Hajin’s breathing grew rougher and rougher.
The hand that held the fire trembled faintly.
“Go.”
He said.
His voice shot out like an order,
but the end of the word trailed off.
“I said go!”
Miryeong stood frozen where she was.
Without saying a word,
she did not take even a single step closer.
“From here—”
Hajin began, then suddenly shook his head.
“No.”
He abruptly took a step back.
“No,”
“That’s not it.”
The light Hajin held wavered wildly.
“If you’re here, you’ll see it.”
“You can’t see it.”
Hajin’s gaze darted between the two of them.
“What I did—”
His words broke off.
Hajin closed his mouth,
then suddenly shook his head violently.
“No.”
And this time, louder.
“I didn’t do it!”
He clutched his own head with one hand.
“I didn’t think that.”
“I—”
Hajin’s voice overlapped with itself.
“I came to clean things up,”
“not to kill,”
“so—”
Little by little, he began to gasp for breath.
Hajin could no longer keep up with his own words.
“Get lost.”
The words burst out suddenly.
The next moment,
he shut his mouth as if startled by himself.
“…No.”
Hajin’s voice dropped sharply.
“Don’t go.”
The direction of his words had twisted completely.
The air inside the cave slowly tightened.
Then Miryeong opened her mouth.
“Hajin.”
The way she called his name was calm.
“Take one step back.”
Whether those words reached Hajin or not, there was no way to tell.
At some point, Hajin’s gaze had fixed on Miryeong.
He blinked less and less.
His pupils did not move.
Miryeong was the first to sense the change.
The air had shifted slightly.
Too weak to be called pressure,
still too ambiguous to be called a threat,
yet clearly not normal.
“Stay there.”
Miryeong said.
This time, she did not call his name.
“Don’t come any closer.”
The corners of Hajin’s mouth trembled.
He lifted them as if trying to smile,
but soon failed to maintain the expression.
“I…”
Hajin’s words cut off as if he could not breathe.
Then his pupils trembled faintly.
And then,
very slowly,
his eyes turned red.
And in that instant,
Miryeong moved first.
“Bido.”
At the same time as she spoke, Miryeong stepped forward.
Between Hajin and Bido,
exactly in the middle.
Bido immediately realized that Miryeong’s voice had changed.
It was low, but urgent.
Even in the darkness, red was clearly spreading through Hajin’s eyes.
“Mirkin!”
Bido cried out shortly.
But before she could understand, her body stiffened first.
The air had changed.
It felt as though something was touching her skin.
It was neither cold nor hot, but it was unmistakably abnormal.
Miryeong’s breath lagged by one beat.
“Hajin.”
She called his name.
“From there—”
Before she could finish, Miryeong’s face contorted.
“Ghk—”
Unable even to cover her mouth, Miryeong bent forward.
And soon, something red fell from her lips to the ground.
Blood.
Bido’s eyes widened.
“Lady Miryeong!”
She drew her sword by reflex.
Miryeong’s skin was visibly darkening.
It was not that the blood was draining from her face,
but rather that the color of her blood itself was changing.
Miryeong sank down onto one knee,
bracing one hand against the ground.
It was the motion of someone trying not to collapse.
“Bido.”
Miryeong’s voice was already buried in her breath.
“Go.”
Bido could not move at those words.
“This is—”
“Run.”
Miryeong said through clenched teeth.
At that moment,
Bido’s mind went blank.
The words telling her to run overlapped with the sight of Miryeong crumbling before her eyes.
From that point on, Bido did not look back even once.
She ran to Miryeong and grabbed her arm.
“I won’t go.”
Her words were firm.
At that moment,
Miryeong’s body shook violently, then stopped.
Her ragged breathing settled a little.
Miryeong’s eyes slowly turned toward Bido.
And focus returned to them.
With great effort, Miryeong smiled.
“…Ah.”
Then, catching her breath, she said,
“That’s right.”
She still had not let go of Bido’s hand.
“You are…”
“This, weren’t you.”
Miryeong’s shoulders sagged slightly.
The change had not ended completely.
But,
for now, at least, it had stopped.
Hajin looked as though he could not understand the scene before him.
“Why…”
He muttered.
His gaze moved from Miryeong to Bido,
then back to Miryeong again.
“Why won’t you die?”
The instant the words slipped out,
Hajin himself heard them and shook his head violently.
“No!”
“No,”
“I’m not trying to kill you.”
He took a step back, then came forward again.
