Chapter Text
Yul had made the right decision in visiting Danhyanggok one last time. The trees here were steady and unchanging. They did not fail him, not in the terrifying way his once-reliable body had. Even now, his legs trembled as he painstakingly crossed rough terrain that he'd used to run across. But he did not regret forcing his ailing body to trek all this way. Seeing that Danhyanggok had not changed relieved him, as this was not true in his dreams.
In those, blood ran in rivulets down stone, spattered against leaves and painting grasses. Sometimes, it fell from the sky itself. And always, always, the Shadow Assassin bore her stained sword. The sicker he'd become, the more those dreams snuck into his waking hours. He'd struggled to escape them.
But in the light of truth, Danhyanggok was a peaceful land of birdsong and bright sunlight. The specters of his past did not haunt him here. Instead, Yul learned once again that Danhyanggok had more shades of green than existed anywhere else in Daeho.
Despite his weakness, Yul pushed himself forward. He wanted to see as much as possible. But by the time he reached the tree Naksu had so often talked about, he had to sit down. No matter, he told himself, even though he was disappointed not to at least reach the rock where he'd broken his leg.
It wasn't as though he could expect that much from his body anymore. In fact, he expected so little from it that he had not packed anything in the way of supplies. This wasn't that kind of journey.
When Yul had been young, an old pet bird of his had escaped its cage. It had been sickly, and he had been horrified that he might have allowed the old thing to fly off while he cleaned its cage. The guilt had weighed heavily on him.
His mother had not berated him for losing it, nor had she told him that it was just a bird, and therefore not important. Instead, she’d told him that clever birds do not like to die in cages. They flew as far and long as they could before death took them.
Yul had chosen to do the same.
He could only hope his friends and family would forgive him for dying here alone.
**
Seo Yul had always been the type to ruminate about stuff, but this was really too much. Naksu perched at the top of her tree, trapped up there by Yul’s strange, solemn vigil at its base. It had been so long that the sun had moved in the sky, and was now in Naksu’s eyes.
You shouldn’t be here, Seo Yul, she thought, glaring daggers at him. When she’d first spotted him, she’d darted up here and assumed quite readily that she was thoroughly screwed. By now, her fear of discovery had been dwarfed by her frustration that one of the most observant people she’d ever met had not noticed her. Yul forcing her to act was much preferable to sitting up here and failing to come up with a plan. Naksu was no longer used to practicing patience.
“What can he possibly be thinking about?” she murmured crossly. Truthfully, it was not Yul’s serenity that bothered her. His was the first human presence she’d come across in three years. She hadn’t expected anyone to ever come. But trust the one boy from her childhood to make a reappearance in the place she’d chosen as her living tomb, after her body refused to die as she deserved.
Far below, Yul finally moved. He leaned forward, bracing both hands to the ground. A choked sound left him, and his entire body shuddered.
Was he… crying?
Naksu leaned forward to see better, gripping a thin, dead branch to do so. Was Yul thinking of her? Of how thoroughly she had led him astray, and how his friend had been brutally murdered because of it?
Even after three years, the thought stung, and Naksu clenched her hand to a fist. She put too much energy into the motion and snapped the dead branch. Leaning as she was, she couldn’t risk grabbing for it without potentially toppling herself. Instead, the dead branch fell slowly through the trees, plummeting short distances then getting tangling in leaves and slowing. It seemed to take minutes to reach the ground.
Despite the ample warning, Yul hardly scrambled out of the branch's path. His head lifted, and then he saw her. Dammit.
Naksu braced herself and jumped down. She landed in a crouch before him, still entirely uncertain of how to handle this.
It turned out, however, that her indecision did not matter. For likely the first time in his entire life, Yul reacted quicker than the person before him. Which was to say, he stared at Naksu just long enough for her to realize he looked terrible, then drew his swords and lunged.
Since coming to Danhyanggok, Naksu had trained often. Not because she expected to fight again but because three years ago, she had hoped desperately that using enough of her newly unlocked energy would petrify her again. But death had eluded her, and now, as she danced away from Yul’s attacks, she found she was stronger than she ever had been.
Despite this, she did not attack Yul. It was not difficult to merely evade him. His attacks held nothing back, but he was fighting like a far worse mage. Naksu had once bragged she could take on any Jeongjinggak mage and had believed it, but if there were any who would have put up a fight, it would have been Yul. Her victory over him would have came less from a difference in skill and more that Yul’s rigidity to the rules did not make for a creative fighter, which was a disadvantage.
