Chapter 17

“Hyeon-ah!”

Horrified beyond belief, Sa-yeong scrambled toward Sa-hyeon, who had tumbled all the way to the bottom of the stairs. He lay as motionless as a corpse, already unconscious, dark bruises spreading across both cheeks. Crimson stains were seeping fast through his clothes, proof that whoever had done this had beaten him hard enough to draw blood.

“Hyeon-ah? Hyeon-ah? Wake up. Please. Why … why are you here?”

“I was going to let him be, since it was pretty entertaining watching him scurry around the sheds and corridors, but I had to catch him when he tried to sneak into our private quarters.” The young man’s voice drifted down from the top of the stairs, sweet as syrup, friendly in a way that made her skin crawl. “What use is a rat that can’t make a single peep with its mouth when its footsteps are so obnoxiously loud?”

Sa-yeong, frantically cradling Sa-hyeon and patting his cheeks, snapped her head up at the sound of him.

The ferocious hatred in her eyes, the contempt, the raw intent to kill, seemed to strike the young man as insolence. He curled his lips into a sneer and lifted his hand, about to strike.

At that exact moment, the limp, lifeless child vomited blood.

“Keuk … ggeuk, heu-uh …”

“Hyeon-ah!”

It wasn’t relief, not really, even if it meant his airway had cleared. The six-year-old’s swollen eyes fluttered open to narrow slits, then rolled back until only the whites showed. Dark, clotted blood welled up from deep in his chest, coating his tiny teeth before spilling relentlessly over his lips.

Screaming her brother’s name, Sa-yeong tore open his collar with one hand. The sight of the bare chest beneath was so horrific she could barely keep her eyes open.

“Wh … what is …”

The beating had been concentrated, crushing, deliberate. His ribcage was warped beyond recognition, parts of his chest sunk in as if someone had caved him from the inside, while jagged bone jutted out elsewhere. His ribs were shattered. There was no doubt.

Her mind went blank. In a bizarre, suffocating daze, Sa-yeong traced her brother’s bare skin with trembling fingers.

Why is this child here? I told him not to follow me. I told him. So why is he here?

The answer came instantly, sharp enough to make her stomach twist.

It was her fault.

Even as her gang of comrades grew, Sa-hyeon was the only one she had ever truly trusted. Whenever they ran a decoy job, one distracting the target while the other stole the goods, she always brought Sa-hyeon along. They moved in perfect sync, as if sharing one body, and they had never once failed.

Hearing they were dealing with martial artists, Sa-hyeon must have decided his sister couldn’t handle it alone, and he’d acted on his own.

Exactly as he had been taught.

Exactly as his older sister had taught him.

“Now that I look at it, you approached me knowing everything.” Ho-gwan chuckled, rising from his seat and sauntering closer to Sa-yeong. “It’s so endearing I’m not even angry.”

“You wouldn’t believe how wickedly cunning young children are these days, hyung,” Ok-ri chimed in.

“True enough. You were a conniving little brat yourself, Ok-ri.”

Clutching Sa-hyeon to her chest, Sa-yeong glared up at Ho-gwan and scrambled backward, only for her spine to hit the wall almost at once.

Ho-gwan planted a hand beside her head and leaned in, studying her at leisure. His looming figure threw a dark, suffocating shadow over both children. Sa-yeong kept staring at him with feral defiance, but tears had already streaked down her face without her noticing, and her body trembled in hard, jerking spasms under the crushing weight of his martial aura.

His mouth parted in a sneering smirk as he caught her face with one hand, squeezing just enough to remind her he could break her.

“I’ll overlook the sin of you trying to scheme with that tiny head of yours. I quite enjoyed your silver tongue, so why don’t you come with us? Your circumstances will be far better there than living like a starved dog in this wretched place.”

The moment the words left his mouth, the hand he’d braced against the wall shot out and snapped around Sa-yeong’s thin wrist.

Her knuckles were bone-white around the battered, rusted dagger she’d been hiding.

“Ugh!”

Ho-gwan released her by reflex.

Sa-yeong had lunged and sunk her teeth into the inside of his wrist, biting down hard enough to tear a chunk free. The instant his grip loosened, she yanked Sa-hyeon out from under his shadow and dragged him close, shielding him with her body.

She spat the piece of Ho-gwan’s flesh onto the floor, wiped her blood-smeared mouth with her sleeve, and leveled the dagger at him.

Ho-gwan clicked his tongue and straightened. He flexed his hand a few times, opening and closing his fist, and the bleeding stopped as if it had never begun. Sa-yeong’s eyes still blazed, wild and unbroken.

“This is Hao Sect territory,” she spat, forcing the words out through a trembling voice that wanted to crack. “You go around doing whatever the hell you want, and it’ll come back to bite you.”

Ho-gwan let out a genuinely baffled laugh. “So you’re claiming to be a disciple of the Hao Sect? If that’s true, there’s absolutely no benefit in making the Namgung Clan your enemy.”

