A vivid afterimage flashed before Bido’s eyes.
At first, he could not even tell what it was.
Light and shadow, an unfamiliar sky, wind, voices.
But soon those things became scenes, and the scenes soon became emotions.
It was a blue desert.
Beneath a light so clear it made the eyes ache, young Raen was laughing.
His parents were beside him, and a little distance away was his younger sister.
A faint sandstorm blew in, and the dull sound of a beast’s feet treading on sand could be heard.
It was warm.
It was peaceful.
As if, for that moment alone, nothing in the world would ever happen.
But the scene did not stop.
The smell of blood rushed in.
The shadow of a demonic beast, like thick darkness, descended, and the screams were far too close.
Raen’s vision shook.
His parents’ hands reached out, and his younger sister’s sobs burst out as if tearing apart.
And in the next moment,
there came the sound of something being ripped and shattered.
Bido tried to draw a breath, but froze as he was.
He did not want to see it.
But he could not stop.
This was not simply watching a scene.
The fear and despair young Raen had felt,
even the helplessness of being unable to do anything, surged into him exactly as they had been.
It was not a sight before his eyes, but an emotion driving itself into the depths of his heart.
Bido’s chest clenched violently for an instant.
The memory that followed was a black forest.
An unfamiliar continent, endless darkness, Raen trembling after losing his way.
And once again, the scene overturned.
Roan.
Bido’s body flinched.
A palm extended toward Raen himself.
At its center was a clear, crimson crescent moon mark.
The chilling fear Raen had felt the moment he faced that mark,
and at the same time, an inexplicable pull, came rushing in all at once.
After that, there was a burning man.
It was Maho.
The blazing heat, the light driving back the black forest,
and the relief of thinking, for the first time, that he might be able to survive.
Then came every moment up to now.
The time spent walking with Maho, the path following Roan,
and countless emotions tangled with fear, resolve, and resignation.
“Hah…”
Bido let out a short breath.
The inside of his head throbbed.
His vision overlapped.
His own memories and Raen’s memories were mixed together,
and for a moment he could not even tell where he ended and where Raen began.
The feeling in his fingertips blurred,
and he felt a cold energy, like a shard of ice, drive itself deep into his chest.
It was something different from memory.
Even as Raen’s life poured into him,
at the very center of it, there existed a cold, unfamiliar energy that could not be explained.
It was neither emotion nor scene.
It was simply quiet, sharp, and deep.
“Hey, Raen!”
A low, rough voice struck the room.
Bido jerked his head up.
Raen had collapsed on the floor.
At his side, Maho had approached at some point.
He was down on one knee, checking Raen’s condition,
but there was not the slightest hesitation in his movements.
Wolryeon reflexively raised her heavy crossbow, then stopped when she saw the situation,
and Jincheong and Ed immediately shifted their stances as if guarding the surroundings.
Only then did the medical officer seem to come to his senses, and he hurriedly ran to Raen.
Even as his breathing shook raggedly, Bido carefully opened his mouth.
“Ra… Raen?”
Silence flowed through the room for a moment.
The medical officer checked Raen’s pulse and lifted his eyelids to examine his condition.
Maho’s gaze, standing beside him, was as sharp as flame.
Even under that pressure, the medical officer forced himself to speak in a calm voice.
“…He is all right. He has only lost consciousness. He is not in immediate danger.”
“Are you certain?”
Maho snapped in a low voice.
His face stiff from the heat pouring out of Maho, the medical officer nodded.
“Yes, yes. He has no fever, and his pulse is stable. There does not appear to be any major issue.”
Maho looked down at Raen for a while,
then slowly rose.
And then he turned to Bido.
The moment that gaze touched him, Bido unwittingly hunched his shoulders.
He had no idea what had just happened,
why Raen’s memories had poured into him,
or why another cold energy had been mixed within them.
Bido swallowed down his trembling breath and asked.
“Wh-what just happened…?”
Maho looked at Bido for a moment without answering.
His eyes were neither shocked nor angry,
but had sunk heavily, like those of someone recalling something far older.
He looked down once more at Raen collapsed on the floor,
then finally opened his mouth.
“The fragment of the moon Raen had been carrying—”
Maho cut himself off briefly, and his gaze fixed on Bido again.
“has moved to you.”
“What do you mean, moved…”
Bido’s words trailed off.
Maho did not answer right away.
First, he stared silently at Bido.
It was a gaze as though he were confirming something,
or perhaps trying to read from Bido’s face an answer he already suspected.
“You saw Raen’s memories, didn’t you?”
Bido could not answer immediately.
He could not deny it either.
Even now, the light of the blue desert, the smell of blood,
and the crimson crescent moon mark remained in his mind, unvanished.
Maho spoke in a low voice.
