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Rui

The Dokkaebi emperor staggers to his knees in his throne room and chokes on his grief.

Every day, the torment gnaws upon his insides. After every battle, he cannot breathe, his lungs forgetting the simple act of drawing in oxygen as the world crashes and burns around him. Wheezing, he clutches his throat, shaking so violently that he is almost sick on the glossy black floor. Hot tears pressing against the backs of his eyes, Rui lowers his forehead to the cold stone, trying to focus on the frigid feeling against his skin. He needs help, he needs comfort, but he is alone to suffer this attack. As he must be.

For what would they say, if they could see him like this? What would they think ? His soldiers, his subjects. An emperor cannot be weak in a time of war. And so, while his forces return to Gyeulcheon and cluster in the ballroom—which has been converted into a hospital for the wounded—Rui shakes and shudders before his damned throne of dark thorns. He fights to regain control over the pocket-realm’s weather, which fluctuates wildly from sunny to storming as adrenaline fills him so deeply that he gags upon it.

It begins to pass, and Rui takes a tremulous breath, yanking the helmet off his head and dragging an unsteady hand through his sweat-damp hair. Slowly, he pushes himself to his feet. Above him on the ceiling, ruby-scaled Yong swim through scatterings of glowing moons. Rui stares up at those Yong, the true Yong of old, eradicated by time—the creatures the Imugi wish to become a wicked mockery of. Rui’s hands flex at his sides. These original Yong were benevolent. But their dagger-sharp talons, their elongated fangs, their ability to weave through air and sky…

Prophecies cannot be stopped, but by the gods, he has to try .

It would not be honorable , to die knowing that he did not do everything in his formidable power to save these Three Kingdoms from the Prophecy’s wrath. He knows that his army of Dokkaebi warriors feel the same. This, it is their culture. The unstaggering belief that it is better to die a honed blade than one dull and coated in rust. It is no secret that Rui used to scorn this particular Dokkaebi belief—taunting a dishonorable death in ways such as, say, hiring a mortal assassin to try to kill him within fourteen days—but now, Rui understands. He understands, although he wishes he did not.

It’s more likely than not that death is coming for them all…and swiftly.

It is only a matter of how they choose to meet it.

Like cowards?

Or like the warriors they are?

Rui closes his eyes, attempting to collect himself. Trembling, he dons the mask he has become so used to wearing.

Cold. Indifferent. Confident. It is a mask made from terror, sculpted from necessity and weakness. For this is all it is—a mask. Underneath its cold edges, Rui is as broken as only a Dokkaebi can be: endlessly, eternally, through the depths of an immortal soul.

Breathing hard, he closes his eyes and does what he now always does after these attacks. As sweat trickles down his back, he summons the red thread of fate into his mind’s eye. In inky blackness it appears, swirling to someplace far in the distance. In this empty mindscape, Rui closes his fingers around the sparkling ribbon. Here, the string is corporeal, a true ribbon rather than one of the spiritual. With a clenched jaw, he begins to walk. His feet move across the plane of nothingness, following. Following, following. He walks, hope pounding futilely against his rib cage, but he only finds her at the other end of the red thread.

The Prophecy.

It’s like a watercolor splash in the darkness—the blue-tinged, frosty mountain on which the Prophecy stands, the whirling eddies of powdery snow, the long strands of her inky black hair escaping from her tight braid, having already grown back from Rui’s attack in the Sunpo palace with inhuman speed. There is no sign of the burned, bald woman from the Night of the Red Moon. Her eyes are golden above the teardrop scar and slit in the middle by an inky dagger of black—so different than the rich brown that they once were.

No humanity lives in those golden depths. No emotion.

The red thread of fate leads into this splash, and Rui knows that if he wished so, he could step into this scene—make his presence known, murmur words that the Prophecy would hear whispered down their bond.

She’s speaking to somebody, her red lips curled in that horrible grin, a rictus on Lina’s face. Fury washes over him as he turns away. It is not the Prophecy that he is trying to find, who he is attempting to follow the red thread toward. No.

