Before the night had fully lifted,
the group first began to catch their breath.
Their throats still stung every time they inhaled.
It felt as though last night’s heat and the smell of ash had followed them.
The embers had already gone out.
Someone covered them with earth so the ashes would not scatter,
and someone passed around a water pouch, each person taking only a single sip.
There were not many words.
Instead of words, their hands were busy.
They made even the sound of cutting bandages as quiet as possible,
and pressed each knot once more so it would not come undone.
The wounds from the day before were not newly made;
they were lingering “traces.”
Someone grimaced as they rolled a shoulder,
and someone lowered their head, trying not to let that grimace be seen.
Soon, a light meal followed.
The sound of bread being torn, the sound of jerky being chewed.
The shock and abrasion of yesterday still remained somewhere in their bodies,
but still, the people ate.
Kallen tore off a piece of bread,
and Yeonhwa chewed her jerky only after rubbing her wrist once.
Because if they did not eat, they could not move.
Off to one side, someone was rewrapping bandages.
They laid fresh cloth over abrasions,
and pressed water-soaked cloth against lightly burned skin.
Someone rotated a wrist,
and someone clutched a shoulder and let out a long breath.
When the meal ended,
they immediately began clearing the place.
The tents were folded, and the stakes were pulled up.
The packs returned to their backs.
The sounds of feet stepping on the ground began to fall into rhythm, one by one.
Just before departure,
Muryeong quietly sat down to one side.
Before him lay a long object wrapped in cloth.
The dragon weapon recovered from Roan.
Muryeong did not unwrap the cloth.
Not because he did not want to see it,
but because he knew things would change from the moment he did.
A dragon weapon touched a person with its aura before its form.
Muryeong wrapped the cloth once more, tightly,
and pressed his palm against it once.
What he confirmed with his palm was not its weight.
A strange grain against his fingertips.
A cold, alien sensation crawling up his skin.
As though committing that strangeness to memory,
Muryeong adjusted even the direction of the knot once more.
Then he began threading a cord through it, tying it so he could sling it over his shoulder.
The knot tightened firmly.
It was then that Kallen approached him.
Kallen stopped with two steps still between them.
Then he opened his mouth.
His voice was cautious.
“Lord Muryeong. Um… can’t you use that?”
Without stopping his hands as they tightened the knot,
Muryeong glanced at Kallen.
“This is not a human weapon.”
His words were brief.
Words that drew a clear line.
“It is Haraya’s weapon, bestowed by Tiamar.”
“Only one with the ‘qualifications’ can use it.”
Kallen’s lips twitched.
“Even so… wouldn’t it help our fighting strength…”
Kallen trailed off,
his gaze sweeping once more over the weight beyond the cloth.
Muryeong did not answer.
He did not look at Kallen again, either.
He simply
pulled the remaining cord and completed the knot.
Then he slung the cloth-wrapped weapon over his shoulder.
He carried it not like a “weapon,” but like “baggage.”
Kallen lowered his head and swallowed a sigh.
Instead of answering, Muryeong tightened the knot further,
as if to say no words were needed.
Listening from a distance, Bido thought of the sword he was carrying.
A dragon weapon.
Tiamar’s sword.
Do I
have the “qualifications”?
At that moment, Rangnan stepped forward.
“Now. We depart.”
No one answered.
They simply scattered to their places as they were used to doing.
Soon, the vanguard and rear guard quietly fell into formation.
—
The group walked the road in silence.
The morning air was cold,
and yesterday’s lingering heat still seemed to cling somewhere to their collars.
No one spoke loudly,
and only their footsteps continued at a steady pace.
Bido glanced beside him.
Raen was beaming.
Even after going through something like yesterday, that was the face he wore.
His tail kept swaying,
and there was no break in his smile.
Raen’s smile was light,
but that lightness did not come from nowhere.
His walking speed, the swing of his arms, even the rhythm of his tail—
Raen was deliberately matching them all to the “bright side.”
Perhaps because, if he loosened even a little,
last night might come crashing back over him as it was.
Thinking that,
Bido smiled awkwardly for no real reason.
It was not to comfort Raen,
but to avoid breaking the balance Raen was trying to protect.
Bido spoke carefully.
“Raen… you seem to be in a good mood.”
Raen’s eyes sparkled.
“Ah~ yeah! Maho says we’ll be staying with the Silver Moon Corps for a while too!”
Raen swung one arm wide.
“Then I can be with Bido! That’s so great!”
Bido smiled awkwardly.
“Ah… really? Then… that’s good.”