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.” Her grip tightened on the dagger until her fingers shook. “Either way, you’re the one who’ll be in trouble. The Imperial Palace won’t sit idle if you lay a hand on civilians.”

“Haha! Did you hear that, Ok-ri? The Imperial Palace won’t sit idle!”

Roaring with laughter, Ho-gwan drew his sword in one smooth motion and unleashed a horizontal slash.

A fierce gale tore through the air, whipping Sa-yeong’s hair into a frenzy.

A heavy thud sounded behind her.

Stiffly, as if her neck had been locked in place, Sa-yeong turned her head.

A severed head was rolling across the floor.

It tumbled, wobbled, then came to a stop with its face turned toward her, eyes wide and slightly furrowed, as if caught mid-plea, mid-regret. Behind it, the headless body dropped to its knees, swayed, and collapsed sideways. Blood fountained from the stump in time with a heartbeat that faltered, dwindled, and finally failed, leaving the dining hall suspended in a chilling silence.

It was the young cook, the one who had rushed out of the kitchen to protect them.

Sa-yeong’s breathing went ragged.

Namgung Ho-gwan had decapitated a civilian without a flicker of hesitation. It meant the Namgung Clan’s power and influence were so absolute they didn’t need to fear the Imperial Palace or the Hao Sect, and it proved, in the same breath, that these Namgung bastards were completely insane.

Even here, even now, disgust rose in her like bile. Not because she couldn’t mourn the dead man, but because her mind was already calculating, feverishly, how to keep herself and her brother alive.

She crushed the guilt down.

She had abandoned any hope of living like a decent human being a long time ago.

And no matter how hard she racked her brain, there was no way out of this alive.

Adjusting her grip, Sa-yeong pressed the blade against Sa-hyeon’s neck. She knew exactly what kind of fate waited for children in the hands of hypocrites who committed atrocities under the banner of “righteousness,” and she knew it was worse than death.

She had decided long ago that dying cleanly would be better.

Sa-hyeon couldn’t survive in this world without her, so they would die together. She believed that. She had always believed that.

Still, her hand wouldn’t stop shaking.

And Sa-hyeon … Sa-hyeon already looked like he was slipping away for good. Even if they somehow escaped right now, it felt inevitable that he would succumb to his injuries after days of agony.

Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to end his pain with her own hands.

In the end, the dagger slipped from her grasp and clattered to the floor. Sa-yeong wrapped both arms around Sa-hyeon and held him tight, trying to cover him with her own body, as if she could hide him from the world by sheer force of will.

“Haha. I stood back and watched, wondering what adorable trick you were planning, and this is it?”

Ho-gwan raised his sword for another horizontal slash.

Sa-yeong glared at the floor near his feet, then finally closed her eyes. Hot tears fell steadily onto Sa-hyeon’s threadbare clothes, worn to rags because she hadn’t been able to afford anything better for him in so long.

If I die, I’ll become an evil spirit. I’ll become a demon blades can’t cut, spears can’t pierce, and fire can’t burn, and I’ll slaughter every last one of you.

With that vow, soaked in venom and grief, she waited for the pain.

Seconds passed.

Then more.

No pain came.

Sa-yeong lifted her head.

Namgung Ho-gwan’s eyes, gleaming a moment ago like a madman’s, were rolling back into his skull. Twin streams of blood trickled from his nose. His sword slid from his fingers, and he collapsed onto his back, convulsing.

At the same time, Namgung Ok-ri toppled down the stairs from the second floor like a wooden puppet with its strings cut. Every Namgung martial artist in the dining hall, in the entire inn, crumpled to the ground without so much as a groan.

It was surreal, like reality had been peeled away and replaced with something wrong.

Sa-yeong stared at the bodies sprawled across the floor, her mind incapable of forming a single coherent thought, when a pale hand touched her shoulder, gentle as if they weren’t surrounded by blood.

She tilted her chin up.

A pair of light brown eyes looked down at her.

White hair, pristine as the fur of a divine beast, brushed her cheek. The air around him carried the distinct scent of medicinal herbs, the kind you only found in apothecaries.

Sa-yeong could only watch, stunned, as the white-haired man moved.

He pressed firmly just beneath Sa-hyeon’s lips to force his mouth open, then held his clenched fist directly above it. Squeezing, as if wringing something out, he coaxed a few drops of dark crimson liquid to bead at the underside of his hand.

The liquid dripped neatly into Sa-hyeon’s mouth.

Moments later, a hard, hammering heartbeat thudded against Sa-yeong’s arms, so sudden it felt like the world had slammed into her. Sa-hyeon’s corpse-like body convulsed violently. His head snapped back, his limbs went terrifyingly rigid, and when his shattered ribs bulged and shifted grotesquely beneath his skin, Sa-yeong screamed.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“Quiet.” The man didn’t look at her. “He’s healing.”

