It was when the sky was gradually reddening with sunset.
Something caught Rag’s eye as he sat atop a tree.
There was still plenty of distance.
The procession was scattered like dots,
and above it, a low trail of dust stretched long.
Without taking his eyes off it, Rag spoke to Miryeong.
“They’re coming.”
Miryeong drew in a breath.
“Everyone, get ready. Hold your positions.”
“There’s a knight, too. Suppress your Idrin quietly and hide your presence.”
“We move when Jincheong collapses the ground.”
When she finished speaking,
the forest fell silent.
Even everyone’s breathing diminished.
Each of them checked the dirt and leaves around their position once more,
and recalled the feel of the tool gripped in their hand.
Then they waited.
Waiting was noisier than expected.
The sound of leaves rubbing together,
the sound of insects folding their wings,
even the motion of throats swallowing breath.
Rag folded and unfolded a single finger on the branch.
Distance, speed, intervals.
Miryeong held her breath, barely even blinking.
‘Now… hide even the sound of your breathing.’
The words only rolled in her throat.
The sunset light began to stretch long over the road.
The first thing to appear was the advance scouts.
Six, ten at most.
Shadows walking scattered ahead of the carts.
One side searched along the forest edge,
while the other trod the center of the road.
They occasionally stopped to stab the ground with their spears,
exchanging brief hand signals.
The scouts did not “hurry.”
The very fact that they did not hurry proved their skill.
They scraped the road with their toes to check the firmness of the dirt,
and parted the grass with the tips of their spears to read the gaps along the forest edge.
Each time they exchanged short hand signs,
Miryeong watched the height of their hands.
Low.
Visible only to one another.
A habit that said, “We are being quiet, too.”
Rag nodded ever so slightly.
They were coming.
Truly.
Behind them, the carts came into view.
There were three.
Each time the wheels turned, the creaking sound arrived late through the lengthening sunset.
Soldiers were attached to each cart,
and the spacing seemed to have been deliberately widened.
And pulling those carts were three blue oxen.
Under the sunset, the lines of their backs gleamed dully.
Each time they breathed out at length, faint steam scattered into the air.
Lastly, a little farther back, one more blue ox could be seen.
It was a beast prepared as a spare.
Two soldiers beside it drove it along from both sides, matching its pace.
It meant they intended to keep moving even if one collapsed.
On the left and right of the procession, there were also separate guard units.
Their spear tips turned toward the forest,
their steps measuring the intervals as they trod the outside of the road.
Cutting between them, a knight clad in silver armor was moving back and forth between the carts and the vanguard.
His walking pace was slow, but his position kept changing.
And near the carts, she could feel the presence of another knight clinging close like a shadow, never falling away.
Miryeong did not observe those movements with her eyes alone.
The smell of metal mingled in the sunset,
sweat, the breath of beasts,
and, among them, the familiar flow that brushed past in brief instants.
One mobile, one fixed.
Once that judgment was complete, Miryeong lowered her breathing even further.
“The scouts pass first.”
“Until they’ve all gone by, no one moves.”
Jincheong was holding his breath beneath the ground at the designated point.
He held the soil above his head with earth Arkhyn,
fixing the small space in place so it would not collapse.
He suppressed his Idrin to the very end.
If the flow rose, the knight might notice first.
Instead, he lowered his senses into the earth.
One vibration, then two.
The resonance of hooves.
The sound of wheels scraping gravel.
Underground,
Jincheong suppressed the sound of his own heart first.
If the earth trembled, that tremor would spread.
If it spread, it would reach the knight.
He spread his palm and felt through the texture of the soil once more.
It must not collapse here.
The collapse had to happen only once.
Marin did not pull the rope aboveground.
Without pulling it,
she only kept it taut.
If the rope shook first, that was not a signal but a mistake.
Now—
the time had come.
Thud.
With a sudden impact, dust rose low from the ground.
A blue ox let out a low cry.
Several of the advance scouts turned their heads at once.
The procession had stopped right behind them.
The cart they looked at had one wheel half-sucked into the ground.
As the wheel twisted, the axle creaked,
and from the recoil, the yoke was pulled tight, causing one blue ox to collapse onto its knees.
A moment of doubt and confusion.
An attack?
No, just an accident?
That confusion was brief, but sweet.
The soldiers’ eyes turned to the cart wheel,
and their spear tips lowered with them.
Eyes hoping it would end as an “accident.”
The knight watching the scene quickly swept his gaze over the surroundings.
For the moment, he could sense no presence at all.
It was then.