“Roan. That is what happens when he steals a fragment of the moon.”
The air in the room quietly sank.
Maho’s voice was low,
but within it was a heat so familiar that it seemed almost tinged with disgust.
“During the process, memories flow in.”
“The things embedded in the soul are dragged out along with the fragment.”
Bido’s fingertips trembled.
“And usually… it does not end with only the fragment moving.”
Maho’s gaze briefly lowered to Raen, collapsed on the floor.
“The soul is pulled out with it.”
Bido swallowed a breath and looked at Raen again.
Raen, lying on the floor beside the bed, was pale, but he was certainly breathing.
As the medical officer had said, he did not look as if he were dying right away.
That made it even harder to understand.
Maho was silent for a while.
Then he spoke in a calmer voice than before.
“But this time is different.”
He slowly continued.
“The fragment of the moon came out. And yet Raen’s soul is intact.”
A brief silence followed.
“Why…”
When Bido murmured unconsciously,
Maho’s gaze turned to him again.
His eyes were sharp, but somewhat different from before.
They held not only vigilance,
but also the faintest relief and an inexplicable complexity.
“Who knows.”
Maho spoke quietly.
“Perhaps…”
He stopped there and closed his mouth.
Maho slowly turned and walked to the window.
The wind seeping in through the open window brushed his hair.
After looking outside for a moment, he let out a very short sigh.
In that breath, instead of the sharpness that had wrapped around the room until moments ago,
there was something like suppressed relief.
“Take good care of the one over there.”
He was speaking of Raen.
Then Maho turned only his head slightly and looked at Bido.
“Bido.”
Without realizing it, Bido waited for his next words.
“That energy that entered you—feel it fully.”
Maho’s eyes narrowed.
“It should not be difficult.”
With those words, Maho did not hesitate any longer.
He stepped onto the window frame and hurled himself outside.
Soon, a single shadow disappeared beneath the sunlight.
Silence settled over the room once more.
But this silence was different from before.
Bido quietly pressed a hand to his chest.
Had the thing Raen had carried truly entered him?
And why, of all people, had it come to him?
No one had yet given him that answer.
Bido looked for a moment at the window through which Maho had vanished,
then turned his gaze back to Raen.
Fortunately, color was gradually returning to Raen’s face.
The medical officer also let out a relieved breath and straightened his posture,
while the others standing in the room held their breath and watched the situation, as if something else might happen at any moment.
Bido slowly closed his eyes.
Looking inward was no longer an entirely unfamiliar sensation.
Until now, he had experienced with his body many times Ideurin’s blazing energy, Mirkin’s twisted flow,
and the moon energy seeping through Wolhyeol.
Their natures were all different,
but at least he now understood, a little, the way something called “power” touched the body and soul.
That was why this newly entered energy stood out even more clearly.
It was cold.
But it was not only cold.
It was sharp and clear.
Not like ice, but like a crystal that had possessed its own grain from the very beginning.
It did not feel as though it had been forced into his body,
but as though something that had been there since long ago had revealed its form.
Bido carefully brought his consciousness toward that energy, as if reaching out a hand.
At that moment,
he sensed a small crystal settled deep within his chest.
It was so hard that at first it seemed it would not move.
But when Bido focused his consciousness a little closer,
that crystal began to melt very slowly, truly very slowly.
It was closer to seeping in than breaking apart.
Strands of cold light loosened one by one, spreading not through his blood vessels but deeper than that,
beyond the flesh and blood that made up his body, into the depths of his soul.
“Ugh…”
Bido swallowed a breath without realizing it.
It was cold.
It was different from the chill he felt when Wolhyeol opened.
If that had been the sensation of moonlight settling over his body,
then this was the feeling of something far more primal and ancient burrowing inward.
If the moon energy he had accepted until now had flowed in from the distant outside,
this energy was like a single fragment directly connected to the origin beyond that outside, embedding itself within his body.
And yet, strangely, he felt no rejection.
Though it was unfamiliar, cold, and clearly perhaps a dangerous power,
it was melting into some place inside Bido with utmost naturalness.
Rather, the energy of Wolhyeol quietly circled around that cold fragment as if enveloping it.
They did not push each other away.
Nor did they clash.
As though two streams of water that should have flowed to the same place from the beginning had met belatedly,
they quietly became one.
With his eyes closed, Bido steadied his breathing and slowly opened them.
The room was still quiet.
Raen remained unconscious, breathing steadily,
and Wolryeon, Ed, and Jincheong were silently watching Bido.
But to Bido, it felt like a stillness different from moments ago.
The world was unchanged, yet the depth within him seemed to have altered.
Bido unconsciously touched his chest.
The cold energy had not disappeared now.
Somewhere inside him, it had clearly taken root.