Now his strikes were sloppy; his attacks relying on brute force alone. Where was the finesse she’d seem him fight with previously? Yul was weakening, trembling as he called forth his energy. Where was the stamina?
Then, though Naksu had not struck him, Yul collapsed heavily to the ground. His breaths were audible wheezes. He’d dropped both their swords, seeming to require all his strength to keep his head off the ground.
What was going on?
Though he clearly regarded her as an adversary, he kept his head down for some time. When he did raise it, his eyes were horribly bloodshot. Sweat ran in rivulets down his temples.
Something was wrong with him. Severely wrong. And though Naksu had proven three years ago that she was a monster with no empathy for others, she ran to Yul now.
“Yul-ah?” she asked. She hadn’t addressed him so casually since they were children.
His eyes tracked her. His lips failed to form words.
“Seo Yul! Tell me what’s happening!” If anything would work with him, it would be scolding him. She dared to shake his shoulder, then regretted it as he wobbled, as weak as a leaf in the wind.
With great effort, he said, “you didn’t kill me,” and then promptly collapsed forward. Naksu swore as she found herself propping up too much of Yul’s weight.
He thought she’d kill him? She hadn’t even fought back during their fight! This wasn’t an injury she’d caused. Naksu put a hand to his core only to flinch back as though scalded. There was something foreign in his energy. Something malicious.
She gritted her teeth and touched it again. Energy within him was surging, but it pulsed grotesquely against the natural movements of his body. She struggled to find even a hint of his own energy through it, though some must be there, as Yul was breathing.
How had he even gotten here? He must be in unimaginable pain.
Naksu maneuvered him so he laid flat before her. “Seo Yul!” she tried again, wishing to shake him but afraid even that would hurt him in his fragile state. He did not so much as flutter his eyelids. Now that she'd felt the war happening within his body, this did not surprise her.
Which meant his life was firmly in her hands. This was the absolute last thing Naksu wanted. She grimaced. Without her help, he would die here, either due to the foreign energy or because of the scavenging animals of Danhyanggok. But saving him would mean leaving Danhyanggok. She had vowed not to do that. Was Yul really worth it?
“Why would you come here when you were so ill?” she asked him. No healer in their right mind would have let him out of Sejukwon, let alone out of Songrim. “You really are a fool.” She leaned further over him to fix his bangs, which were sweaty and covering one of his eyes.
Three years ago, when she had woken on the lakeshore with broken memories of ice and betrayal and sinking blindly through black water and found her energy restored, she had decided that since she had chosen to be an assassin, she would live like one. It had seemed temporary back then; her continued survival a final kick of her energy reserves before she died.
Naksu had expected to quickly remember her blurry memories of what had happened before she landed in the soul shifter’s grave, to better understand why she’d attacked those she’d come to care about, and then petrify as she should have already.
But no amount of energy usage caused her to run wild. Her memories of her last actions as Mu-deok remained unclear. In three years, she had gotten none of the answers she was looking for.
And now she was here, kneeling beside the body of her oldest friend.
She was going to break her vows for this man, wasn’t she?
Well. At least if she took Yul to Songrim, it would no longer matter that her energy intervened to keep her heart beating. Even Yul hated her so much now that he risked his own life rather than give her a moment to speak. Park Jin would kill her on sight.
Naksu hoped this would happen before she was forced to stand in the same places where Jang Uk made her promises and she accepted them, only to kill him later.
Assuming Yul survived the trip there in the first place. It would be risky to travel with him. Naksu placed a hand flat on Yul’s chest. It rose in slight, fast movements, his breathing off-beat as his body struggled against the surge of energy within him. Good. He was fighting it. Giving into the malignant energy’s rhythm would spell madness and death. But no wonder she hadn’t been able to feel his own energy, whatever of it remained. He was too badly injured to use his breathing technique. What little reserves he had left couldn't even help him.
Often the difference between life and death for a grievously injured mage was whether they maintained control of their energy. Yul truly was on the brink of death, right now. Absurdly, Naksu caught herself breathing in the way Yul should, as though she could teach him it, as he had once taught her. She could still remember it, which made the disparity now only more obvious. Despite Naksu's best attempt to force them down, the memories washed over her slowly. Her hand and his whistle, pressed tight to his chest.
Unintentionally, her eyes flitted to where she had once found the whistle. Faded beads on old string hung from that pocket, and her breath caught. He still carried it? She grabbed it and ran her fingers over the smooth, grooved wood. Yes, this was it.
