Adel’s eyes were stained red.
It was not a color that blazed like flame.
A deep red, as though pressed down and sealed within.
A color that had long lain submerged in prayer and vows.
The moment that redness spread,
Adel’s breath rang once, loudly, inside his armor.
At that moment,
the air around them changed.
Miryeong felt it first.
The sensation of the forest’s scent sinking downward.
The wind no longer flowed,
but felt pressed down.
Something was approaching.
Fallen leaves stuck to the ground.
The branches no longer swayed.
It did not feel as if the forest were holding its breath,
but as if its breath were being “stolen.”
Layer by layer, the air settled.
From above to below,
as though an invisible plate were being laid over them.
Miryeong knew instinctively.
That was not mere intimidation.
The world beneath their feet was beginning to tilt to one side.
“Mirkin!”
Miryeong cried out sharply.
There was no time to think.
If they could not stop this now, it was over.
Miryeong gritted her teeth and threw herself forward.
Drawing up her strength in an instant,
toward the paladin.
One step.
The next moment,
the world collapsed downward.
Thud.
Miryeong’s body was slammed into the ground.
Not by will,
but as though she had been driven down by mass.
Her chin scraped the earth.
Dirt entered her mouth.
Even swallowing her saliva felt heavy.
Her lungs were being crushed.
It did not feel like “breathing,”
but like scraping air in through what little space remained.
Miryeong tried to stretch out her arm.
But before her arm, her shoulder buckled first.
It was not that her strength had left her.
The order in which her joints endured had changed.
Her breath caught.
Her arm would not obey.
“Kgh…!”
Erdin dropped to one knee.
Mendel braced one hand against the ground,
but even that soon lost its strength.
The more they tried to move, the deeper they were pressed down.
As though an invisible hand were crushing them from above.
Not their bones,
but the spaces between their joints seemed to collapse first.
In every direction they tried to exert force, weight arrived ahead of them,
and their bodies stiffened before they could even understand the command.
Adel did not move.
He did not even raise his sword.
He simply stood there,
looking down with red eyes.
Like someone confirming the result of a battle already over.
“Do not resist.”
A low voice cut through the compressed air.
“This is not punishment.”
“It is subjugation.”
At that moment,
Bido realized.
For an instant,
Bido wondered if she was seeing things wrong.
Miryeong was pinned to the ground.
Erdin’s knee was driven into the earth.
Mendel’s fingertips were trembling.
And yet—
she alone
was perfectly fine, as though breathing a different air.
That fact
came to her as fear before relief.
The sensation of being the only one standing.
The feeling that she alone was all right was closer to isolation than protection.
Miryeong’s body was bound to the ground.
Erdin and Mendel were the same.
And yet, she was standing.
Her breath, her feet—nothing was wrong.
Bido slowly raised her hand.
It was not heavy.
The air around her was still the same as usual.
Bido lifted her head.
The red-stained eyes of the paladin
were wavering for the first time.
The air remained crushed,
in a moment when even breathing did not come easily.
The one who first broke that silence
was Erdin.
“Lady Bido…!”
It was a short cry.
There was no explanation, no command.
But Bido understood.
The fact that, in this moment, only she could move.
And that the one who could break this stagnant situation
was, for now, only her.
Bido drew in a breath a beat late.
The red eyes were still fixed on her.
There was no reason to hesitate.
Aslo’s voice brushed past her mind.
“Don’t try to win with the sword.”
“Make your opponent stop.”
“Even once, make them turn their eyes.”
Bido had not understood those words.
Because she had thought that a person holding a sword fought with a sword.
But now, she felt she understood.
Adel was not someone holding a sword.
Adel was someone holding “rules.”
Then what Bido had to do
was put a single scratch in those rules.
Bido pulled at the longsword strapped to her back.
The leather cord came loose, and the sound of the sword sliding free rang out briefly.
The moment she gripped it,
its familiar weight traveled up her arm.
Bido kicked off the ground.
In an instant,
the distance disappeared.
Lightless Slash.
The fastest attack among the techniques she had learned from her master.
The path of the blade left no light behind.
A simple, linear leap,
so swift that even sound followed late.
Adel’s eyes moved faintly.
There was no surprise.
Instead,
there was precise judgment.
Adel raised his greatsword.
Kaang!
Before the sound of metal colliding had even ceased,
Bido’s wrist went numb.
A vibration that rang all the way to the bone.
For a moment, the fingers gripping her sword nearly came loose.
Adel’s greatsword did not block.
It pressed down.
Between metal and metal,
Bido’s arm bent briefly.
The sound of clashing steel split the forest.
Bido’s sword was blocked cleanly.
The difference in strength was clear.
However,
in that brief instant.
In the very moment Adel’s gaze turned to the sword,
the heavy air loosened.
He realized what he had missed
a beat too late.
Mirkin was not a power one “poured out.”
It was an act of maintaining.
Regulating one’s breath,
fixing one’s gaze,
not letting go of conviction.
The center of that conviction
had just wavered once.
In that instant when he blocked the girl’s sword,
the world he had been holding down snapped back into place.
