Becoming the Miracle
The boy dragged in by the Nalgae-ot stared at me with eyes gone wide as saucers.
The traditional robes he had worn so immaculately, and the horsehair hat that had suited him as if it had been painted onto his head, were crumpled and torn to shreds, drenched in blood. Fresh wounds crisscrossed his young cheeks, and from his dazed, parted mouth, blackened, dead blood trickled in a steady line.
Dear heavens.
Seeing a child crawling along in such a state, still gripping the Amryeonggeom with all his might, made my eyes sting of their own accord.
If I had been even a little later, I might never have seen him again.
Swallowing down the tears that surged up, I pulled the Nalgae-ot taut. The Crown Prince's body, which my own strength could never have lifted easily, came sliding toward me without trouble, carried by the power of the divine-woven garment.
Once I had retreated far enough that the thrashing serpent's tail couldn't reach us, I flung my arms around the Crown Prince. I wasn't yet grown enough to hold him properly so much as be clung to, but never mind that.
He isn't dead. I saved him.
Only when I felt the warmth of his body against my chest did I finally let myself relax.
"Your Highness, are you all right?"
"……My lady."
The little Crown Prince started to reach for me, then froze, and with his sleeve pressed over his blood-dripping mouth, he smiled.
"Thank goodness you're safe."
"You're smiling right now?"
"Truly, truly a blessing, my lady."
"Nothing about this is a blessing for you, Your Highness!"
"Are you uninjured?"
"I'm perfectly fine! It's you who's a wreck! Where did you get hurt like this?"
As I fumbled over his body in a fluster, the Crown Prince—looking ready to collapse at any moment—simply kept smiling.
"You really are all right, my lady?"
"I told you I'm fine! Let me see—where are you hurt? What is this black blood? Why are your hands shaking?"
"I was so worried about you."
"Now's not the time to worry about me! I asked where you were hurt! Your Highness, are you even listening to me?"
"Forgive me, my lady. My ears are…… not quite right at the moment."
The boy said it sheepishly and tilted his head toward me. Beneath his crooked hat, he leaned in until our foreheads touched, and whispered.
"Speak closer, please. What was it you said just now?"
Over the sleeve pressed to his mouth, the boy's eyes curved into something soft.
"……!"
Then came a sudden boom.
It was the sound of the Maninsa, maddened with terror, slamming itself against a wall in the distance.
That startled me.
I pushed the Crown Prince back, who had come far too close—and then froze as I realized that this wretched little brat was currently vomiting blood through the sleeve of his robe.
He's smiling while he looks like that? And what was that? His ears are broken too?
My worry boiled up into anger.
"Hold on, Your Highness, let me—"
Without even thinking to hide it, I fumbled through my robes to pull out the Paljuryeong, then stopped short, remembering that the wretched talisman was dead weight here.
M-medicine. I need medicine. Forget the wounds—his condition right now, I think he's been poisoned by the Maninsa's venom.
I pressed my forehead firmly against the Crown Prince's and raised my voice.
"Your Highness, can you hear me right now? Did you breathe in that fishy red mist? Does your whole body feel numb, like you're floating on a cloud?"
"……Yeees."
The boy's voice, once clear as a spring, was damp and heavy now. His pronunciation, always so crisp and precise, had gone blurry and slack. And still he kept smiling.
A jolt of fear went through me.
He's not in his right mind. He is, without question, dying from the Maninsa's poison.
What do I do?
I felt like crying.
The treasury is full of every medicine there is. I should have carried some with me. I should have brought Ansi to write a sealing charm, at the very least.
First, I tried to move the sleeve the Crown Prince kept holding over his mouth.
But even as he grew more limp and listless, he stubbornly kept his sleeve pressed down.
"Your Highness, move this away. Quickly, please!"
"I can't……"
"Why on earth not?"
"If I were to tell you…… it could be…… dangerous for you, my lady……"
Dangerous? Does he mean the blood? Is he worried I'll get poisoned too?
This impossibly young brat is worrying about me again, even now?
The tears finally burst free.
Gritting my teeth, I moved the Nalgae-ot to wrap around the Crown Prince's wrist and pull it away. Something that hadn't budged an inch under my own strength came loose, somehow, under the power of the celestial garment.
"I really mustn't—"
The Crown Prince's face, rigid as he strained against me, was fully revealed. Pale as death, the boy coughed—hack, hrk—and retched up blood, black and lifeless.
He was dying. There was no question about it.
I'm going to lose my mind.
Ansi wasn't here. The Paljuryeong was blocked. I couldn't even call for Mother and Father.
A child was dying right in front of me, and I was the only one here.
I have to do something. Anything.
Think, Sangra Huiyo. You're a god. You're a great god and Princess Cheonmyeong. Figure it out!
……Black blood. Poisoning. Toxic energy.
A treatment my mother had often used back when I would writhe in pain and vomit blood drifted up from memory.
Something like bloodletting. Drawing out overflowing divine power. If I imitate that—could I draw out the poison too?
But how?
First things first.
Wrenching open my eyes, blurred and swimmy with tears, I strained to recall the way I had moved my divine power moments ago.
To recreate that instant when I could see the flow of energy—which way the Maninsa's tail would swing next.
Breathing calmly in and out, I moved my divine power as if it were flowing water.
Gi Ho-cheol said divine power, borrowed from others, can't be wielded like one's own strength. But.
My divine power is mine. It's power I lent to myself. So of course it should be different for me!
The divine power, rising obediently at my call, swirled around my tear-brimmed eyes.
And then—I could see.