Another blue ox following in the rear let out a rough bellow,
and suddenly staggered sideways.
Its legs folded as though something unseen had seized its ankles and yanked.
As the beast fell to the ground, dirt sprayed up.
The sensation of the rope changing tension with a snap.
Marin held her breath,
bearing only the certainty that it had not “fallen,” but that she had “toppled” it.
At that moment,
the knight in silver armor shouted as if tearing his throat.
“It’s an ambush!”
Soon, somewhere, there came a sharp pop.
Smoke began to rise.
The smoke screen rode the wind and spread low, sweeping over the road.
The knight immediately raised his voice.
“Maintain formation! Don’t scatter!”
He swept one glance behind him and added at once.
“Archers! Secure sight lines! Prepare to fire!”
There was no substantial damage yet.
That was why, all the more—
for now, the right move was to “prepare.”
The archers stepped back and raised their bows.
Even without visibility,
they first made “places to shoot.”
Seeing that, the forest grew even quieter.
As the smoke settled low, the soldiers’ feet grew heavy all at once.
When people cannot see,
their instincts stop their feet first.
From within the smoke, someone shouted, “Left!”
only for it to immediately change to, “No, right!”
The instant sound lost its direction,
the formation wavered with it.
And that confusion deepened.
Miryeong counted that confusion.
One breath.
Two breaths.
And by now, the place where the fire should enter.
The soldiers raised their spear tips and formed a semicircle around the carts.
The scouts aimed at the forest edge, widening their spacing one step at a time.
Then,
directly beneath the cart stopped with its wheel sunk in.
Srrrk.
The ground opened.
A very narrow gap.
But that gap was a “path.”
Underground, Lia and Rion had their fingertips pressed together,
holding only the edge of the fire.
That light flared once, like a breath.
From Lia’s fingertips, the shape of a stake was once again carved out of flame.
Beside her, Rion laid his hand over hers, holding the wavering edges in place.
It would not last long.
When the fire began to tremble slowly.
“Now.”
The instant Lia clenched her teeth and supported it,
Rion drove the stake of fire into the gap in the cart’s floor.
Chiiiik.
The wood reacted at once.
Lia and Rion withdrew their arms at the same time.
As the gap closed, the two lowered themselves back into the soil—
in the direction Jincheong opened for them.
And a few beats later.
From beneath the cart floor, flames rose with smoke.
At first, it was a small fire.
But it is from “small” things that fire makes people move.
The soldiers’ gazes, spear tips, and footsteps all rushed to one side.
The real confusion—
was only just beginning.
The soldiers around the cart busied themselves trying to put out the fire.
At that moment, the knight in command felt it.
A flow.
From beneath the ground—
the sensation of someone sending Idrin flowing and drawing up vitality.
“Underground!”
the knight shouted.
“Watch the ground!”
Miryeong held her breath and thought.
As expected.
They are not overreaching.
But—
just a little more.
Even at the knight’s shout, Jincheong did not stop.
Behind them, the cart tangled with the blue ox Marin’s rope had toppled.
One wheel was holding on while half-lifted.
He could not raise the entire cart.
But he could break its balance.
Jincheong bit the inside of his mouth once.
To pour out Arkhyn with force,
he drew up the Idrin he had suppressed until the very end.
His body reacted first.
His muscles hardened, and his breath grew hot.
At the same time—
he knew someone was looking at him.
He gathered the flow of earth into a single point.
Inside the cart,
from beneath the axle, a rock-like mass of earth shoved upward like a wedge.
Creeeak—!
The wheel supporting the weight twisted under the pressure from the side,
and in the end, broke apart and fell away.
The cart lurched to one side, spilling its cargo.
Sacks tore open,
and food scattered across the already damp ground.
In that moment, the knight became even more certain.
The main axis of this ambush.
This flow of Idrin—
he would catch the earth ghost.
Following that flow, the knight’s feet changed direction.
And that movement—
Muryeong did not miss.
The knight felt it in an instant.
A wolf-like, intense flow
that made him forget the earth ghost’s flow from moments ago.
And toward that direction, he immediately raised his sword.
Kaaang.
Metal rang out.
A white-haired Haraya was bringing down a heated axe.
The knight said,
“Kyle Everheim.”
Muryeong answered at once.
“Is introducing yourselves your specialty?”
It was then.
Fweeeet—
Miryeong’s whistle rang out.
The signal to retreat.
Muryeong immediately shoved hard with his axe.
Under that pressure, Kyle had no choice but to be pushed back one step.
And normally, at this moment, crossbow bolts should have flown in.
But.