Part 1
Boom—!
The first firework shot up over the walls of the imperial palace.
The streak of light that pierced the black night sky created a brief moment of stillness.
The movements of every living thing ceased for the span of a single breath.
The soldiers patrolling the walls instinctively raised their heads.
The light spread.
A blinding white flash swallowed the top of the wall whole, and the thunderous roar that followed shook the very axis of the earth.
Stone dust and flames erupted simultaneously.
One soldier on the wall was flung straight into the air before plummeting back down.
A second explosion followed. This time, it was the western outer wall.
The gunpowder buried in the section where troops were most densely stationed detonated all at once, and a portion of the thick wall collapsed inward.
Then a third time. A fourth time. The explosions did not stop.
The fireworks that shot up one after another lit the night sky as bright as day.
The flashes burst open like enormous flowers against the black sky, and the scattered sparks rained down like hail.
It looked almost like a festival was being held.
A festival — perhaps it could be called one.
After all, what was being destroyed beneath those flames was the very heart of the empire.
Each time the walls shook, the bell tower inside the imperial palace rang out in a wild clamor.
The shouts of soldiers, the cries of horses, and the sound of stone walls crumbling all tangled together.
The soldiers rushed about in disarray toward the outer wall, while the commanders couldn’t even determine where the attack was coming from, veins bulging in their necks as they screamed orders.
“Intruders! There are intruders in the imperial palace!”
“They’re coming from the east wall! Hold the east wall!”
“It’s the western powder magazine!”
The imperial palace of the Daeryun Federal Empire was no ordinary palace.
It was the center of eastern hegemony — the place that had deified the emperor and subjugated the surrounding nations under its dominion.
Breaching its outer wall and infiltrating was Shin Yigyeom’s mission.
The mission was not a simple act of terror but the first signal of revolution.
To bring down the unyielding walls of the empire, to burn the imperial palace to ash — and in doing so—.
“Aaaargh!”
In the midst of the pandemonium, screams tore from the mouths of soldiers being crushed under rubble.
The flames caught the wind and spread to the surrounding buildings.
Bang! Another explosion tore through the stillness of the night, and the surroundings grew blindingly bright.
The light that surged forward, pushing back the darkness, illuminated Shin Yigyeom’s face.
“…….”
Beneath lashes that fell long like a drawn shade, pale bluish eyes took in every detail of the scene before him.
On the lower half of his face, covered by a strip of black unbleached cloth, the outline of his lips was visible.
The corners of his mouth were set hard.
The flames that split the center of the wall sent a wind carrying scorching heat. It brushed past Shin Yigyeom’s sweat-dampened forehead.
“…It’s done.”
At last moving the corners of his mouth, Shin Yigyeom murmured in a voice audible only to himself.
His hesitation to assassinate the Third Imperial Prince had nearly caused everything to fall apart.
Had that happened, every last member of the unit would have died meaningless deaths without ever having made use of their one and only chance.
The people’s long-held wish would have been pushed back yet another few hundred years.
“Yi! The imperial army is closing in. We have to flee now!”
Someone breathing harshly grabbed Shin Yigyeom’s shoulder and yanked.
“Urk!”
Simultaneously, a short, dull sound was followed by a death cry.
Shin Yigyeom’s spine went cold in an instant.
Blood burst like a fountain from the neck of the unit member who had been standing beside him just a moment ago.
A short crossbow bolt that had flown in from the darkness had pierced through just below the Adam’s apple.
The moment you waste time verifying is the moment you put yourself in danger.
The instant he registered blood erupting at the edge of his vision, Shin Yigyeom immediately dropped his center of gravity.
Lowering his posture until his knees nearly touched the ground, he twisted his right foot to use as an axis and angled his body diagonally rather than straight forward.
Bows and crossbows are aimed on the premise that a human will instinctively flee in a straight line, so the first thing to do was to eliminate any predictable direction of movement.
This shouldn’t be possible.
This was the northwestern outskirts of the imperial palace — the abandoned military supply zone.
It had once been a temporary storage site for provisions and siege weapons, but after the northern gate system was reorganized several decades ago, it had become practically a forsaken place.
Wedged awkwardly between the outer wall and the forest, it was excluded from regular patrol routes, and there was no stationed garrison to speak of.
Most critically, visibility was the issue.
The northern cliffs and forested terrain wrapped around the outer perimeter of the imperial palace like a folding screen, causing surveillance efficiency to drop to an extreme low.
At night, even with torches lit, securing a clear line of sight was difficult — the kind of place where even the imperial palace guards deliberately minimized patrols.
