She ran all the way to her room, anger giving her the stamina to ignore the throbbing pain in her ankle. Once inside, she closed and bolted the door, then turned to take a seat on the one chair in the room. Like any other bedroom she had seen here, hers was only mildly furnished; a small bed, a chair, and a dresser with a pitcher and basin on top being the only furniture. She took advantage of the chair, though, and lifted her leg to get a better look at the cut on her ankle.

It was the outside of her right ankle, a clean cut that left a flab of skin hanging from the side of her leg, blood dripping down onto her floor. She used the pitcher and an extra shirt to try and clean the cut, focused so intently on her task that she hadn't even noticed her door opening.

"How bad is it?" Yongguk's voice startled her, but she reacted with the first movement she could think of. She flung the pitcher at him. To her surprise he caught it, water sloshing out and dampening the front of his shirt, but he ignored it and came closer to squat in front of her. "We're not the enemy, Amber. We all had to go through that to join the temple. I wasn't as smart as you, though," he said with a small smile, and set the pitcher on the floor in front of her before pulling up the side of his pant leg. A long, thin scar marked his left leg from somewhere inside his shoe to up near his knee.

She found herself staring as he rolled it back down carefully, then before she could move away he dropped forward onto his knees and carefully took the shirt from her to begin cleaning her wound. "I know it was scary, more than you realize. I know. It's just... our way."

His words did nothing to sooth away the anger, but she found after a moment that his actions did. His hands were gentle as he cleaned and then wrapped her wound, and once he was done she was actually able to meet his eyes without wanting to kick him in the face.

"Why?" she asked, and though she could have meant it in several ways, he took it to mean the test. He shrugged before standing to wash his hands in the basin on her dresser; only when they were clean did he answer.

"The Dark Temple... I think you've probably caught on to the fact that we're not exactly a bunch of monks or something. The King of Darkellyun founded it, actually, and for hundreds of years the heirs to the throne were sent to train amongst the Brotherhood. We've changed a lot since then but at our core we still believe in the old ways. The main belief is that to be strong you must be brave, and to be brave you ust commit to the path you've chosen. No man, or woman, can live a life to their full potential unless they have commited themselves to their path."

"So if I had died in there..." she let the rest trail off, but to her surprise he shook his head.

"We don't want to kill you. If you hadn't been ready for the test, we never would have pu