It is his wife, his soul-stitched whom he looks for. Shin Lina, with her sparkling laugh and fierce disposition. Shin Lina, his little thief, his assassin whom he loves with every beat of his bleeding heart. Shin Lina, who died with Eunbi—

Rui squeezes his eyes shut, gripping the red thread so hard that his nails dig into his palm, leaving angry red crescents as that terrible night forces its way into his memories.

It was never meant to happen like that. Kang, colorless with shock, had knelt before Rui later that night in Gyeulcheon, swearing upon his life that this —this had not been his clandestine plot. Eunbi’s presence, combined with his Dokkaebi fire, had only been meant to shock Lina out of the parasitic Prophecy’s grip. Rui swallows sickness as he remembers gripping the collar of Kang’s robes with pale-knuckled fists, shaking his advisor so hard that his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Rui had—Rui had been so close to killing him, his friend, his brother in all but blood.

All that time, Kang had not so much as lifted a hand to defend himself. As Rui’s blue flames crackled, cold as ice, Kang had closed his eyes and nodded. In acceptance.

He had once told Rui he was not the sort to run from his mistakes. He had not lied.

But Rui…Rui had not been able to do it. His fingers had fallen from Kang’s robes, and with a low sob, he’d shoved the other Dokkaebi away, his hands spasming at his sides. Instead, he’d spent the night screaming at the stars, so cruel and cold in the sky of his own creation.

The next morning, he’d staggered through the palace to Hana’s bedroom, falling to his knees beside her deathbed, his head hung in the worst sort of grief: the kind that swirls inside of you at the knowledge of an unavoidable, impending death.

Hana’s bedroom—so typically maddeningly unkept, with hundreds of fine dresses strewn across the marble floor as if she tried on dozens of hanboks before deciding on her favorite for the day—was eerily clean, smelling of harsh soap and lye underneath the more putrid stench of sickness and a seeping wound. The Dokkaebi laid beneath the covers of the bed, her skin pallid and sickly, sweat beading on her damp forehead. Her lips, usually painted in the most fashionable colors, were dry and cracked. Her eyes, when they fluttered open to rest upon him, were dull and glazed with pain.

“Rui?” she rasped. Her voice was no longer the smoky, sensuous thing it once was, now broken and weak. Next to her on the bed, Chan’s eyes snapped open from the shallow sleep he must have found himself in. His general’s emerald eyes reminded Rui of shattered glass: sharp and utterly destroyed.

If eyes truly were the window to the soul, then his were punched in, wrecked beyond repair.

It had happened so fast. Not seconds after that horrible moment in Sunpo’s palace when the Prophecy cleaved Manpasikjeok in two, Hana had screamed, felled by the venomous bite of an Imugi. The serpent had sunk its teeth into her side, so deep that even Kang’s most desperate measures did little to stop the bleeding. As for the poison, running through Park Hana’s veins…

No medicine, no elixir, would take.

And Hana had vehemently resisted attempts to administer her the wongun enhancer. After all, Lina was once poisoned by Imugi venom. Her ingestion of the enhancer afterward had… changed her. Monstrously so. Although the same likely would not happen to Hana—not without an ages-old Prophecy waiting viciously in the wings for her—his friend would not sway.

She’d rather die than be like Lina.

And somewhere, deep down, Rui knew that even the wongun enhancer would not cure Hana. She was already a Gaksi Dokkaebi of his inner court; the enhancer was only used for granting the Gaksi ability of teleportation to standard Dokkaebi. Nothing could help Hana. Not at this stage.

That, oh that , was the crux of it all.

“Rui?” his friend repeated, blinking slowly. “Is it you?”

“Hana,” he said roughly, the name scraping against his throat. There was little else for him to say. They knew what was coming. “Forgive me.”

A glimmer of that old vindictiveness sparked in Hana’s eyes. “Apologies do nothing , Rui,” she snapped, and her voice would have been steely cold if not for the crack running down the middle. “I warned you, did I not? I told you, quite plainly, to kill her. And now this.” Her lips twisted. “There will be more deaths like mine. Many more. The mortal realm will soon run red with blood. I am the first, but I am not the last.”

Rui pressed his trembling lips together. Yes, Hana had urged him to kill his beloved—with what he had thought was spite and malice. Now, he wondered if it was mercy.

