Page 77

Kang

In the world above, the Yong embrace a sweet triumph, inhuman bellows shaking the sky, golden scales illuminated by the piercing lightning as their twisting bodies soar toward the Bonseyo palace where Kang stares down at Rui’s still face and Iseul shakily closes Lina’s eyes.

Out of the corner of his vision, Kang watches as Chan looks up at the sky and staggers back, face ashen. When the Supreme Commander’s gaze falls upon the dead Dokkaebi emperor, he once more falls to his knees.

“This vengeance,” rasps Chan. “It does not…it is not what I thought it would be.”

Kang closes his eyes. Grief comes then, splintering his skin. Haneul Rui is dead. Truly dead.

“We lost,” the Gumiho breathes, looking up at Kang. “We lost —”

Another earth-rattling roar. This one so close above that the ground undulates, and Iseul falls onto her rear.

Kang swallows hard, forcing himself to think. “We cannot leave the bodies,” he rasps. The ravaged bodies. He had steadfastly not considered what Rui would look like, so still and cold and bloody when he’d planned his assassination—knowing that if he did, he never would have carried out the act. The king has always been one so full of life, of glittering eyes and mischievous smiles, radiating with a razor-sharp energy.

The advisor cannot blame Chan for what he did, yet this…

This, despite all, is a wound to the heart.

Kang blinks back tears as he lifts the dead emperor into his arms. His fingers had been intertwined with the girl’s, and it cuts him deeply to tear them apart, but they must retreat. Next to him, Iseul is tenderly scooping Lina up, crying softly.

Another roar, from far above. They are running out of time.

Kang summons a portal. “Chan!” he shouts, but the Supreme Commander makes no move to summon his own, weakened by either injury or shame. Instead, he stares up at the sky as golden dragons cut through the storm clouds like shocks of lightning descending vengefully upon the earth.

White hair whipping in the wind, Kim Chan pulls himself to his feet and opens his arms wide. Kang thinks he is shouting Hana’s name.

Iseul screams in terror, moving toward Kang’s portal, slowed down by Lina’s weight. “GO!” Kang cries, but it is too late.

In slow motion, the Yong come.

Kang closes his eyes just as the dragons descend, maws angled toward the earth with eyes molten from rage.