Jyom Pass

Jyom Pass is a fishing settlement set on the banks of the Ghajan River in Ionia. Still an active community, it is known for hosting the Spirit Blossom Festival, which draws guest artists and travelers from across the province. Its darker reputation comes from a single night, for Jyom Pass is where the serial killer Khada Jhin was first captured. For four years, Kusho and his students Shen and Zed hunted the murderer known as the Golden Demon, dissecting his crime scenes and searching for a pattern in the killings. The long investigation left all three men changed, until Kusho at last found the pattern he sought. On the eve of the Spirit Blossom Festival in Jyom Pass, the master disguised himself as a renowned calligrapher to blend in among the other guest artists, and waited while Shen and Zed laid a carefully prepared trap. When they finally came face to face with their quarry, Kusho was proven right: the feared demon was a mere stagehand from Zhyun's traveling theaters and opera houses, working under the name Khada Jhin. The capture divided them. Young Zed moved to kill the cowering man, but Kusho held him back, reasoning that they had already broken the Kinkou's remit and that revealing Jhin's mere humanity might undermine the trust that defined Ionian culture. He decided the killer should be taken alive and locked away in the monastery prison at Tuula. Shen submitted to his father's judgment, but Zed, haunted by what he had witnessed, could not accept the mercy, and a resentment began to grow in him at Jyom Pass that would shape the rest of his path. Years later, after Jhin walked free again, he returned to his work with Jyom Pass as its stage. Leaving clues that Zed and Shen would be forced to follow, he intended to draw them back to the Blossom Festival and the site of his first capture, so that in their desperation they would have to work together once more, as they had when they were young, before he revealed himself and began his true masterpiece.