemy as she knew it.
It was something else.
The letter's content lingered in her mind like smoke:
> "The threads cannot be severed by will alone.
For death is a gate—not an end..."
Rin's jaw tightened. She had spent years learning the principles of life and balance. She knew how the body broke down after death, how blood congealed, how warmth faded. These were facts, not things one could undo.
But Lord Isamu's corpse had remained warm.
And the mark on his wrist...
She reached for her sketch journal, flipping through pages until she found it—the drawing she'd made only hours earlier, of the mark that hadn't matched any known house seal or alchemical diagram.
Except now...
She laid the drawing beside the letter.
They matched.
Not perfectly. The angles were different, the center rotated—but the symbol on the corpse's wrist shared the same spiral thorn structure as the sigil in the letter.
A chill crept down her spine.
Before she could stop herself, she whispered aloud, "What were you trying to do, Lord Isamu?"
No answer came.
Just the distant hum of city life beyond her window.
She stood and crossed the room to her bookshelf, dragging down an old leather-bound volume: The Alchemical Lexicon—Vol. III: Lost Symbols and Ancient Theories. She flipped rapidly through the brittle pages, searching for anything even remotely similar.
Then paused.
There. A partial drawing, half-faded by age. A symbol once forbidden by decree of the Imperial Council. Its origin was unverified, its function unknown—but rumors called it "The Seal of Returning."
Beneath it, in red ink:
> "Rumored use in soul anchoring. Dangerous. Do not replicate."
Rin swallowed hard.
Her eyes darted back to the letter.
Soul anchoring?
That was theoretical nonsense—alchemy's most taboo topic. The idea that a soul, once parted from the body, could be bound back by alchemical force. Scholars whispered about it behind closed doors. Priests condemned it. The empire banned any official research into it generations ago.
Because it defied nature.
Because it defied death.
And yet...
Rin looked at the letter again. At the flickering symbols that refused to be still. At the warmth lingering in Lord Isamu's skin. At the fact that someone had tried to kill her and Kael over it.
This wasn't theory anymore.
This was real.
She sat back, hand pressed to her mouth.
Suddenly, a soft click echoed through the room.
She froze.
Someone had touched the lock.
She doused the lamp immediately. Shadows consumed the room. Silence reigned.
The door didn't open—but the presence on the other side was undeniable. Someone was there. Watching. Waiting.
Rin stepped back slowly, eyes adjusting to the dark, letter clenched to her chest.
Then—
A sharp tap, like a knuckle rapping wood once. Twice.
And silence.
She didn't breathe until she heard retreating footsteps.
Whoever they were... they didn't force their way in.
They only wanted her to know they could.
She remained frozen for several minutes before finally relighting the lamp with shaking fingers. The warm glow returned—but the comfort it usually brought didn't follow.
Her world, once so tightly bound in logic and science, was fraying at the edges.
She turned back to the letter.
One phrase burned in her mind now, clearer than the rest:
> "Tell no one."
She should burn it. Tear it apart. Forget the mark, the warmth, the assassin. Return to her work as an apothecary and pretend none of this ever happened.
But she couldn't.
She had seen too much.
And the truth was whispering.
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