The Sword Forged of Fear
There was no guarantee that this would be the end of it.
Even if the Crown Prince tore out every one of his own enemies by the root, the empire would still hold others who coveted his wife. The villains who had shoved a child into a deathbed and then, by some twist of fate, survived—if they ever learned that child still lived, they would never leave her in peace.
The best course of action might be to help Seruhwa flee the palace altogether, but she herself had refused that path.
'I won't allow it. Now…… I need my lady by my side.'
If he wanted to hold on to her, if he could not let her go, then he had no choice but to protect her with his life. Crisis could strike at any moment.
And so the boy needed power.
A weapon to protect his wife.
A firm, icy resolve settled into the boy's black eyes.
'Let's try what I did just now.'
How had he extinguished the fire earlier? The moment he'd seen Seruhwa in the flames, terror had seized him utterly—terror that his wife might be hurt. But fear had not driven him to his knees.
Instead, he had grown desperate to overcome the terrifying situation somehow. He had grown angry—at the things that made him afraid.
The moment he took that step forward, the darkness had moved at his command.
'In the end, my emotions are the key.'
Cheon Gyeol-woo hardened his expression and lowered his gaze. At once, darkness came writhing up out of his shadow and coiled around his fingertips.
'Drawing the darkness up is simple. All I have to do is imagine something frightening. The problem is what comes after…….'
In the prince's grip, the darkness swelled enormously and then shrank down as if yanked by reins, over and over. The boy gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his face.
'To be afraid and yet not be ruled by fear. To face the terror inside me and yet…… never let it command me.'
Extreme fear could, at times, be forged into extreme courage—the strength that let a cornered rat sink its teeth into its mortal enemy, the cat.
Cheon Gyeol-woo deliberately willed himself into that state.
Recalling the darkness that had enveloped him for two years—and the girl who had reached out to hold his hand within it—both at once.
Do not deny the emotion. Admit that you are afraid. Accept your own weakness. But do not surrender to it.
Temper the fear into courage.
'The weapon I will seize. The sword that will protect my wife……!'
In that instant, the darkness that had been flickering wildly stabilized into a fixed shape.
A hwan-do—a ring-hilted saber—formed of pitch-black shadow.
It was still small enough to be called a mere dagger, but precisely because of that, it did not writhe on its own. It could be held, and swung.
'That's it. I just have to keep it like this.'
Drenched in sweat, the boy closed his hand around the black sword.
The blade, forged from his own darkness, clung to his palm as if it were a part of his own body.
Cheon Gyeol-woo turned his gaze to one of the collapsed arsonists sprawled on the ground, the flickering saber still in his hand.
'When people are engulfed in my darkness, they feel terror—they go mad, or they die. But what if I don't cover them completely? What if only a part of them touches it?'
He lowered the sword over the unconscious warrior. Catching the darkness that threatened to come cascading down onto a living man, he squeezed hard and let only a thread of it slip through.
The darkness poured off the blade like a coil of rope and touched the warrior's forehead.
The boy clenched his jaw and held the connection steady. A moment later, the warrior screamed and his eyes flew open.
"AAAAGH! AAGH! Haaagh!"
Drowned beneath the roar of heavy rain, the warrior's screams did not carry far.
The darkness spread like ink, threatening to swallow his whole body. Frozen with horror, the warrior rolled his eyes back and thrashed like a madman.
'No more! I have to control it!'
Darkness, once it spread, did not easily retreat. Straining with every ounce of strength, the prince remembered his wife's words.
"Come to think of it, wouldn't the darkness stay quiet as long as Your Highness is in a good mood? You're smiling, so your shadow's being so well-behaved."
The boy consciously tried to smile. It did not lift his mood at all—his upturned lips only felt stiff and awkward.
'Then…….'
He recalled jade eyes gone wide and round, staring up at him from beneath the eaves of the paint-decorated corridor. He recalled the girl peeking out slyly from beneath her long skirts. He recalled her chattering voice asking which sweets he liked best.
And the forced smile melted, all on its own, into a genuine one.
At the same moment, the darkness spreading over the warrior guttered and died.
The warrior, who had been raging inside the most terrible nightmare imaginable, opened his eyes to find a beautiful boy gazing down at him with a bright, blooming smile.
"Who is behind you?"
The voice was as cool and calm as still water, utterly at odds with the smiling face.
The warrior blinked, dazed.
"Wh-what?"
"I asked who dared to order you to do this."
"Uh……?"
Only then did the warrior recognize the boy standing before him as the Crown Prince. He also remembered how the operation had failed and how he had been captured and knocked unconscious.
Even in failure, he could not reveal his backer. He feared the consequences.
