The Price of Betrayal Cannot Be Forgiven by Death Alone

A Dullahan. A headless undead, typically fashioned from the corpse of a knight, a renowned mercenary, or some other warrior of exceptional martial prowess. They were infamous for hurling their own severed heads as weapons — but Jae-hyun had no intention of making Arnold carry one around. He planned to raise the boy as a Dullahan with no head at all. Even for a Dullahan, lugging a skull about was cumbersome. Better, perhaps, not to have one.

"AAAAAH!"

The moment Jack grasped what Jae-hyun's words truly meant, he screamed.

Only now did he remember the first rule of dealing with a demon: beware the contract. He had begged Jae-hyun to save his son. Jae-hyun had demanded, in return, that Jack obey a single command — any command. The terms had specified only that the boy be brought back to life. They had said nothing about how. And so Jae-hyun was twisting the pact, fulfilling his promise by raising Arnold as an undead.

No — that had been the plan from the start. Had it not been, Jae-hyun would never have accepted the contract at all. And then Jack would have drowned in an even deeper despair at his son's death. Either path led to the same place. For Jack, there was only crushing hopelessness. Those who bargained with demons almost always ended this way: tasting despair, never receiving what they truly wanted, mocked by the very being they had trusted.

"AAAAAH! I curse you! I hate you! Demon King! I curse you! You will die a miserable death — I swear it!"

Jack raved, hurling curses at Jae-hyun. His eyes burned with hatred as he glared at the man who had taken his son. Jae-hyun merely shook his head.

At those words, Jack's rage faltered. The curses died on his tongue before he even realized he had stopped. The price of his own sins had come home to him. And cruelly, the victims were not himself alone — they were his family. The crime he had committed to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠give the people he loved a richer life had returned as their wretched ruin.

"AAAAAH!"

But Jack's hatred for Jae-hyun did not weaken in the slightest. His wrongs were his wrongs, and his thirst for vengeance was his thirst for vengeance. To set aside one's own guilt and dwell first on the harm one has suffered — that was human. His reaction, if anything, was normal. To Jae-hyun, it was merely laughable.

"You don't even consider that this is what you yourself once did, coming back around. You have no right to resent me. Trash."

Jae-hyun's voice was ice. He kicked Jack as the man lunged at him, sending him sprawling. The gulf between their strength was the difference between the vast sky and a single grain of sand. Jae-hyun could have crushed or killed Jack with a glance. He chose instead to kick him down — because the shoe on his foot was still wet with Arnold's blood, the blood of the head he had just crushed.

"Ghhhk!"

Jack hit the ground with his son's blood smeared across his body. The kick had hurt enough that he could not rise at once. Jae-hyun looked down at him and smiled, cold and thin.

"But a promise is a promise. I'll bring your son back, just as I said. As a Dullahan." He chuckled, low and cruel.

"N-no!"

It was not enough that his son had been murdered. He could not allow the boy to be raised as a cursed undead. As a paladin, Jack's loathing of the undead ran far deeper than any ordinary person's. The thought of his own son becoming something as repulsive as a Dullahan was more than he could bear.

With a will that bordered on the superhuman, Jack forced himself to his feet to stop his son from becoming undead. He had barely risen before Jae-hyun's kick sent him crashing down again.

"Gahk!"

While Jack lay sprawled once more, Jae-hyun began to chant — loudly, deliberately, so that Jack would hear every syllable. Bridget, Jack's wife and Arnold's mother, had already begun to lose her mind watching ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Arnold die with Jack's sword through his heart. The sight of the boy's skull bursting under Jae-hyun's heel had finished her. She had long since fainted.

She was only a traitor's family, not a traitor herself, and Jae-hyun had paid her no particular mind. Jack was on his back. Bridget was unconscious. There was no one left to stop Arnold from rising as a Dullahan.

The words of a Demon King were power in themselves. They poured madness into those who heard them, and even the most cunning deceptions took root as belief before the listener knew it. Jae-hyun, a Demon King whose speech alone carried such force, had spoken the command on purpose. It was already over.

The corpse sat bolt upright.

Arnold's body rose. The head was gone — pulverized — but only the head had been crushed beneath Jae-hyun's foot. The body itself bore nothing but the wound where Jack's sword had pierced the heart. Aside from the missing head he would never need to carry, he had been raised as a perfect Dullahan.

The headless undead turned this way and that, taking in its surroundings. And here Jae-hyun offered Jack a special gift. He had left Arnold's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ego intact, the way one might with a Death Knight.

Most Dullahans lost their sense of self. There was simply no need to preserve it. A Dullahan possessed a hardy body, yes, but it could not wield Death Aura — the killing energy born of a dead man's qi. Its only virtue was toughness: sturdy enough to take a Sword Expert's aura bare-handed and barely flinch. Compared to Death Knights, which were forged from the corpses of truly powerful warriors, a Dullahan's sole advantage was how easy it was to make. In every other respect it was a lesser undead, inferior across the board.

