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Rui

Wyusan’s capital of Sanyeongto has no time to mourn as the body of their empress, missing a head, is teleported into the city limits by war-weary Dokkaebi. The remaining Wyusan soldiers are brought through the shadowed portals as well, screaming all the while, their mortal minds unable to comprehend the impossibility of what they just saw. What they just experienced.

Sanyeongto’s land is enclosed by a wall of granite. The Beast Wall keeps the creatures of the wilderness from entering the crammed capital, but now it will be used for another purpose. For war.

Children are evacuated, Dokkaebi shouting orders in the narrow streets between jumaks and shops. They will claim refuge in Gyeulcheon, carried through the shadowed corridors by the warriors. It is the one place that the self-proclaimed “Goddess of Wrath” cannot reach. They are not given time to pack anything more than clothing.

Adult men and women will stay. They must stay. Wyusan’s forces have been severely impacted. Their only comfort is that the Imugi have been reduced in number as well. Wyusan’s tradition of educating its citizens in combat from an early age means that the commonfolk can serve as a makeshift army until Bonseyo responds to the distress call.

When the Prophecy takes the capital, Wyusan will fall. The people will have no choice but to submit, and there will only be one more kingdom to take before Fulfillment of the Prophecy is reached.

Chan has been sent to Bonseyo, to pry the Jeon Dynasty’s heads out of their asses, as Empress Moon suggested before her death. Rui, head pounding, organizes the evacuation of the children, and of the adults who are unable to fight. It brings him no pleasure, to separate families like this. But they need every fighter they can get.

The evacuations take hours. Night bleeds into day, which bleeds into evening. Chan has not yet returned from Bonseyo. Rui, drained of all energy, finds a quick reprieve in Moon’s old palace. He sleeps on the floor before the phoenix throne, his head cushioned by a floor pillow he found a few halls away. And then he is awake again, meeting with Kang in Gyeulcheon’s infirmary.

They have returned to using the pocket-realm as a base for the wounded. Now that Moon is dead, so is her request. Yet it is still partway honored. The Dokkaebi who are not wounded remain on Iseung with the mortals who escaped unscathed.

“The Gumiho?” Rui asks wearily as he watches Kang stitch the flesh of a wounded human’s lower abdomen back together. It is rather unclear if the unconscious and bloody soldier will make it. The medics are giving the injured mortals priority, but it is a strategy Rui may soon be forced to order abandoned. The human survival rates are already low, and one Dokkaebi soldier is worth five human ones in terms of battle capability. They simply cannot afford to lose any more of Gyeulcheon’s warriors.

“Caged,” Kang says, eyes on his work. Rui sees that the back of his hanbok is damp with sweat, and his chin-length, red-brown hair is lank with it. It is becoming clear that Kang cannot save the human, even with the vast array of medicinal techniques at his disposal, but Rui knows that he will try. Jeong Kang always tries. “She is secure. I will form a strategy later of how to maximize her capture to our benefit. Lina—the Prophecy, that is, will want her back.”

Rui nods and fights the urge to drag a hand down his face, to give into the demands of his exhausted body and sway on his feet. Even after the brief sleep he found in the palace, he knows that if he loosens his grip on his mask of control for even a moment, he will collapse at Kang’s feet. Tired. Haneul Rui is so very, very tired—and frightened.

Frightened of the bloodshed of this war.

Frightened of his—and Lina’s—fates.

That Demon in her mind, that Aglyeong… He knows of its kind.

What it forebodes, should one look upon it.

And they have both seen it.