Damn brat. Where did he dump his age?
Adjutant Raina’s head ached from the early morning, still serving her troublesome superior. She thought he’d endured well on the first day, but he ended up causing an incident after all. Still, yesterday was better. At least there was an excuse.
It was truly laughable that people actually liked it more when they learned that the great hero could also fall ill. Well, he was such an inhuman human anyway. Even she was seeing him laid up for the first time, so what could she say?
He was the kind of man who’d run around wielding an axe even with his body skewered on spears like meat on a spit. Thinking about it, yesterday’s worrying had been pointless. If he was someone who’d die from just being dunked in cold water, he would’ve died long ago.
“Shameless brat. Really doesn’t fucking listen to a word I say.”
But unfortunately, if he continued holing himself up in his room like this, it would trouble many people. It wasn’t her business as his adjutant, but other troubled people wouldn’t just leave it alone. They couldn’t dare raise their voices to the great hero, so they only tormented her instead.
Aigoo, my fate. So this morning too, Raina came to the separate palace again.
He couldn’t keep using the excuse of being sick. It was because that excellent physician had boldly declared he was fine and left. So in the end, it meant the powerless and pitiful adjutant had to drag her superior out of this damn room.
Though she grumbled internally, her body moved on its own. She knocked on her superior Miros’s door, tap tap, and said,
“General. You can’t skip today. You really have to show your face.”
But as expected, once again there was no answer. Does this bastard even know the word ‘dignity’ to begin with?
“General, I’m coming in.”
The moment the adjutant grabbed the doorknob and pushed her body halfway in, a rough, irritable voice shot out from inside.
“Fuck off.”
“…That’s quite aggressive for a morning greeting.”
She paused for a moment, but soon let out a hollow laugh and entered the room anyway. His appearance was quite a sight. Disheveled hair, sunken eyes, a strangely pale face. His eyes were already sharp as blades, but today they were even worse. The look of someone ready to kill.
She deliberately clapped her hands, then spoke in an exaggerated, artificial tone as if she were an actor.
“How wonderful would it be if you woke up this early every day. Now, you need to wash and get ready, don’t you?”
“I said get out.”
“Oh my, are you finally feeling like going?”
“Raina.”
The face that had been grinning shamelessly froze as if cracked. Oh, this is bad. Today’s a bit dangerous. Why? Was it because he woke up after being sick yesterday? Or could it be this bastard didn’t sleep? Though she maintained her smile to the point her facial skin felt stretched, her mind spun furiously.
The great hero of victory, General Miros, rarely called anyone by name. No, he rarely called people to begin with. He was someone who’d rattle on as he pleased and you had to listen on your own. She was grateful enough that he called her “adjutant.”
For such a person to call her by name was a warning in its own way.
“I told you to get out.”
“General, I clearly told you, didn’t I? You know, right? I’m innocent?”
She spoke nonchalantly while slowly backing away, then hurriedly left the room. Though she fled almost at a run, she cursed her superior’s temperament internally without pause.
Left alone again, Miros rubbed his stiff eyes and made groaning sounds. Because he absolutely couldn’t get his mind straight.
The room was still cold. He was still sitting by the window. Without eating or drinking, without sleeping, he’d been sitting there all night just staring outside. At the end of his gaze hung the blurry form of the White Snake Mountain Range.
How strange. That thing is so far away, yet it feels unfamiliar yet close, as if its breath could reach me right beside me.
He roughly ran his hands through his hair and spat out an irritated mutter.
“Fuck…”
Miros himself knew. That this kind of behavior couldn’t be good. His adjutant had merely done her job. Whatever else, he was the protagonist of that damn banquet, and it would be good for everyone if he at least showed his face.
This isn’t the time to be spacing out staring at some damn mountain.
I can’t do this. He gritted his teeth and barely managed to rise from his seat. And though sluggish, he began preparing in his own way. He put on the stiff dress uniform that felt like it was strangling him, hung that excellent medal on his chest. Then suddenly, such a thought occurred to him.
Why do I have to wear this thing?
Someone might consider it an honor and wear it proudly. But right now, he was seized by a certain impulse. The texture of the medal in his hand felt alien. It’s mine. I obtained it through the results I achieved.
“So what?”
He didn’t even realize he’d spoken aloud. The inside of his arm gradually went numb. His wrist trembled, and the heat he’d barely been forgetting seemed to seep deep into his bones.
Thud—his medal fell off. So weakly and futilely. But he didn’t care about such things. He put it down almost as if throwing it. No, perhaps he really did throw it. He stood there like that and looked around.
His eyes rolled around, unbearably stiff. His fingertips trembled minutely. Then his eyes naturally turned beyond the window. To the White Snake Mountain Range he’d tried so hard to shake off, tried to ignore with gritted teeth.
Unlike the blurriness of his vision, that presence increasingly gripped his throat with heavy weight. The tingling, aching pain in his arms now became an intense agony as if grinding his bones. But he forgot even that. A pain pulsed as if something was burrowing inside his ribcage, tearing at his living flesh.
Am I even breathing? Why must I flounder in such pain? His breath grew short, but his lungs seemed shriveled with nothing going in or out.
Then his gaze was briefly stolen by a mirror caught in his wavering vision. Miros felt his reflection in the mirror was terribly unfamiliar. A bloodless face, gloom cast beneath his eyes. His tightly shut mouth felt its boundaries blur.