If she was trying to save Lina from the cruel hands of fate.

If she was trying to save Rui from watching the girl he loved be consumed by a parasite from the inside out.

Hana reached out and gripped one of his hands in her own. Her other clenched around her lover’s. “ Avenge me ,” hissed Hana, her curly black hair plastered to her freckled neck by her own sickly sweat. Her white nightdress was stained with it. “ Swear it .”

And as Chan swore the oath, his low voice cracking like ice in frigid winter, Hana did not look at him once. She kept her glare, suddenly lucid and furious, on her emperor.

“I swear it,” rasped Rui, again bowing his head. “I swear to do what I must to stop the Prophecy.”

And to avenge Lina , he added silently. For Shin Lina was as much a victim of that insidious parasite as Hana.

“Good,” snapped Hana, and for a moment Rui was a young crown prince again, allowing himself to be bossed around by a mere servant’s daughter in a game of pretend. There was a reason he had chosen her for his Inner Circle. Even now, as she took a shuddering breath, Rui saw it. That fire inside of her. Hungry and burning.

Until it guttered out.

Suddenly spent, Hana collapsed back onto the pillows.

She did not speak again.

Two nights later, Park Hana died, the Imugi venom overtaking her body. She screamed in her final moments before falling still, dark eyes wide and empty.

That same night, Rui and Kang had to hold Chan down as he roared, had to sedate him as he attempted to portal into Sunpo, to kill Lina where she stood. They had just lost one friend. They could not survive losing another so soon.

Now, in the mindscape, Rui opens his eyes and swallows hard, trying his best to step around the vision of the Prophecy. It is a foolish yearning, he knows, to wish that his Lina is still in here somewhere. She is as good as dead, but he cannot—Rui cannot accept that. Still, he looks for her, begging the red thread to lead him to his love. But it only ever leads him to the Prophecy. For so long, he has hoped that Lina is somewhere , only hidden from him.

Yet as he returns to his body in the throne room, Rui admits with a flood of nausea that if Lina is there, she is…hidden. Shrouded forever, never to emerge. As much as he attempts to coax her out like this, or through the Dokkaebi fire on the battlefield, a part of him knows that his Lina is gone forever.

And he knows that he must be the one to kill her body.

If not him, it will be Chan. Chan, mad with grief, consumed by his furious oath to avenge Hana. His supreme commander, who speaks of cutting up the Prophecy like a slab of raw meat. For his Lina, Rui will not allow that to happen. This body was once hers. It must be painless. It must be quick. For the girl he loved and loves still.

She, too, deserves an honorable death.

“Little thief,” Rui whispers, holding his head in his hands, “I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

…

As Rui strides into the ballroom, his eyes snap immediately to his mad Supreme Commander . Chan is gritting his teeth against Kang’s needle as it weaves in and out of the wound dripping from his side and glaring at Rui, who pretends not to see. Unfortunately, Chan’s war-crazed glower is rather hard to ignore. It cuts through him like the sharpest knife as he slowly walks through the cots of the injured, his heart heavy as the Dokkaebi servants now trained in basic medicinal skills rush back and forth with panicked expressions.

Dokkaebi healing is typically quick, but fighting Imugi venom is a slower process—and one that can be futile. Hana died from it. These soldiers, the ones with the deeper wounds, will also be dead in two nights. Maybe less. Suppressing a grimace, Rui passes Ryu Seojin. The human boy—brother to one of Lina’s old gang members—has quickly become one of the most skilled healers in the Dokkaebi army. They are fortunate to have him. Without him, their death count would be much higher.

As Rui nears Chan, he listens as the Supreme Commander’s breaths come sharper, quickening in time with Kang’s ministrations. The emperor hides a grimace as Chan grunts in pain, eyeing the gouge in his side. The sight of the gore is almost a relief. Chan’s wound is not as bad as Rui had feared—the Gumiho’s claws gouged into the warrior’s flesh, but not deep enough to scrape bone.

Small mercies mean everything these days.

