The road to the palace was quieter than it should have been.
Not peaceful, never peaceful, but too controlled.
The kind of silence that didn't belong to night travel.
Ji-ho noticed it first.
His steps slowed slightly without meaning to.
Bella, walking beside him, felt it in his grip.
Tighter than before.
Behind them, the escort unit moved in formation.
Not just guards, elite palace protection.
Eight royal guards in front and rear coverage, flanking the Crown Prince's carriage path with disciplined precision.
At their center walked Ji-ho and Bella.
Protected.
Until now.
As Bella took a stance.
"You feel it too?" He whispered.
She didn't answer immediately.
Both their eyes scanned the tree line beside the road.
Dark shapes.
Still.
Too still.
The palace lanterns were far ahead now, just faint glimmers against the horizon.
They were exposed here.
On the open stretch between forest and capital road.
Ji-ho adjusted his hand around hers slightly as she worded "Stay close,".
But the words hadn't fully left her mouth when the sound came.
A sharp whistle cut through the air.
Bella reacted instantly as she tries to shield Ji-ho from the immediate danger.
"DOWN!"
"Protect the Crown Prince!" Poong Yeon shouted.
Instantly, the formation reacted.
Steel slid free in synchronized motion.
The escort unit surged forward, forming a protective arc around Ji-ho and Bella.
For a brief moment it worked.
Another stumbled back under coordinated strikes.
"Left flank secure!" a guard called.
"Push them back!" another ordered.
But Bella's expression didn't change.
Because she saw what they didn't.
The forest wasn't reacting like chaos.
It was reacting like command.
Then, the second wave hit.
Arrows.
Not random.
Targeted.
From elevated positions.
From blind angles.
A guard fell instantly, struck through the neck before he even turned.
Another collapsed seconds later.
The formation shifted.
Then broke.
"Formation collapsing!" someone of the younger guard shouted.
"Reform! Reform!" Poong Yeon orders.
Too late.
Shadows stepped out of the tree line.
Not scattered, nor desperate.
Organized.
Four assassins became six.
Six became more.
Torches ignited in their hands.
Steel caught moonlight like teeth.
Bella's breath caught.
A guard stepped in front of Ji-ho.
"Your Highness, move back-!"
The sentence never finished.
Steel flashed.
He dropped.
Silence cracked.
The escort unit tightened again instinctively, but the forest answered immediately.
A coordinated counterattack.
The guards were skilled.
But they were being outnumbered.
And worse, out-positioned.
"Fall back to the Prince!" Poong Yeon shouted as he fights fiercely.
But Ji-ho stepped forward instead.
"No," he said.
That one word changed everything.
Because now, it was no longer protection.
It was survival.
Bella was long gone from his side already fighting now.
When he saw her, he couldn't help but join the fight with the hope that they'd survive this together as the always did.
What motivated him to add the way he did Bella couldn't tell as Ji-ho pulled Bella behind him, dragging her off the road into partial cover as steel came alive around them.
From the tree line,movement erupted.
Shadows stepped forward.
Not random but organized.
Four figures emerged first, then followed by more behind them.
Torches flared to life in their hands.
Sword blades caught the faint moonlight like teeth.
Bella's breath caught.
"They followed us…" she whispered.
"No," Ji-ho said sharply.
His eyes narrowed.
"They were waiting."
The first assassin charged.
Bella met him halfway.
Steel collided instantly.
The sound rang out like a bell breaking in the night.
Clang!
Ji -ho stumbled back instinctively, but he didn't retreat fully.
His eyes stayed on her .
As an attacker emerged from the shadows, but his blood sword.
Ji-hi dodged his sword as he swung it at him.
It was like something possessed Ji-ho that he so moved differently now.
Not royal, nor restrained.
Something older and bolder came through him.
Survival.
He blocked another strike. As he twisted and drove the attacker back with a brutal counter.
The man staggered,momentarily losing his footing.
Ji-ho pressed forward, forcing space between them, but before he could fully capitalize on the opening, the assassin steadied himself, drawing in a sharp breath, and surged back into the fight with renewed force.
Bella was locked in her own fight, blade meeting blade, but at the edge of her vision she caught Ji-ho's movement, clean, precise, as he evaded one attacker and immediately turned on the second. The thought of him flashed through her for a fraction of a second… before she was forced back into her own struggle.
Ji-ho ducked just as the blade sliced through the air where his neck had been a heartbeat before. Too close. Dangerously close.
For a split second, everything blurred, sound, movement, even his own breath.
Bella saw it.
Her breath almost stopped at the sight of the incident that she hurriedly knocked her open it down.
Bella's voice reached him like it was coming from somewhere far away. Not loud. Not real. Just an echo cutting through the chaos.