Thud,
the pressure that had been crushing them
vanished as if it had been a lie.
Miryeong exhaled harshly.
Erdin pushed himself up with one knee on the ground,
and Mendel, too, staggered as he regained his balance.
“It’s released…”
Mendel muttered, catching his breath.
Adel took one step back.
The power that had been crushing the group to the ground had vanished completely.
The red color in Adel’s eyes was already gone.
He slowly raised his head.
Bido stood before him.
Sword in hand, steadying her breath.
Adel looked straight at Bido.
This time, it was not observation.
Nor was it confirmation, nor possibility.
“……”
For a moment, no words followed.
Adel had clearly used Mirkin.
Neither its range nor its density had wavered.
He had not deliberately excluded only her.
And yet,
it had not worked.
Adel’s gaze moved from Bido’s toes
to the sword in her hand.
And then back
to her face.
“You are…”
For the first time, his words faltered.
Looking at the black-haired girl,
Adel realized for the first time that there existed a place the order he had believed in could not reach.
It did not feel like the power of a demon.
On the contrary,
it was so quiet that it disturbed him.
There was a sensation one could only know in the moment of using Mirkin.
The world grew thin,
and rules caught at one’s fingertips.
That sensation, only before that girl,
had snapped off.
Adel slowly bit the inside of his mouth.
Not to preserve his self-certainty,
but to hide the tremor within him.
Bido, too, swallowed her breath.
Only now did the result of what she had done
begin to feel real.
She had not struck him,
nor had she blocked him.
She had merely
broken it.
There was no bewilderment in Adel’s eyes.
But somewhere deep within them,
Bido felt a fine crack appear.
As though she had not broken a wall,
but the wall had cracked on its own.
What she had broken was not power,
but a condition.
Bido could not precisely explain
what she was doing right now.
Adel slowly lowered his greatsword.
He did not drop his guard,
but his bearing was no longer the same as before.
The air of the forest was still taut.
But now,
of the four people standing here,
not one could look at this situation with the same eyes as before.
The moment the pressure in the air was released,
Miryeong was already moving.
Adel’s gaze turned toward her.
No,
he felt it before that.
The weight was changing.
He reached a conclusion.
The center of this battlefield
was not the black-haired girl.
The crimson armor moved, and the greatsword was raised.
It was not Mirkin.
An utterly ordinary,
pure strike.
Yet its weight
was more than enough to cleave a person in two at once.
Miryeong did not smile.
She did not even draw in a breath.
Her feet rose as though brushing the ground.
The wind lifted her from beneath her feet.
As if the air, a beat late, were supporting her.
The greatsword passed through.
But Miryeong was not in the place it should have cut.
Only her white hair, fluttering in the wind, grazed its trajectory.
Adel’s eyes narrowed faintly.
It was not a quick dodge.
It was the sensation of slipping away with precision.
Miryeong twisted her body in midair and landed.
At that moment,
she called out briefly.
“Erdin.”
That single name was enough.
Erdin’s foot planted on the ground.
The ends of his gauntlets struck together, sending sparks flying.
A small explosion began at the tip of Erdin’s fist.
Exploding Fist.
It was not an attack meant to inflict a fatal wound.
It was simply a shock meant to break Adel’s stance,
and his next movement.
Adel easily received the impact with his greatsword.
But in that instant,
the sound of water mingled in.
Water condensed at Mendel’s fingertips, spinning as it flew in.
Precisely toward the boundary between sight and balance.
It was not strong.
But it was distracting.
Adel’s gaze wavered.
Miryeong did not miss that opening.
The surrounding air gathered.
From all directions into one.
And,
this time, she did not let it flow away.
The wind burst.
With a roar,
a powerful blast of wind split the forest and drove Adel back.
The crimson armor flew between the trees,
and the greatsword scraped the ground.
He did not fall.
But the battlefield was severed.
“We’re going!”
At Miryeong’s shout, their bodies moved.
Bido did not ask why.
There was no need for an explanation.
Instinctively, she followed her.
The forest regained its sound,
and the wind covered their backs, blurring their traces.
Adel straightened himself between the trees.
Fallen leaves dropped onto his armor,
and his breathing was still even.
He looked in the direction they had fled.
He did not raise his sword.
Nor did he pursue.
Instead, he murmured lowly.
“White weasel.”
It was certainty.
As the wind Miryeong had created scattered,
Adel had not chosen “pursuit” even once.
If emotion came first, what followed would be a mistake.
For a paladin, a mistake became a sin.
And he remembered.
The moment his Mirkin had been severed just now.
The fact that he had yet to give a name to its cause.
Adel turned his greatsword sideways and shook off the leaves stuck to it.
There was no blood, and no wound.
And yet he felt as if something, somewhere, had been torn.
He slowly drew in a breath.
The breath of a man who believed prayer remained not as voice,
but as resolve.
The sun gives the same light to all.
Even so, if there exists a place it does not reach—
that place must be confirmed.
And behind that,
one existence he had yet to name
remained vivid in his sight.
The black-haired girl.
The existence his power had not reached.