Shin Yigyeom had personally confirmed the surroundings of this area multiple times with the unit members before planting the explosives.
He had calculated everything: the interval between guard rotations, the positions of rock faces jutting out like reefs, the blind spots within the forest, and the movement times of the mounted patrol units.
A location close enough to the imperial palace to monitor the explosion, yet where an immediate response from the regular army was practically impossible.
And yet the imperial army had appeared?
Fast. Impossibly fast.
It meant they had pinpointed this location immediately after the explosion, or that they had anticipated their movements in advance.
How?
…Could it be that information had leaked from the inside.
Shin Yigyeom, who had been sprinting with agility, came to an abrupt halt.
From the darkness ahead, black shadows revealed themselves one by one.
Their faces covered below by iron masks, they held crossbows and longswords — and had even muffled the sound of their horses’ hooves.
“Arrest them.”
They were not the imperial army.
In black armor overlaid with wolf fur — it was the Heugnyeongwi special operations unit.
Torches hung on the walls at regular intervals, their flames flickering.
Each time the hardened resin crackled and burst, the smell of tar drifted through the air.
Mingled with it were the stench of blood and the reek of burning flesh, leaving the air stagnant and still.
In the silent corridor, only the torches were alive and moving.
The chill hadn’t been quite this severe when passing through the floors where ordinary criminals were held.
Located a full six floors below ground, this place held those who had denied the existence of the state.
For an ordinary person, even stepping inside for a brief moment would plunge them into extreme isolation and terror.
“This is an order addressed to the Grand Bureau Chief.”
The imperial civil official, glancing nervously around him as he swallowed dryly, extended an envelope to the lieutenant commander standing before him.
“I will deliver it.”
On the face of the lieutenant commander who accepted it as a formality, there was no expression or warmth that could be called human.
Most of those who belonged to the Dark Bureau wore faces like this — accustomed to concealment and hiding.
The Grand Bureau Chief had raised them to be this way.
“Well then. Thank you for your service.”
The official gave a hasty bow, as if fleeing.
Moving at nearly a sprint down the corridor, he rounded the corner of a wall — and his body froze.
“A-ah, greetings, Grand Bureau Chief. I was just in the middle of delivering a document that arrived from the imperial court a moment ago—”
His words weren’t finished before Wi Saheon had already walked past.
The gaze that had briefly glanced down at him held no warmth.
The official remained frozen mid-bow, and only after Wi Saheon had fully moved away did he finally exhale.
Fleeing up the stairs, the official thought: it probably wasn’t simply because he stood in a physically elevated position.
Those eyes that looked down on people. Those pupils like an inanimate object.
Wi Saheon crossed the corridor of the underground interrogation chamber without hesitation — dark and winding as the innards of a beast.
His stride was unhurried and unafraid.
Even the cruel aggression in the sound of his sleek military boots was expertly contained.
“Sir, I have a report.”
The lieutenant commander, who had snapped to a crisp salute and fallen one step behind him, fixed his gaze on the pale bluish area around Wi Saheon’s jaw as he reported on the disturbance from two days prior.
It was stripped of interpretation or judgment — only the facts.
“Therefore, the senior cadres believed to have led the incident are currently being held in isolation in the interrogation rooms, and those not killed on-site are being detained on the upper floors. As for those who escaped—”
“The nameplate.”
“Yes…?”
The lieutenant commander, who had been reporting in rapid succession, stopped short for a moment.
He blinked quickly, trying to parse the meaning of Wi Saheon’s words.
“It’s crooked,” he said.
Wi Saheon tilted his head at the same angle as the slanted nameplate, as if trying to see it straight.
The lieutenant commander quickly straightened it.
“My apologies. And this is the document that arrived from the imperial court just a moment ago. I was told it is for your eyes only.”
The lieutenant commander held out with both hands a document stamped with the imperial seal — sealed so that no one other than the intended recipient could open it.
“I heard it earlier.”
Wi Saheon, wearing a look of faint irritation, didn’t even glance at the envelope as he headed toward Interrogation Room No. 1.
The guards saluted Wi Saheon and pulled open the door handle.
As the heavy iron door, rusted at its hinges, swung open, the faint scent of underripe peach drifted out.
The fragrance of fruit or flowers generally belonged to a yin person.
Wi Saheon reflexively narrowed his brow.
“The one with the long hair turned out to be a man, not a woman.”
The lieutenant commander, who had followed one step behind him, added a detail he had not yet reported.