Slowly, Naksu leaned back from him. They couldn’t keep doing this; the two of them. One carrying it, then the other. Yul bearing it today, despite his certainty that she would kill him. The fact that he could die with it now, in the same way she once should have.
No. She wouldn't allow that.
Naksu raised her hand, brought forth her energy, and let the whistle burn. This cycle would end. And when she took Yul to Songrim, so would she.
**
Naksu had forgotten about the barrier. Worse, she had not expected that since she had last been here, Songrim’s security had apparently gone to shit. For the past ten minutes, Naksu had been screaming for literally anyone to come. And she knew they weren’t simply ignoring her because she had the Seo heir’s inert body on a makeshift stretcher beside her. If nothing else, they would sure care about that.
“Hey! If no one comes out I’ll take him to Jinyowon! Lady Jin will let him die but at least they answer their door!”
Grumbling, Naksu kicked at a stone on the ground, then sat beside Yul’s collapsed form. She couldn’t believe news of her hadn’t already reached Songrim. Though the villagers had helped her with Yul once they’d recognized him, they’d been terrified of her. Even they were aware that someone her size had to be brimming with energy to carry Yul alone. A bunch of them thrusted some weird black sigil in her face as she passed, like she didn't have enough to deal with.
Being ignored by so-called important people was not something Naksu had often dealt with, even as Mudeok the maid. She’d been prepared for an army, and instead, she returned to the same isolation she’d had in Danhyanggok.
“Do you want Seo Yul to die?” she yelled at the barrier. “Has Park Jin let this place fall apart?” Any longer, and she’d start feeling Yul up for his plaque.
A metallic clink behind her warned that someone had finally come, though not from the barrier, and whoever it was had a sword to her back. Naksu froze. A chill permeated the air around her, though it was the peak of summer. She did not plan to fight the fate that awaited her here. It had been a long time coming.
“Get away from him.”
That voice. Naksu had underestimated how much her memory would affect her perception of this place, if she was hearing this voice now. Slowly, she stood and turned.
But her ears had not misheard. Jang Uk stood behind her, dressed in black and emanating power like no one she had ever seen before. Naksu took a step away from him. Had whatever ailed Yul affected her as well? Was she hallucinating?
“You’re dead,” she told him. She listened to her energy carefully, but the only strange thing within her was the racing of her heart.
Uk made a quiet huff at her words, the same way he’d used to react when the Crown Prince hid an insult under a compliment. But he paid her no further mind, instead rushing to Yul. He put his sword aside to do so, which was impossibly foolish of him. Why would he disarm himself in front of the one who’d killed him?
Unless he had never died at all? But Naksu had watched him—
Uk whipped around, and she startled. “What did you do to him?” He said it harshly, and she wondered if this was his second time asking. Naksu tried to focus on Yul, who had not moved as Uk attempted to wake him.
Uk had spent less time trying than Naksu might have guessed, and now as he touched Yul’s core of energy, only the slight twitch of his eyebrows betrayed his horror.
This did not seem like Jang Uk. And he did not recognize her, which certainly meant it could not be him.
“He collapsed in front of me,” Naksu said. “I wondered why Sejukwon would allow such an ill mage leave alone, but it seems Songrim has changed.”
She meant that in more ways than one. If whatever stood before her wasn’t Jang Uk, then it was something that could appear as him. Likely, it was something sinister here for the rest of Yul’s energy—and no doubt hers, if it could manage it.
Once, something so evil would not have dared to appear this close to Songrim, but clearly, things had changed.
The fake Jang Uk eyed her, Yul, and the barrier. “Have you been to Songrim before?”
"Yes."
Uk narrowed his eyes. “I will allow you inside,” he said. “Go get Park Danggu and Master Heo. Tell them Seo Yul is outside and badly injured. We'll need help to carry him.”
He stood from Yul’s side and held out a plaque to her. Well. This defeated her hypothesis that he was an evil spirit. As she went to take it, he caught her forearm. His icy fingers pressed tightly into her skin. “Once inside Songrim, act with care. If you attempt to harm someone, you will be caught. And if it becomes clear that you did this to Yul, I will kill you myself.”
Naksu stared up at Jang Uk. The longer the perfect illusion held, the more she began to question whether this was reality after all. She had lived when she should have not. Had he done the same?
If it was really Uk, then he was pretending not to recognize her. Naksu couldn't imagine why--but he'd made his feelings clear. I will kill you myself, this cold, hard Uk had said. There was no love left in him. She had ruined that.
Naksu forced herself to nod back to him. Then she thought, I'll count on that, Jang Uk.