Just moments ago, this place had been nothing short of a small battlefield. It had been a chaotic storm of orders and reports, of furious battle cries, of the clash of steel, of screams and groans.

But then, the Venerable One of Dark Heavens had appeared, and like a great tsunami, he had swept it all away.

It was as if none of it had ever happened.

Now, an eerie silence pressed in, broken only by the occasional moan from the wounded and the quiet, hushed voices of runners and adjutants coordinating the cleanup. There had been fighters, there had been bloodshed, and there had been death, but of the enemy, not a single trace remained. No bodies, no bloodstains, nothing.

It was an unreal spectacle. For a moment, Se-ah felt a wave of vertigo as she tried to comprehend the scene that so thoroughly defied all logic.

“Mistress.”

The voice of her field commander pulled her back to reality. “We are tending to the casualties, and the reorganization to maintain the street blockade is underway.”

“Good,” Se-ah replied curtly, then stopped the commander as he turned to leave. “This sight… to you, who have stood on so many battlefields, is it strange? No, of course it’s strange.”

At her question that was not quite a question, the field commander paused. He turned and surveyed their surroundings for a moment. Everyone was engrossed in their duties; no one was paying them any mind. With a short sigh, he removed the leather helmet from his head and tucked it under his arm. A puff of hot steam rose from his hair, carrying the scent of sweat.

“It is, my lady. As you say, it is incredibly strange,” he admitted. “It is also unsettling and unnerving. I even feel as if I am under some kind of spell.” It was a surprisingly candid confession. He offered a weary smile at Se-ah’s surprised expression. “But then, bizarre things often happen on a battlefield. Things occur that you cannot possibly understand at the time.”

He seemed to want to explain further, but then, blaming his own warrior’s lack of eloquence, he resorted to a more familiar method.

“Forget it.”

“Excuse me?”

He tightened the loose leather straps of his armor. “On the battlefield, one’s vision inevitably narrows. That’s only natural. If you focus on the strange things, you are bound to make a mistake.”

Se-ah slowly nodded in understanding.

“Everything makes some sort of sense when you look back on it after enough time has passed. You can see things you couldn’t see before.”

“Is that so…”

He glanced around once more, then gave Se-ah’s shoulder a quick, reassuring pat. “So for now, Commander, just forget it.”

Se-ah nodded again. “That is good advice, born from long experience on the battlefield.”

The commander gave a bitter smile as he placed the helmet back on his head. “Of course, whether an experience as bizarre as this can ever be explained, even with time, remains to be seen.”

He was right about that, too. But the conversation had its intended effect. Se-ah’s mind returned to her duties.

“What of the Venerable One of Dark Heavens and Geum-ju? Any word on their whereabouts?”

It had only been moments since the Venerable One of Dark Heavens had eliminated the last of the martial artists and vanished.

“Regarding that…”

It was Gyu, who had been waiting silently behind them, who answered. “Geum-ju disappeared shortly after the Venerable One of Dark Heavens first revealed himself. As for the Venerable One of Dark Heavens…” She sent a sharp gaze down the street. “His energy is still so distinct I can feel it clearly. I cannot pinpoint his exact location, but…” Her mouth felt dry as she continued, “…he is definitely still somewhere on this street.”

Se-ah nodded. Just as she was about to issue an order, a deafening explosion ripped through the air, and a powerful tremor shook the ground beneath them. Gyu moved faster than thought, throwing her body over Se-ah to shield her.

“Over there!” she yelled.

From the wreckage of a building that had been blown to smithereens at the heart of the explosion, a figure in a crimson dress leaped into the air. It was Geum-ju.

“You bastard! You bastard! How do you know my name?!” her voice thundered, echoing through the desolate streets.

And then, the Venerable One of Dark Heavens’s characteristic laughter—a harsh, metallic grating sound—spread like a funeral dirge through the entire district.

***

The sound waves from his laugh rapidly dispersed the dust cloud, revealing his form. Geum-ju, who had landed on the roof of a building across the street, screamed at him again.

“Who told you my name?! Answer me, right now!”

In an instant, his laughter ceased. He twisted his head to the side at an unnatural angle to look up at her.

“Did you truly believe,” the Venerable One of Dark Heavens said, “that you could hide your name from me, no matter what you did or where you were?”

As he spoke, a pair of eerie, blue demonic flames ignited over the sealed eyeholes of his white mask.

“D-don’t be ridiculous!”

He was standing on the street below, looking up at her on the rooftop. And yet, for some reason, she felt as if he were towering over her, looking down from some impossibly high place.

“Did you think that by hiding your name, you could hide your sins as well?”

The eyes of the Venerable One of Dark Heavens, now burning with demonic fire, were seeing a different reality.

[Se Yu-hwa! Give me back my brother! Give me back my family!] A woman with gouged-out, bleeding eye sockets was clutching at Geum-ju’s hair, wailing.

[You bitch, Yu-hwa! Was that paltry twenty jeon worth ruining the man who raised you?!] A middle-aged man, dragging his entrails behind him, crawled forward and clawed at her leg.