With the combination of Kang’s treatment and his natural healing, Chan will be able to return to the field tomorrow. Rui lingers near the foot of his cot, watching Kang work with narrowed eyes.

“Stay still,” he warns his Supreme Commander. Quietly, almost gently, but it’s still an order from an emperor. It is to be obeyed. “I daresay that jerking around like a fish on a string will only make it hurt more.”

Chan snarls.

Rui sighs.

These days, talking to Chan is like speaking to a wounded, rabid beast. The Supreme Commander of the Dokkaebi army is liable to be reticent one moment, and flying into a rage the next, raving about what he will do to Shin Lina when he is given the chance. It is exhausting yet understandable. They have lost their loves, the two of them. And they suffer.

“It’ll heal itself,” the warrior snaps, glaring at everyone and everything in sight.

“Not if you keep moving,” Kang retorts sharply before turning toward Rui. As it always does now, Rui’s stomach drops as their eyes meet. They do not have much of a friendship anymore.

Attempting to murder a friend does that, apparently. Who would have thought?

Rui flattens his lips before they can curl into a cold, sardonic smile. It’s an effort for him to incline his head into a chilly nod. It hurts to look at his advisor, at the dark circles underneath his wise eyes and the way his once-sleek, dark auburn hair is now matted and limp. Rui wills his mask not to crack as he turns his gaze to Chan, unable to meet Kang’s eyes for a moment longer.

What do you say after you try to kill your friend?

What do you say after he nearly lets you?

Rui’s notoriously silver tongue simply has no words for this situation. He glances back toward Chan. The white-haired general still sits on the cot, his dark chest bare. The wound in his side has been cleaned and is in the process of being stitched. Chan glowers up at Rui, blame simmering in his eyes, and the emperor is bitter at the truth of it: his inner circle is fractured and broken. Blame and loss has pulled them apart, drawing an irreversible line in the sand between the three remaining Gaksi Dokkaebi of Gyeulcheon’s inner court.

“We keep retreating ,” Chan snarls up at Rui, clearly itching for a fight. “We need to stand our ground. We’ve fought this war before, and never once did we retreat.”

“Circumstances are different,” Rui replies stiffly, measuring his breaths. “There is a Prophecy. These retreats have saved the lives of the army. It would be foolhardy to stay when our own carnage surrounds us.”

“Or,” Chan growls, gnashing his teeth together, “you don’t want to kill her just yet. You’re holding back. My soldiers and I know it.”

Rui stiffens, narrowing his eyes. “ Our soldiers,” he corrects icily, but inside, he is worried. Chan has taken up his wartime position as Supreme Commander. As thus, his power over Rui’s army is considerable. Should Rui die in battle, the troops will be solely reliant upon Kim Chan. And although that is not the case yet , Rui has not missed the way his soldiers look up to the Supreme Commander. Respect him, admire him both as a Dokkaebi and as a soldier. If Chan is spreading discontent amongst Gyeulcheon’s militia, Rui will need to deal with it. Deal with him. He pins Chan down with a stare.

His commander is grieving; Rui can understand that as he, too, feels the useless organ in his chest crack and rupture and fissure every moment of every damn day. But if Chan’s way of mourning his lover poses a risk to this war, if his grief leads to hurried decisions and actions fueled not by strategy but by foolhardy haste, Rui will not hesitate to slap sense into him. If he is forced to demote Chan, he will.

But not yet. Chan is his strongest fighter, trained by his father, Kim Joonghoo—a revered combatant, one that has made his way into Dokkaebi myths and legends. Rui pins Chan with a stare a moment longer. Know your place , he tells him through firm lips and hard eyes.

Chan inhales sharply. “Fine,” he eventually spits out, but Rui knows that what he really means is, All of this is your fault. Hana warned you from the very start that getting involved with that human girl was a stupid choice.

His hands curl at his sides. It takes a glorious amount of effort to remind himself that pummeling the wounded is most typically frowned upon.

“Fine,” Rui retorts sharply and turns back to Kang. “I meet with Empress Moon of Wyusan tonight.” The warrior-empress knows to expect him. Since Lina took Sunpo, they have been exchanging correspondences: urges to prepare for invasion from the Dokkaebi met with Moon Dahee’s curt replies that although she is readying her army, she’s hopeful the Dokkaebi will stop “this snake-girl” (as she put it) from reaching her kingdom.