The warrior pressed his lips shut and scanned his surroundings. No one else was in sight—it seemed he had not yet been dragged to the Royal Constabulary.
A warrior of bizarre, supernatural might, he gathered his ki to snap the hemp rope binding him.
Every muscle in his body went taut—but the rope did not budge an inch. It was clearly no ordinary cord.
'What in the world is this rope?'
He had no way of knowing that it was an orat-rope from the divine realm, one that Ansi used, and that no amount of ordinary ki could ever undo it.
The smile that had been lingering on the Crown Prince's face as he watched the warrior strain against his bonds vanished, as if wiped away.
"If you won't talk, then I'll make you want to."
The boy reached out his hand again.
The warrior stared, eyes wide, as darkness rose out of the boy's shadow and became a sword, as a pale hand closed around it, as the black-flickering blade came toward him.
Darkness flowed down along the blade and spilled over him like tangled thread. The moment it touched his chest, the world went dark.
Within the darkness, the warrior saw the thing more terrifying than anything else.
Not an illusion shown to him by another, but the most dreadful nightmare of his own making—drawn straight out of himself.
"AAAAAAGH!"
It was too terrifying. So terrifying that he would rather bite off his own tongue than keep watching. Yes—better to kill me. Just kill me, kill me……
Then, as if by magic, the darkness lifted.
The elegant boy was looking down at him, smiling like a figure in a painting, his bearing immaculate.
"Who is behind you?"
"……"
The warrior panted, terror constricting his breath.
The soft, youthful face of the boy no longer looked like a child's at all.
The Crown Prince was…… this kind of person?
He had clearly heard that His Highness was frail and timid, so exceedingly careful about harming anyone that there was no need to fear something like the Black Curse.
They'd said he was kind in name only—a "good child" with a heart too gentle to crush a single bug!
And yet wasn't this very thing the Crown Prince was deliberately unleashing on him the infamous "Black Curse" he'd only ever heard whispered about?
"It seems you still have no intention of answering."
As he said it, the smile drained from the boy's face once more.
Darkness bloomed upward. The warrior trembled from head to toe.
'That's the Black Curse. The one that turned Unjeongnu into hell two years ago. The one that drove people mad and killed them…….'
The nightmare that had claimed every corner of his vision moments ago resurfaced in his memory.
That terror—of living through every worst scenario he had ever imagined in a single breath, of his own abyss reaching in and dragging out the thing he feared most and shoving it right into his face.
He understood now why people had gone mad during the Black Curse. He understood why some had torn at their own throats until they died.
It was so terrifying that death itself seemed a mercy.
The moment the white hand clutching the quivering darkness like a sword drew near him again, the warrior lost control of his bladder.
The boy looked down at the sorry sight and smiled faintly.
Scattering the sword in his grip, the Crown Prince asked,
"Ready to answer now?"
The warrior nodded frantically, beside himself.
"Who is behind you?"
"The L-Left State Councilor, my lord, the Left State Councilor! Lord Left State Councilor ordered us to set Jamryongdang on fire and burn you and the Crown Princess to death!"
"……Were the fire ghosts summoned to Unyeondang your doing as well?"
"I beg your pardon? Fire ghosts?"
"Ah, I see…… so you know nothing of that."
The boy was still smiling. The warrior allowed himself a breath of relief—surely it was over now.
Until the Crown Prince continued, his face still curved in a smile.
"I find it hard to believe you've been honest about your backer."
"What?"
"You could have named anyone at random to hide the true mastermind, couldn't you? I don't believe a creature like you was given orders directly by the Left State Councilor, either."
The Crown Prince shrugged and raised his hand once more.
"It seems I'll have to verify it again."
Black darkness bloomed in the boy's palm. The warrior went deathly pale and shook his head like a man possessed.
"It's true! I swear it! Lord Left State Councilor, truly—!"
"You are a shameless wretch who dared to set fire to the East Palace. How could I take the word of such a man at face value, without a shred of proof?"
"Please, believe me! If— if you investigate the Joongga Merchant Guild, you'll find proof at once!"
"The Joongga Merchant Guild?"
"It's a guild the Left State Councilor raised to handle his secret business! The-they train warriors of supernatural might there, disguised as guild guards! I—I know it well, because I'm the one who gathers the lowest dregs of life and trains them there! Those men don't even know who stands behind them—but I know exactly who it is!"
"……There are men who could fail without consequence precisely because they don't know who their backer is. And yet the Left State Councilor sent you, a man who knows this much? To a mission where failure means ruin? That makes no sense. All the more suspicious."
"This operation was important! That's why! When selecting only the finest warriors to guarantee success, it was those of us who normally keep to the shadows who were chosen!"