It was thanks to the Management Bureau that they were able to integrate guilds that didn’t even properly cooperate with each other and send them in like that. Precisely speaking, Yoon Taegyeom. Her cousin.
“Check please.”
Yoon Sora left the restaurant with a bitter taste in her mouth. She’d filled her stomach, but she couldn’t help the emptiness inside. She habitually turned on her phone to check the breaking news.
[Stigma Gate, miraculous survival rate.]
‘A miracle…’
People call it a miracle, but those who were at the scene know. That it wasn’t a miracle but thanks to someone’s devotion.
Yoon Sora caught a taxi. Her destination was Saseong Hospital VIP Ward. Heading to that place, the most heavily secured in South Korea, she swallowed another sigh.
In her mind rose the image of her cousin Yoon Taegyeom that she’d seen in front of the gate a few days ago.
“When will the advance team preparation be finished! Hurry up!”
It was a sight unimaginable from the usual Yoon Taegyeom. He was always a person who calculated optimal efficiency with cold reason. He who had treated emotions as unnecessary noise was raising his voice and shouting loudly.
Like someone who had left their entire world inside the gate.
‘Simply because they’re friends? Or because they’re nationally important assets?’
Yoon Sora shook her head. To simply say that, Yoon Taegyeom’s eyes had been too desperate. Those weren’t the eyes of a Management Bureau official. They were the eyes of an extremely ordinary human trembling in fear of losing something precious.
‘They were people that precious to him.’
Perhaps because of that, the approaching time felt even more bitter.
***
The atmosphere in the hospital room was deeply sunken. Originally, the atmosphere couldn’t be good when a loved one was hospitalized, but this place was especially filled with despair and sadness.
The regularly sounding electrocardiogram monitor broke the silence, but that was all.
“…Get some sleep, will you.”
Yoon Taegyeom clicked his tongue and closed the hospital room door. In his hands were two lunchboxes he’d bought from the basement convenience store. But the two men in the room didn’t even budge.
Choi Jaeheon sat in the chair beside Ian’s bed, clasping his bloodless younger brother’s hand. His face, which looked like he hadn’t even washed properly let alone shaved, with stubble that had grown darkly over several days, was half out of it.
“Jaeheon. At this rate, you’ll collapse before Ian wakes up.”
“…Won’t sleep.”
Choi Jaeheon’s voice was rough like chewing sand.
“I can’t sleep.”
Choi Jaeheon’s gaze was fixed on Ian’s face, gasping while relying on an oxygen respirator. The moment Ian collapsed coughing up blood that day was engraved like a tattoo on his retina and wouldn’t be erased.
‘I called him. I made him come.’
He’d always said he’d protect him, yet unable to keep that promise, he’d driven Ian into a deathtrap. The wounds remaining on Ian’s body had disappeared, but guilt that could never be erased for a lifetime remained in Choi Jaeheon’s chest.
It was the same for the man on the opposite side of the bed.
Vermouth stood like a statue looking down at Ian.
“Vermouth-ssi, you sit down too. I know your stamina is amazing, but it’s making the people watching anxious.”
Yoon Taegyeom spoke carefully, but Vermouth seemed not to hear. His purple eyes were obsessively staring only at Ian’s closed eyelids.
‘I swore to protect him.’
He’d boasted that where his sword reached, he wouldn’t let a single hair be harmed. But what was the result? To make up for his own incompetence, Ian had shaved away his life and burned light. That brilliant wide-area purification wasn’t salvation to Vermouth but painful punishment. A life obtained by offering his lover as a sacrifice was utterly horrific.
While they were withering in hellish guilt in reality, Ian’s consciousness had reached a very distant place.
***
It was a pure white space.
An infinite white world with no up or down. Ian stood blankly in the middle of that unfamiliar yet familiar space. It was a place where neither reality’s pain nor heavy guilt existed.
The sensation touching his soles was like fluffy clouds, and also like well-trimmed grass.
‘Here…’
Am I dead? Or am I still in a dream?
Ian looked down at his hands. They were clean without bloodstains or dust. Instead of the nauseating demonic energy or bloody smell that had been piercing his nose just moments ago, a refreshing and sacred fragrance like forest dawn air permeated deep into his lungs. It resembled the overwhelming divine power he’d felt when he first set foot in Lancia’s grand temple.