And something flashed through his pupils. Something faintly golden. No, did I really see that? Did I just see an illusion? Or did I go crazy and mistake it for seeing something?
But the moment he became aware of that golden flash that passed in an instant, he could no longer endure it.
He left the room without hesitation. And ran frantically.
What did it matter about the splendid decorations of the gorgeous separate palace corridor given by the king, or the fine fabrics? He’d never cared about the wealth and glory of this excellent country to begin with. That wasn’t what he needed.
He crossed some threshold of boundaries. He didn’t know what it was himself. A chilling current wrapped around his entire body eerily, but couldn’t cool the boiling heat.
Deep in his lungs, unpleasant heat seemed to creep up and burn everything away.
“Just a little, just a little, more…”
He muttered as if possessed by something. He just ran and ran again. Just a little, just a little more. Whether it was words or thoughts didn’t matter.
***
It wasn’t someone’s whisper. There was no reason. He just wanted to erase this heat, this thirst, this longing. Evidence? How could there be such a thing? He just knew he had to do this, that he had to go there.
That alone dominated everything about him.
He crossed hills and passed ramparts. Even as he ran through the forest, everything was stolen from him by the White Snake Mountain Range visible before him. He didn’t even know it was stolen. So he couldn’t think to take it back.
Even when the dirt path suddenly changed to a rough, hard stone road, even when it transformed into rugged terrain firmly blocked by large boulders. He was sometimes fast, sometimes slow. But he didn’t stop.
His appearance was a mess. He looked precarious as if he’d collapse at any moment. But no one cared about such things.
“…Huh?”
At one such moment, he finally stopped.
“It was getting, closer… but…”
What on earth was happening? The outline of the mountain range that had seemed so far away became clear, but in an instant he lost it from his vision. But how could that be? How could such a massive mountain range disappear from before his eyes?
He looked around in confusion. There was a well-constructed but broken stone floor with only its form barely remaining, collapsed pillars, and hideous stone slabs left as if gnawed away. The stones half-buried in the ground showed traces of oddly having been touched by human hands.
In the middle of the landscape swallowed by time, he faced a stone statue miraculously left standing alone.
“…Strange.”
It really was strange. The form he encountered by chance felt oddly familiar. Though he knew better than anyone he’d never seen it before, he couldn’t take his eyes away.
It was massive and majestic.
The body carved from pure white stone had a human form, but the meticulously crafted features were far too perfect and alien to be called human. The statue’s beauty was breathtaking at a glance.
But in the center of that face, where eyes should be, horn-like protrusions jutted up as if piercing the sky.
A face that seemed to reject being looked at. Yet strangely, Miros who was actually looking at it found it even harder to look away.
He just stood there, rooted to the spot.
His breath became shallow and rapid. His heart pounded wildly, and from inside his arms the heat he’d barely been forgetting rose up strongly. His fingertips trembled numbly from that burning heat.
Thud, thud. The shabby footsteps and weak sounds were unusually clear.
Before he knew it, Miros was approaching right in front of the statue. Without even a moment to catch his breath, his hand reached out on its own. As if he’d been waiting for a long time, without any hesitation.
The moment his fingertips touched the foot of the statue, the texture of roughly carved stone seeped into his bones. Though the surface had countless marks of time carved into it, strangely it felt as if it were alive.
And at that very moment, the ground beneath his feet suddenly gave way.
As the earth’s support vanished, Miros’s body fell into empty air.
***
When he came to his senses again, Miros was standing in the middle of a completely different space.
His surroundings were submerged in thick fog. Even the space itself seemed to twist finely and embrace him.
That fog brushed against his skin cold and heavy like a ghost’s breath, and crawled along the floor like finely tangled silver thread.
Tree vines were entangled everywhere. The round, smooth leaves gleamed dimly even in the fog, and faint light that had seeped in from somewhere coiled between the vines.
The sky hung low, sticky and hazy gray. There was no boundary between cloud and fog, and because of that weight, the entire atmosphere seemed to be damply pressed down.
The ground beneath his feet was covered in soft moss. The moss subtly deflated then swelled again as if breathing, and from within it a sweet yet damp grass scent burst forth.
Everything was clear yet ambiguous. The only thing distinct was the chilling texture of the stone statue still remaining at his fingertips.
No, was that really true? Miros suddenly felt certain he knew this place. That’s nonsense. He couldn’t know this. He didn’t think he knew it, and there was no reason to know it. Yet he knew it. Something collided inside him.
“No, I know. Clearly.”
He moved. Power filled his slow steps, and gradually he picked up speed. Soon he began to run. The air there was cold, but from somewhere the lingering trace of an ancient breath brushed Miros’s cheek.
But Miros still couldn’t know.
I know it but I don’t understand. I can’t explain it. Why do I know this place? What am I trusting to run like this?
“Haa, fuck…”
The curse slipped out with his roughened breath, and at the end of his words rode a hollow breath like suppressed mockery. Even as Miros laughed, his eyes were coldly frozen.
As if time itself surrounding him was shattering to pieces.
At that moment, the wind stopped. He stopped without realizing it. Everything seemed to sound an alarm. He even had the illusion that his body was being crushed alive.
All currents, whispers, and signs of life disappeared. The air was completely trapped in silence, becoming heavy and solid like a transparent glass wall.
And an eerie silence rolled in. Miros could instinctively know. Nothing was needed to realize it. I just know. That’s all it is.
Someone is here.
The master of this space, something very ancient, is here.