"Ji-ho… focus. Remember your training."
His eyes flickered. The battlefield sharpened again. The world snapped back into place
The assassin in front of him wasn't just strong.
He was massive.
Easily 6'6", broader through the shoulders, built like a wall carved from war itself. Compared to Ji-ho's 6'4" frame, it wasn't a difference in height that mattered, it was weight, presence, pressure.
Every strike Ji-ho made was being absorbed, redirected, answered.
Steel clashed again.
Hard.
Ji-ho staggered back a half step.
The assassin pressed forward instantly.
Too fast,too heavy.
Ji-ho blocked but the impact rattled through his arm.
For the first time in this fight, he believed in his will to survive.
But he filtered just slightly.
A sense of hesitation.
And that was enough for the assassin to lift his blade high,for the kill.
Ji-ho saw it too late.
The strike came down but Ji-ho dropped his weight instantly, spinning low across the ground.
His boot dragged in a tight arc, circling the attacker's stance, disrupting balance.
Dirt scattered.
Steel missed by a breath.
The assassin turned sharply.
But Ji-ho was already rising.
The two blades met mid-air.
CLANG.
Metal screamed against metal.
The force shook Ji-ho's arms but he held.
The assassin pushed harder.
Ji-ho didn't retreat.
Their strength locked.
Breath against breath.
Pressure against pressure.
Then, Ji-ho shifted.
A sudden, sharp movement.
He drove forward with his shoulder, breaking the clash just enough to reposition.
The assassin stumbled half a step that was all Ji-ho needed.
He lifted his sword not for a wide strike.
Not for power.
But precision.
And struck.
The hilt, hard, controlled, crashed into the side of the assassin's head.
A clean, brutal impact against the skull.
The man's body jolted violently.
His stance broke instantly.
He staggered once, twice, then collapsed into the dirt.
Unconscious. Still. Defeated.
Another assassin raised a bow,
Bella saw it first.
"Behind you!"
Ji-ho turned too late to dodge fully.
The arrow fired but a blade knocked it mid-air.
It spun off course into the ground.
Ji-ho didn't look back.
Because Bella had moved closer.
She had blocked it.
Their eyes met for half a second.
Something unspoken passed between them.
They didn't have the time to think or recollect themselves for the danger behind them was growing.
She looked back at the direction of the archer but forest behind the archer shifted.
They had little to no time to run before the shadow behind the enemy multiplied.
Not one but two.
More.
Too many to consider fighting there.
One stepped forward.
Then another.
Then another.
Until the darkness resolved into shape after shape.
Six more.
Together with the archer, a total of seven.
"We need to escape now" Bella tells him.
"They were never alone…" he whispered.
Bella didn't answer.
Because she understood it already.
This wasn't an attack.
It was a containment.
A kill box.
The archer released.
Ji-ho grabbed Bella in the same instant.
"MOVE!"
The arrow sliced past where they had been standing and buried itself into the ground behind them.
No hesitation.
No warning.
Just execution.
He pulled her.
Hard.
Into the trees.
Branches whipped across Bella's face as she stumbled behind him.
"Ji-ho-wait-what about-if we try- to find the-others"
"We might not make it if we do," he cut in sharply. "Am not letting history repeat itself with you try to protect me from danger always while you yourself for victim to it."
This statement pulled at the heart strings of Bella, that she followed him without the question.
Behind them footsteps erupted instantly.
The six moved as one unit.
Coordinated.
Hunting.
Bella glanced back once.
Just once.
Enough to see them spreading through the forest line like a net closing in.
Her stomach dropped.
"They're surrounding us Ji-ho. We need to leave this forest immediately"
"I know," Ji-ho said again, voice lower now. Controlled. "And we will."
he made a decision.
"This way."
He pulled her off the main path into a narrower, hidden trail leading away from the road entirely.
Branches whipped past them again.
The sound of pursuit grew distant, but not gone.
Always there.
Watching. Waiting.
And then through the trees ahead a structure emerged.
Old.
Secluded.
A noble manor.
Half hidden by time and vegetation.
Stone walls worn by years.
Wooden gates slightly open.
Ji-ho slowed.
Bella looked at him.
"Do you know this place?" she said.
"Yes."
A pause.
"…We'll be safe here."
But even as he said it neither of them fully believed it.
They entered.
The gate creaked loudly behind them.
Too loud.
Like it wanted to be heard.
Ji-ho closed it carefully.
Silence fell.
Not peace.
Suspicion.
Bella exhaled shakily.
"We made it?" Ji-ho said but Bella didn't answer immediately.
Her eyes stayed on the dark treeline outside the gate.
"…For now," she said, as Ji-ho lits the oil touches.
Now, they wait.