“You’ve worked hard, my child.”
At the soft voice heard from behind, Ian slowly turned his body.
There stood a woman. Dazzlingly shining silver hair, and deep eyes that seemed to contain the universe. It was exactly the same appearance as the massive stone statue standing in the center of Lancia’s temple.
The goddess, Regnasia.
Ian involuntarily stepped backward. He’d devoted himself under Regnasia’s name for five years, and because of that, had come to hate her.
“…Why are you here?”
“Didn’t you call me? While breaking your shackles yourself.”
The goddess approached Ian with a gentle smile. When her touch brushed his cheek, warm warmth seeped in.
“You must have many questions.”
“…I’ll ask just one.”
Ian opened his mouth with a trembling voice. He knew the being before his eyes was a god, but the anger he’d been suppressing surpassed his fear.
“Why did you place such a constraint? That shitty condition that you can only use power if you make contact, if you feel pleasure. Do you know how miserably I, and countless Saints, lived because of you?”
That was the lump of years knotted in Ian’s soul. The humiliating times of being treated as a tool, having to endure unwanted touches. The wretchedness of having to live being treated not as a Saint or Saintess, but just as a ‘holy whore.’
But the goddess’s answer was unexpected. Deep sadness appeared in her universe-like eyes.
“That is not a shackle I placed.”
“……What?”
“It’s a shackle created by human fear.”
The goddess waved her hand in the air. Then Lancia’s past unfolded like a panorama.
The first Saint wielded infinite power without shackles. But while people worshiped that overwhelming power, they simultaneously feared it. The terror that if the Saint decided to, they could even kill the king and overturn the country. So they degraded the Saint from god’s representative to a ‘weapon’ that needed to be controlled.
The church was established, and doctrines were twisted. To suppress the Saint’s power, those in power cunningly inserted the condition of ‘physical contact,’ disguising it as divine revelation. It was humanity’s ugly desire to make the Saint dependent on someone to use their power, to make them unable to be self-reliant.
“I have never once tried to bind you. I merely wished for you to live loving and cherishing each other.”
Transparent tears flowed from the goddess’s eyes.
“I’m sorry. Because my power was insufficient, I realized the pain you endure too late.”
Ian stared blankly at the goddess. His chest felt stuffy at the fact that the target he’d resented for so long wasn’t actually the target of resentment, but rather cherished him.
“But you broke that false law yourself. With your will, with your love.”
The goddess placed her hand on Ian’s head. Warm light enveloped his soul.
“Now you are free. You no longer need to be bound by anyone or any condition. Now shine your light when you want, in the way you want.”
Her blessing rang clear like the sound of shackles being released.
“So rest now, my beloved child. I will share your burden from now on.”
The goddess’s form gradually scattered as light and disappeared. Ian withdrew his outstretched hand and smiled comfortably for the first time.
“…Thank you.”
Bright light filled his vision.
***
“Ugh…”
When he lifted his heavy eyelids, the first thing that entered his eyes was an unfamiliar ceiling. The hospital’s characteristic smell and the sound of machines running regularly could be heard.
Ian blinked and focused. His whole body was heavy like cotton soaked in water. The feeling of exhaustion was so severe that it was hard to even move a finger. He habitually tried to check the divine power inside his body, but like an empty well, he couldn’t feel anything.
“…Water.”
As soon as the cracked voice leaked out of his mouth, someone shot up from the chair beside the bed.
“Ian!”
Sparse stubble and sunken eyes. It was Choi Jaeheon looking like he’d stayed up nights for several days. Where did that neat appearance go? As if he couldn’t believe Ian had opened his eyes, he had his mouth hanging wide open.
“…Hyung? Why does your face look like that? Are you a bandit?”
“Ian! Are you conscious? Can you recognize who I am? Try moving your fingers!”
Choi Jaeheon circled around Ian while repeatedly pressing the emergency call button. At that commotion, on the opposite side of the bed, Vermouth, who had been taking a nap with his head buried in a corner of the blanket, sprang up like a spring.
“Ian-nim!”
Vermouth’s condition was no less than Choi Jaeheon’s. His blonde hair, which was always perfectly set, had become a bird’s nest, and his eyes were full of redness. When both men rushed at his face simultaneously, Ian recoiled in disgust and pulled his head back.