Raen nodded,
pressing his body a little closer to Bido.
“You’re happy too, right, Bido?”
“Ah. Well… yeah.”
Just then, Miryeong cut in from beside them.
“Hey, Dullam kid.”
Raen immediately turned his head.
“Yes!”
Miryeong asked while looking ahead.
“But why are you up here on this continent?”
“Don’t all of your people live in the Blue Desert?”
Raen tried to answer with his usual smile.
“Ah~ well, you see!”
But his words
cut off there for a moment.
Raen’s tail sank a little.
The smile remained,
but his eyes looked briefly empty.
“…Because there’s nowhere for me to go back to.”
Raen tried to smile,
but the corners of his mouth followed a beat late.
Then, as if nothing had happened,
he matched his steps again.
Bido saw that brief gap.
The moment Raen did not seem to “be bright,”
but seemed as though he had to be.
Miryeong closed her mouth for a moment.
“Ah…”
The words that followed
were quieter than expected.
“Is that so.”
Without turning her gaze, Miryeong added,
“Then… you’re kind of like me.”
Raen’s tail swayed ever so slightly.
And as if forcing it to rise again,
Raen lifted the corners of his mouth.
“Right? So we just need to get along with each other!”
Bido nodded faintly.
The group once again
walked without saying anything.
—
As he walked, Bido suddenly thought.
So much had happened.
The day he had walked out carrying the box his master gave him.
Everything after that had passed in a blur.
The Empire.
Holy knights.
The Silver Moon Corps.
And someone’s death.
Tiamar’s sword.
The demon of the moon.
To Bido, who had lived with his master in Arku, everything was unfamiliar.
Too fast, and too strange.
Bido had never had anything like a goal in life.
Even now, that was the same.
He had merely drifted along and arrived here.
And so he thought.
Where will I drift to next?
The Seonhwa that Maho had spoken of.
The words that had come out of his mouth without him realizing.
The emotions he had felt from Roan.
Everything was complicated and difficult.
But—
last night came to mind.
The sensation of the lock snapping like a thread.
The fact that the things he had believed he was holding on to
could be torn apart so easily.
That memory tightened around his fingers.
Bido swallowed a breath.
And recalled again.
The faces that had been with him in those moments.
The people who were still by his side now.
Bido realized.
That he now had people with him.
And
that he was still gaining more.
Bido thought.
I want to be with these people.
And I want to protect them.
This everyday life.
Bido lifted his head.
The backs of the group stretched ahead in a single line.
The words “I want to protect them” were easy.
But protecting something
was less about defeating someone and closer to not collapsing first.
Bido recalled the sensation from the day before, when the lock had broken.
The moment when not power, but trust, had been severed.
Even if he met that moment again, he would not step back next time,
Bido vowed only inwardly.
Not because saying it aloud would make it weaker.
A vow had to harden first at the fingertips before it came out into the open.
And so, instead of speaking,
Bido quietly adjusted his grip on his sword strap once more.
—
The forest was still quiet.
As if yesterday’s commotion had been a lie, only the trees stood there.
Rangnan took the lead without hesitation.
No one asked the way.
They only followed.
Though they had not walked for long, the tips of their feet felt heavy.
Not their bodies, but their hearts.
When Rangnan changed direction,
an abandoned shrine appeared between the trees.
It must once have been a place people came and went,
but now only old pillars and a cracked floor remained.
Raen’s eyes sparkled at the sight of the shrine.
Bido adjusted his grip on the sword strap once more.
Miryeong said offhandedly,
“Home at last.”
Behind the shrine.
When Rangnan pushed aside the vines,
a steep stairway descended beneath them.
The stone steps were slick with moisture,
and the farther down they went, the colder the air became.
Below was soon a dead-end rock wall.
A dead end so complete it felt suffocating.
A place where anyone could see there was no further path.
Raen tilted his head for a moment,
and Kallen unconsciously grabbed his scabbard.
Bido adjusted his grip on the sword strap once more.
Rangnan placed a hand on the rock wall
and knocked in a familiar rhythm.
A brief silence.
Rather than the rock wall “opening,”
a gap spread between the stones as though it had always been there.
Darkness breathed out from within.
The smell of stone and earth, of old embers.
Rangnan said in a low voice,
“We’re going in.”
One by one, the group pushed themselves through the gap.
Their footsteps echoed low beneath the stairs.
Bido, for the last time,
looked back at the entrance, which was like the shadow of the shrine.
Then he turned around.
A moment later, the gap slowly closed behind them.
The sounds of the outside, and the wind—
were cut off as though they had never existed at all.