[Lady Se Yu-hwa! My children are crying from hunger! Please, give me back my breasts!] A peasant woman, her torso a bloody mess, thrust three crying infants toward Geum-ju. The infants, all headless, wailed with all their might from their severed necks.

[Did you really think I could survive after you took the arms from a man who knew nothing but hard labor?]

[My hand! Give me back my hand!]

At first, there were only a few. But as time stretched on, their numbers grew, until they formed a dense, pressing crowd around Geum-ju. And beyond them, the line of vengeful spirits⁹ stretched on and on, its end impossible to see. Their hate-filled accusations, their despairing shrieks, melded into a horrific, discordant symphony. The sound grew louder and louder until it became a single, monstrous roar, the individual words lost in the cacophony.

[What sin did my only daughter commit that you took her from me?! What grudge did you have against a child of that tender age to make her die so miserably?! How can you visit the sins of the father upon the child?! How will I ever be able to face my daughter in the afterlife?!]

[I will tear you to pieces! Even if my bones turn to dust, even if I must suffer in the fires of hell for a billion kalpas, I swear I will curse you and rip you limb from limb!]

Behind the white mask, Yeon So-hyeon’s face was contorted in agony. Their injustice, their sorrow, their resentment, and their rage—it all pierced his heart with a terrifying vividness. The Scripture that Commands the Dark and Quakes the Heavens was forcing the stories of these vengeful souls, their final memories, directly into his mind.

The demonic fire on his mask, as if responding to his own fury, blazed even more fiercely. He raised a trembling hand to cover the mask, but it did nothing to block the vision. He looked down, but there was no escape. The burning flames showed him everything.

A trickle of blood flowed from the corner of his mouth, where he had bitten his lip.

“…Cough! I told you to stop muttering that nonsense!” Geum-ju was screaming at him. “Just answer my damn ques—?!”

As he snapped his head up, Geum-ju instinctively stumbled two or three steps back.

Yeon So-hyeon’s voice exploded with the force of thunder.

[SE-YUHWA!]

A storm of black Demonic Qi erupted from his body.

[Resist with all your might! Use everything you have! Even in death, you will suffer for eons until every last ounce of this resentment has faded!]

The Demonic Qi infused in his voice was so intense that the surrounding buildings began to tremble, and the dust that had settled was whipped back into the air.

“Shut up!”

Geum-ju reflexively threw up an energy shield, which vibrated violently from the force of his roar. “Who the hell do you think you are?! What gives you the right to judge me?!” Pushing her power to its absolute limit, ugly, dark-red veins bulged across her face. A formidable aura of power blasted out from her in all directions. “Take your pathetic hero act to your grave!”

She whipped her hands through the air, and the space around the Venerable One of Dark Heavens erupted in a series of explosions. Through the deafening barrage, a metallic voice cut through, embedding itself directly in Geum-ju’s ear.

“First, one.”

“More nonsense?”

The words were meaningless to her. She raised her hands, her nails sharpened like claws, and saw that her right ring finger was gone.

“…?!”

Crimson blood spurted from where the digit had been. “Wh-when did you… my finger…?!”

The Venerable One of Dark Heavens’s grim laughter echoed in the ruins. “You, who destroyed the lives of others so easily, are you so surprised by a single finger?”

As the dust settled, he was revealed, holding her severed finger between his thumb and forefinger.

“How dare you! How dare you…!”

She stomped her foot, and the ground around her caved in. It was a terrifying display of power, but the Venerable One of Dark Heavens seemed utterly unconcerned. He stood perfectly balanced amidst the tremor and casually tossed the finger into the air. It fell directly into his gaping maw.

Odo-dok, odo-dok. The sound of crunching bone was sickeningly clear.

“…A delicacy,” he rasped, his long tongue darting out to lick the blood that trickled from the corner of his lips. “Did the flesh of that neighbor’s child you first ate taste like this?”

“SHUT UP!”

Geum-ju’s form blurred as she shot toward him. The Venerable One of Dark Heavens slid backward like a ghost, but it was a movement she had already anticipated. Her arms lashed out like whips, tearing the air apart as they flew in irregular, unpredictable arcs. A barrage of strikes, as fast as light, hammered into his torso. A series of sickening cracks echoed through the air as his body was thrown about helplessly.

“DIIIIIE!” she shrieked, thrusting a final, devastating blow infused with all her internal energy into his body. The air itself seemed to rupture from the force of the strike, and his body was sent flying, grotesquely crumpled.

With a deafening crash, he tore through the outer wall of a building, shot through the interior, and burst out the other side. His momentum, still unchecked, carried him through several more walls before he was finally slammed into the side of a building far down the street and embedded there.

One by one, the buildings he had passed through, their structural integrity destroyed, began to collapse. The final building, the one he was embedded in, crumbled last, burying him under a mountain of rubble.

“Is that all you have?! Was that all the power you had to act so high and mighty?!”

As her triumphant, shrill voice rang out, another voice whispered right beside her ear, a voice that had no right to be there.

“Two.”