The night sky filling the Crown Prince's body. The meridians through which darkness flowed. The blackish-red poison spreading through them.
I didn't understand the principle behind it, but I could see. The way I had once seen through to the span of a mortal's life with my Cheonmyeong Eyes.
I could see the direction the poison was flowing. Through that direction, I could foresee. I could guess where it would reach moments from now.
It's heading for his heart!
That repulsive toxic energy was creeping toward the little brat's heart. Serpent venom steeped in ten thousand deaths.
A pure Eodukseoni would have swallowed even that poison into its fathomless darkness, but the Crown Prince—whether because his body was that of a child, or because he was an unprecedented mortal Eodukseoni—could not consume it and was being poisoned instead.
There was no time.
Like Mother did—I push my divine power in and draw out the poison.
It was something that could only be done without backlash when the energies were akin, but I had no leisure to worry about that now.
If I want to lessen the backlash even a little, I should use the bare minimum of divine power……
I laid my hand on the chest of the Crown Prince, half-collapsed against me. Carefully, I fed the divine power I had drawn up like flowing water into his body.
I peered in without blinking.
I could see it—a thread of jade-green, my divine power, boring into the darkness of the Eodukseoni's body, dark as a night sky. The darkness reared and thrashed wildly, trying to block the thread's path.
"Kgh……"
"Just bear it a little longer, a little longer, Your Highness."
I murmured the words as I soothed the Crown Prince, whose body rebelled instinctively against the foreign energy. His clouded black eyes lifted to find me.
"My lady……"
"Yes."
"Is that…… my lady?"
Was he asking whose power it was, burrowing into his body?
"Yes. It's me."
"I see……"
His words stretched long and thin, and the Crown Prince's eyes fluttered drowsily. Then the darkness that had been barring my divine power abruptly turned docile and stepped aside.
Just as darkness had brightened wherever I touched it, the dark spirit within the boy's body yielded and made way wherever my divine power went.
……
Something indescribable welled up in me—but this was no situation in which to drown in feelings.
I stretched the thread out with care.
The Crown Prince's body offered no resistance at all to my divine power's movements, so I was able to move faster and faster.
If only my divine power had some power of purification, of healing.
As a god who governed nothing, my power still had no character of its own.
Which meant I had to do this the crude, brute-force way.
With thread-like divine power, I looped once around the blackish-red toxic energy crawling toward the Crown Prince's heart.
Twice, three times, four times…… I wound around it again and again, binding the poison tight in my power, and pulled.
"……!"
The boy's body jolted like a landed fish. The Crown Prince retched up a fresh mouthful of blood—bright red this time.
Not dead blood. Living blood.
I froze on the spot and began to tremble.
Dragging it out is scraping the poison along his insides—it's wounding him from within!
If I pulled it out like this, the Crown Prince's organs would all be ravaged. It amounted to nothing more than spreading the poison faster.
What do I do? I have to get this thing out. How?
Nothing came to me.
I really am different from Mother, aren't I? I can't manage it the way she does, so effortlessly.
Of course not. In two hundred and ten years, have I ever truly accomplished anything? The great Princess Cheonmyeong? In truth I'm just a pathetic little child who can't even keep her own body in order.
A child who needs her mother and father's help just to survive. Who can't manage even the 'living' that the lowliest creature manages on its own.
I shouldn't be the one to do it. I won't be able to.
If I pulled the poison out and the Crown Prince died—if he died, if I ended up killing him—
The Crown Prince I was holding right now. Dead?
I was terrified. Far more terrified than when I fell into the Samdocheon.
Even though I had spent my whole existence watching the dead in the underworld, witnessed countless deaths, and died more than a few times myself—the thought of this little brat dying here was terrifying beyond bearing.
Why? I didn't know.
Unable to move a muscle, I stood frozen and stared blankly at the Crown Prince.
The poison, bound in my divine power, thrashed against its bonds. The Crown Prince's body temperature began to drop. The familiar shadow of death crept across his pallid face.
Mother, Father, what do I do? I can't. I don't know how to—
The instant the sob caught in my throat was about to burst free, I saw the Crown Prince's sleeve, stained blackish-red.
The blood-soaked sleeve he had raised to cover his mouth—for fear his poison would splash me.
I bit down hard on my lip. The skin split, the taste of blood flooded my mouth, and my mind snapped sharp and clear.
What do I mean, what do I do? If I want to save him, I have to do whatever it takes! There's no one here but me! No Mother, no Father, no Ansi!
I was all there was.
I am Sangra Huiyo, Princess Cheonmyeong.
Daughter of the mother and father who won the war against Dueoksini—the war that killed countless gods—and raised themselves to the divine throne. A great and mighty god.
And I am here, right now.
A god is here.
If I'm a god, then let me act like one—work a miracle!
I gathered the chilling boy into my arms and prayed with everything in me.
I prayed to myself.
For a miracle.
Please. A miracle.
Become the miracle yourself!
The moment I willed it so fiercely that my mind went white and empty, the divine power flowing from my fingertips began to shine.
"……!"
Within the Crown Prince's night-sky body, a spool of jade-bright thread caught the light. White. Brilliant, dazzling white.
The white light spread. It bloomed through the darkness the way the Milky Way blossoms across a night sky, light rippling outward over the dark. It settled over the blackish-red poison like a cloud of stars.
The poison, blanketed in light, flared wildly. But soon it guttered. It withered. It was buried beneath the stars.
And I knew it instinctively.
That here, now, the miracle I had longed for above all had come to pass.
The concept of healing had taken root in my divine power.