Seongjin stood watch at the edge of the camp.

  The hour was deep enough that even the fires had quieted. Only embers remained, breathing faintly beneath metal bowls. The wind moved low through the grass, careful not to wake anyone.

  He did not shift his stance.

  Guard duty was like that.You stayed still so the world could move around you.

  Above him, the sky had cleared.

  Dust no longer veiled it. Stars lay scattered in uneven clusters, some sharp, some dim, as if the night itself had been scarred and healed badly. Seongjin tilted his head back and looked up for a long time.

  He could not remember the last time he had truly seen the sky.

  Marching, fighting, training—his gaze had always been forward or down. The ground, the enemy, the next order. Looking up felt almost indulgent.

  A star flickered and vanished behind a passing cloud.

  He lowered his eyes.

  His left hand rested against his chest.

  Beneath the layers of cloth and leather, the wooden tag pressed lightly against his skin. He slipped two fingers inside and drew it out.

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  The tag was warm.

  Not from the night air—but from him.

  Seongjin turned it slowly in his palm. The grain of the wood rose unevenly beneath his thumb, familiar now. He traced the carved letters without reading them aloud.

  Park Seongjin.

  The name did not feel like something spoken anymore. It felt like weight. Like proof.

  He thought of the hands that had carved it.Of the old man’s knife.Of black paste rubbed into shallow cuts.

  This was what remained if he did not.

  His fingers curled, closing around the tag.

  Then he looked at his hand.

  Under the starlight, it did not look like the hand he remembered. The skin was rough, cracked in places. Small cuts crossed the knuckles, some scabbed, some newly reopened. Dried blood sat in the lines of his palm like something that would never fully wash away.

  This hand had drawn a blade.This hand had pulled a string.This hand had closed around a throat and held.

  He opened and closed his fingers once.

  They moved without hesitation.

  Seongjin let out a slow breath.

  I survived.

  The thought came unbidden—not as pride, not as relief, but as fact.

  From somewhere deeper, another followed.

  From that day on, the war never truly ended within me.

  He did not know when that day had been.Perhaps it had not been a single day at all.

  The wind shifted. A banner somewhere down the line rustled once, then stilled. No alarms sounded. No footsteps approached.

  Seongjin slid the tag back beneath his clothes and rested his hand on the spear again.

  The wood was cool now.

  He lifted his gaze to the sky one last time, fixing the shape of a star cluster in his mind—as if marking a place he might return to, if returning were ever possible.

  Then he faced forward.

  Guard duty continued.

  The night passed without incident.

  And that, somehow, made it heavier than battle.