He lifted one finger, cutting off whatever else she would have said, and his low voice carried a strangely calming weight that smothered the furious outburst boiling in her throat before it could escape.

Instead, she poured all her strength into holding Sa-hyeon still, trying to keep him from slamming his small body into the cold floor. The sickening sound of bone grinding against bone echoed close enough to feel intimate, but she clenched her teeth until her jaw ached and endured it.

After a long stretch of time, Sa-hyeon’s writhing finally slowed, then stilled. The jagged bones that had protruded from his chest were gone. His wounds and bruises vanished as if they’d never existed, and he looked, impossibly, healthier and more vibrant than he had even before the beating.

A medicine that could fuse shattered bones, close torn flesh, stitch a fading life back together.

It shouldn’t exist.

It couldn’t.

“Is he … is he cured?” Sa-yeong stammered, her voice shaking as hard as her hands.

Did he survive? Is my brother going to live?

The questions clogged her throat until she couldn’t force them out, and the desperate sliver of hope she’d just grabbed onto shattered almost instantly.

“No. At this rate, he’ll die within five days.”

His tone was indifferent, absolute, as if he were commenting on the weather. Not a single ounce of pity touched his face for the child who would be dead within a week. The casual finality of it knocked the breath out of her.

“H-how …?”

“What I fed him is no different from an extreme, lethal poison. Soon his body will thrash against an energy it can’t handle, and his organs will start to burn away.”

“Why …?”

Then why heal him at all? Why let her see his body repairing itself, why give her hope only to crush it?

Sa-yeong stood there, devastated, lips trembling soundlessly, and the man swept his fingertips across Sa-hyeon’s forehead and eyelids. Wherever his fingers passed, torn skin fused as smoothly as water sealing over a stone, flawless and seamless, as if pain itself could be erased with a touch.

“I’m the only one in this world who can cure this poison.”

He spoke with the same tranquil certainty, then lifted Sa-hyeon from Sa-yeong’s arms and stood.

Between the aftermath of desperation, the shock of blood, and the whiplash of emotion, Sa-yeong felt detached from her own body, as if she were watching everything through a glass wall. She didn’t even realize she’d lost her grip on her brother until he was already gone from her embrace.

She lurched up, frantic, reaching for Sa-hyeon.

Looking down at her, the white-haired man delivered an ultimatum as calmly as if it were a kindness.

“Since I’ve laid my hands on him, I’ll take responsibility. If you want to follow, do as you please.”

“… Follow you?”

Who did he think he was, appearing out of nowhere and demanding this? What even was he?

She wanted to scream, to demand answers, to claw at him until he gave her something, anything she could trust, but no words came. Her survival instincts, the ones that had dragged her through every brutal day of her short life, were screaming loud enough to drown out everything else.

Follow him. This is the only way you and Hyeon-ah survive.

Have I lost my mind? Am I already dead, trapped in some flickering dream?

A bitter laugh scraped up her throat, more disbelief than humor. Sa-yeong glanced around, spotted her fallen dagger, and snatched it up.

Her eyes dropped to the two Namgung martial artists sprawled helplessly across the dining hall floor.

The white-haired man carrying her brother didn’t wait. With his back turned, he was already gliding out of the hall, his gait so light it looked like the clouds had taught him how to walk.

To Sa-yeong, it felt like a crossroads where every road ended in blood.

One man had terrorized her and Sa-hyeon, then tried to execute them.

The other had beaten Sa-hyeon to the brink of death while she, oblivious, had been stuffing her face with a horrific meal.

If she did what she’d always done, if she followed the vicious laws of survival she’d lived by her whole life, she would slit the throats of the two incapacitated bastards right here, right now, and call it justice.

But if she did, she could feel it in her bones, her brother and that mysterious man would vanish beyond her reach.

And following him meant stepping into the unknown.

She had no idea what kind of work he did, why he had intervened, what he would demand if she followed, or what steep price he would extract in exchange for saving Sa-hyeon’s life.

With all those terrifying uncertainties pressing down on her, it almost felt easier to murder the Namgung bastards and leave the rest to fate.

After a brief, agonizing moment, Sa-yeong turned her back on revenge and sprinted after him. The dagger stayed locked in her grip, her final, desperate bastion of defense.

The comrades of the Resolute Rat Gang. Jang-wi, whom she’d failed to save. The people of the Wind and Wave Inn.

She knew perfectly well that if she chased this fragile dream, countless others would suffer the fallout in her place, and she didn’t stop running anyway.

As she’d already admitted, she’d abandoned the luxury of living like a decent human being long ago. She’d let go of the naïve hope of becoming someone noble, someone who traded deep affection, upheld loyalty, and fulfilled moral obligations without flinching.

In the end, the person Sa-yeong chose to follow wasn’t the ethereal, white-haired man at all.

It was Sa-hyeon.

Because in her wretched, gutter-trash life, her little brother was the only thing in the world that mattered.

[Conclusion of Sa-yeong]