“I never thought—”
His words broke off.
Soon, Hajin’s eyes turned even redder.
This time was different from before.
The color was not spreading.
It was filling up from within.
“Why—!”
Hajin shouted.
At the same time, the inside of the cave responded.
The water pooled on the floor slowly turned black.
Something like an oil film spread over the clear surface,
and then—
Hiss—
With a low sound, smoke began to rise.
Bido swallowed her breath.
The same change was occurring among the corpses.
It began with the skin.
The already discolored flesh could no longer hold its shape and slowly melted down.
Smoke seeped thinly from the bodies.
Hajin screamed at the sight.
“I didn’t do it!”
“I never—”
“I didn’t come here to do this!”
Contrary to his words, the reaction inside the cave grew more and more violent.
The air stung.
Even breathing in felt dangerous.
From that moment on, Bido stopped thinking.
No,
there was only one thing left she could think of.
Rangnan’s words.
When necessary.
Bido did not let go of the hand gripping Miryeong.
Miryeong was still catching her breath,
enduring without having fully returned to herself.
Bido did not close her eyes.
She fixed her gaze on Hajin.
Then she drew up something from within herself.
Her Mirkin answered.
There was no sound.
Nor was there much light.
Even so, the change was unmistakable.
The water around them that had been turning black stopped changing.
Along with it, the smoke vanished as though scattered in midair.
The melting of the corpses progressed no further.
As if time had been bound again.
Hajin’s body shook violently.
The red blazing in his eyes wavered for an instant,
then gradually faded.
“What…”
He gasped for breath.
“Just now…”
“What did you do…”
Bido did not answer the question.
Instead, she looked back at Miryeong once.
Miryeong was still kneeling,
but her head was raised.
Only then did Bido let go completely.
And she gripped her sword with both hands.
This time, it was not a reflexive motion.
It was a clear choice.
For a moment, the cave fell silent, as though holding its breath.
What remained was not the stillness after the end,
but the sound of unfinished things catching their breath.
Though no water dripped,
the smell of dampness grew thicker from somewhere.
But it was not over yet.
Unable to properly see Bido before him, Hajin repeated the same words.
“What the hell are you…?”
His voice trembled.
“How…”
“How can you—”
In the end, the words did not continue to the end.
Bido was catching her breath while maintaining her Mirkin.
It did not feel like she was forcefully holding on to it.
Rather, her current state felt strangely natural.
Bido let Idrin flow into her sword.
A sensation like the sword humming lowly traveled through her hands.
The way to use the sword—
the thing she had remembered,
practiced, and tried to make her body learn—
was now being arranged not in her head, but within her body.
Bido’s eyes seemed to blaze red.
And below them,
faint scales slowly sprouted.
But this time, there was no pain.
Her breath did not stop,
nor did it feel as if her body were being torn apart.
The sword responded as though shouting something.
Bido did not try to understand that sound.
She simply took one step forward.
Slowly,
but without hesitation.
Hajin saw her and fell backward.
Then, with his hands braced against the floor, he edged away.
“D… don’t come.”
His voice was close to a scream.
“I said don’t come—!”
But Bido did not stop.
The one before her eyes was Hajin,
but in Bido’s vision, the image of Miryeong kneeling and catching her breath overlapped with him.
At first, it was anger.
Then came an incomprehensible confusion toward this entire situation.
Even so, in this moment,
Bido felt that she knew how she had to use this sword.
She had never learned it.
No one had taught her.
She simply knew, right now.
Bido carefully raised the tip of her sword.
Then, without hesitation, she swiftly gave Hajin a light thrust toward the chest.
It was not deep.
The movement was far too shallow to be called fatal.
But in that instant,
Hajin’s body stopped for a moment.
The red energy in his eyes wavered,
then drained away all at once.
Without making a sound, Hajin collapsed forward just like that.
And the inside of the cave became completely quiet.
Only then did Bido exhale harshly.
The moment she breathed out,
the smell of the cave surged in all at once.
Blood, dampness, burning smoke.
Bido instinctively knew that smell would not disappear.
Her chest heaved greatly.
Then the red blazing in her eyes slowly subsided,
and the scales, too,
vanished without a trace,
as if they had never sprouted at all.
Bido soon looked down at her own hands.
The sword was still in her grip,
but it no longer responded.
Bido stood there for a while, then slowly raised her head.
It was not completely over yet.
But,
at least for now,
everything inside the cave had stopped breathing.