A Death Knight could freely wield Death Aura drawn from death energy, and so a Sword Master raised as one could still display the full martial might of a Sword Master. Leaving a fragment of the ego intact allowed the undead to use its living techniques perfectly — and even to refine them a little further. A Dullahan, by contrast, could not use Death Aura at all, and there was almost nothing left to develop. Small wonder that the method of creating a self-aware Dullahan had never circulated among necromancer-class black mages.

But Jae-hyun was the Demon King, heir to the magical knowledge of every Demon King who had come before him. Every scrap of lore those predecessors had possessed regarding the undead was stored within him, intact. For a man like that, creating a self-aware Dullahan was easier than eating cold porridge. Cold porridge, after all, lost its flavor as it cooled and was a chore to swallow.

A Dullahan could not see in the ordinary sense, but as an undead it perceived the world through spiritual power even without eyes. Whether a lowly skeleton or a Death Knight at the pinnacle, the undead were the already-dead. Their existence was taboo, regarded as a violation of the natural order, precisely because even their souls were denied rest.

An undead was not merely a reconstructed body. The soul of the body's original owner was forcibly summoned, stuffed back into the undead flesh, and put to work. A soul that should have been at eternal rest was dragged back into the Intermediate World and enslaved. That was why people said that destroying an undead was an act of mercy — a kindness to those who had become such things.

Dad? Mom?

Arnold was an undead under no one's control — free. Even without a head, he recognized Jack and Bridget at once. But even as a child, he could tell that the way he saw things had changed. No — every physical sensation had changed. It was as if most of his senses had died, and yet his body moved, strangely, of its own accord. He seemed to be looking at the world not with flesh-and-blood eyes but from the state of a soul.

And then Arnold remembered what had happened to him. He remembered his father's sword piercing his heart.

Am I dead?

Unsure whether he was a living thing or a dead one, Arnold staggered toward Jack.

"AAAAH! Demon King! How dare you!"

Jack was on his feet again, spewing fury at Jae-hyun. He had no idea that Arnold's mind was not being controlled. All he saw was this: because of Jae-hyun, he had been made to kill his own son with his own hands — and now that son had risen as an undead and was coming to attack him.

Had Bridget been conscious, she might have noticed that Arnold's behavior was strange. But Jack had lost his reason to rage, and as a paladin his loathing of the undead was so fierce that such a possibility never even occurred to him. To him, the undead were simply unclean things that needed to be erased.

Jae-hyun wiped Arnold's blood from his shoe, then returned to his place. From that high vantage, he watched the Jack family's misery unfold once more.

"Kh… I'm sorry, Arnold."

Jack apologized to his son as he raised his sword. Better to shatter the Dullahan's body so the boy could rest in peace. That, he believed, was what a father owed his son.

A Dullahan's body was extraordinarily hard; ordinary aura would not cut it easily. But Jack was a paladin. The Holy Aura he wielded was Holy Power itself, sheathed along the blade — and an attack laced with Holy Power bit far deeper into an undead Dullahan.

Calling upon the name of the goddess he served, Jack raised his sword. Tears streamed down his face as he swung, meaning to set Arnold free.

The blade bit in with a wet, tearing sound. The corpse was freshly dead; the blood had not yet fully dried. The skin had hardened, but inside, warm blood still sat, only half-clotted. The sword, charged with Holy Power — an energy antithetical to the undead — carved into Arnold's body, and the Dullahan staggered in pain.

Aaagh! It hurts!

Arnold cried out in pain. Normally, even when an undead was struck by Holy Power, the trapped soul itself rarely suffered. That kind of agony was reserved for those who had become undead of their own will, through a contract. Jack had no idea. But his son Arnold had entered into a contract with Jae-hyun, the Demon King. That made him one of the rare cases: when Holy Power struck the undead body, the soul felt every bit of it.

And that was not all. Each blow of that opposing energy wounded the soul itself. At this rate, Arnold might be annihilated entirely.

Dad! It hurts! Stop!

Arnold screamed in desperation, but Jack could not hear him. Believing he was saving his son, he swung his sword with everything he had — and with every stroke, he forced the boy to taste the agony of a soul being torn apart.

The Dullahan's hardy body began to crumble. Jack saw his chance and poured every ounce of his strength into the blade.

"HRAAAAAH!"

"I'll set you free now!"

Jack brought the sword down from overhead, meaning to release his son. In that instant the Dullahan's body — the prison that had held Arnold — toppled forward, and only Arnold's soul remained where it had stood.

The holy blade sheared through a soul that had contracted with a Demon King and belonged now to the darkness. Arnold's scream was raw with agony. Jack heard it — the scream of his son's suffering — and his face went white.

"D-don't tell me…?"

Only then did Jack understand what he had done. But it was already too late. His son's soul, severed clean through, lost its strength and began to fade. It would not find peaceful rest even in death. It was being annihilated in unspeakable agony.

"U-uwaaaaaaah!!!"

He had killed his son with his own hands — and then, beyond that, he had destroyed the boy's soul in hideous torment. The realization dropped Jack to his knees. A scream of pure despair tore out of him.