Even when Rui sent Kang to warn her that Prophecies are always fulfilled—and quickly , if there is nobody honorable enough to at least try to oppose them—Empress Moon did not sway, confident that the Dokkaebi would find an early triumph, citing an ancient battle between Sunpo and Wyusan in which the Sunpo army quickly perished on Habaek’s River and the Yaepak Mountain Range.

“ I will not join this war until it reaches my lands ,” Empress Moon had apparently explained to Kang.

The emperor knows he cannot blame Moon for her folly—she does not yet understand the wrath and ruin the Prophecy will reap, even against the powerful Dokkaebi. Yet he has, on multiple occasions, wished that Manpasikjeok was not broken. That he could bend Wyusan and Bonseyo’s stubborn minds to his will. For Bonseyo is even worse than Wyusan, ignoring Gyeulcheon’s many missives entirely in favor of sorting out their own inner war between the members of the Jeon Dynasty who have a tendency to stab each other in the back. Their inanity is staggering. Their kingdom is poised to be taken in a war that they ignore in favor of their own family feuds .

Or perhaps they have already accepted their demise and turn to petty squabbles as a distraction. He has never fully understood the way of mortals. And, he thinks, he never will.

Rui should pay the Jeons a visit as well, but for now, Empress Moon is the priority. The Prophecy is closer to her kingdom, and her forces are larger in number, more organized. Rui, to be honest, doubts Bonseyo’s value as a lender of aid. They are unstable, both internally and externally.

Now that the Prophecy has almost reached the Wyusan Wilderness, Wyusan’s empress will recognize the necessity of joining power with Gyeulcheon to stand against the Prophecy. And Gyeulcheon, as much as it pains Rui to admit it, needs reinforcements, human or otherwise. A good number of warriors have been felled by Imugi venom. At the very least, the human soldiers will provide a distraction.

Rui closes his eyes. He hates war. He hates that it forces him to think this way, equivalating human life to distractions .

Kang is watching him warily. He can feel it, the scrutinizing gaze tracing his face, his stooped shoulders. Yet Rui is suddenly too damn tired to hide how he is slightly unsteady on his feet, or to even attempt to smooth the fatigue etched upon his visage. The cause of his insomnia is not just this great and terrible war, the haunting bloodshed and broken battles.

It is the Prophecy.

It is what she has done to Lina’s body—a terrible, ghastly violation.

This war, it is futile.

Yet it is not the Dokkaebi way to stand idly by as Imugi ravage the mortal realm of Iseung. It is not his way. Amidst the wounded and dying, Rui reminds himself of that.

“Shall I come with you to meet with Empress Moon?” Kang asks carefully as Rui opens his eyes. His advisor turns back to Chan and finishes the final stitch. As soon as the needle leaves his flesh, Chan scowls and abruptly stands, grabbing his undershirt and shoving past Kang and Rui. Both Dokkaebi watch the Supreme Commander storm out of the ballroom toward his daily meetings with the generals and cavalries. Chan’s body quivers with suppressed energy, and Rui’s lips thin.

That energy, it is dark. It is dangerous. He recognizes it, for it is the same sort of energy that churns within the Prophecy.

This does not bode well , Rui thinks with a heavy heart.

“Rui?” prompts Kang. “Shall I accompany you to Wyusan?”

“No,” the emperor replies quietly as the ballroom doors slam shut once again. “You’re needed here.” He pretends not to see the hurt and shame that flickers across Kang’s face. Once, his advisor’s presence by his side would not even be in question. “Keep an eye on Chan. Ensure that he…stays in line.”

Kang bows his head in promise, focusing on this small step forward. A hollow bitterness—regret—lingers in his eerily wise eyes. Rui looks away from the dark shadows beneath them. “I— Yes. I will.”

Rui nods and hesitates. For a moment, he is tempted to clasp Kang by the shoulder, as he always did in farewell before…

Before.

But a moment later, Rui departs in a swirl of shadows.

And something withers deep inside of him.