I'm Sorry
"Miryu. Sit this one out."
Dan Mihyeong set a hand on Dan Miryu's shoulder and said it without room for argument.
"We've come this far, and you want me to drop out?"
Dan Miryu bit down hard on his lip.
"A fight with Father won't be easy. So long as he has the Stone of Resurrection, we can kill him and kill him again, and he'll only rise."
"That's obvious. Which is exactly why we have to fight him together!"
Dan Miryu couldn't make sense of his brother. Even if Dan Hocheol had grown feeble, the Stone rendered that advantage meaningless. He and Dan Mihyeong were strong enough to beat Dan Hocheol even in his prime, but against a Dan Hocheol wielding the Stone, victory was nothing they could promise.
Bring Dan Hocheol down, and this wretched business could finally be cut off. The Dan clan would go back to what it had been—never stepping into the open, living with its breath held for the sake of its mission.
"Do you even have a way to beat the Stone of Resurrection?"
"I don't."
Dan Mihyeong smiled, bitter.
"See? If we're going to beat that man, all we can do is drag it out. I already told you everything."
"I know. I know, but..."
Dan Mihyeong let out a long, heavy sigh.
"There's no one but you. No one else who can be the next head."
"...We already finished that talk."
"You've got a sister-in-law, too. So..."
"Hyung. Have you forgotten the oath we swore that day?"
The oath between brothers: all but the one who would lead the Dan clan would be disposed of.
Remembering it, Dan Mihyeong hesitated. Dan Miryu gentled him.
"Hyung, we bring Father down first and talk after. An oath can break whenever it has to. Can't it?"
"...Yeah. It can break."
Whatever he had settled inside himself, Dan Mihyeong was the bright, easy man he used to be.
"Let's go. Finish this fast and get something to eat."
"Now you sound like my brother."
Dan Mihyeong clapped him on the back and opened the door of the human research lab where Dan Hocheol studied the Stone of Resurrection.
"So you've come, you unfilial sons."
Dan Hocheol stood alone at the center of the laboratory.
"Father. Your rampage ends here."
"And what do you know, to speak of rampage to me?"
"You betrayed the clan's mission. You dragged in countless people who had nothing to do with any of it. And..."
Dan Mihyeong's eyes went to the necklace at Dan Hocheol's throat.
"You did the one thing that must never be done."
"The one thing that must never be done? Is word of this getting out truly such a catastrophe?"
"Have you forgotten our history? Everyone in the clan who tried to make the Stone of Resurrection known has failed. Even when that someone was the head...!"
"I know it well. A history of flight, scrawled at bloated length by cowards!"
"Our ancestors were only on guard against cases like yours. And their choice was not wrong."
Dan Mihyeong and Dan Miryu dropped into a formal stance and spoke as one.
"As sons of the Dan clan, and by the laws of the house, we will put the criminal Dan Hocheol to death."
"Keh heh heh!"
Dan Hocheol let his white hair fall loose and laughed like a madman.
"Mihyeong. Did you think gulping down a clan with no father left in it made you into something?"
A low hum rolled through the room. The Stone of Resurrection pulsed, and green Life drove into Dan Hocheol's body as if it meant to parasitize him.
"Hah! So this is what it means to live...!"
White hair dyed itself black. Wrinkles smoothed flat, and his pupils blazed. The bent spine straightened, and muscle swelled like a balloon. The brothers swallowed, hard. Their father was regressing to his prime.
"Haa..."
Dan Hocheol breathed out as if in rapture.
"I find myself curious."
It was not a dying old man's voice that struck their ears, but a young one. A chill crawled over them. Warning screamed through every inch of their bodies. They had underestimated the Stone of Resurrection. They had failed to grasp what it meant to be flooded with infinite life.
"Whether a direct descendant's body is the key to eternal youth... to immortality...!"
He kicked off the floor. Enormous hands closed around both their heads.
"Children can always be born again! The two of you will be fodder for the clan!"
A roar steeped in madness echoed, and the brothers' heads were driven into the floor.
"Kh—!"
"Ghk—!"
"Kahahaha!!! I won't kill you!"
A leg came up into Dan Hocheol's gut. Dan Mihyeong wrung out every last scrap of strength, down to what he'd had at the breast, and drove it in. The impact detonated like a shell. Dan Hocheol's body flinched—but he was not pushed back, and the grip did not loosen.
"With only this much...!"
Dan Miryu's elbow slammed into the jaw. The tip of Dan Hocheol's nose snapped toward the ceiling, and Dan Mihyeong's hand stabbed the exposed throat. For an instant the old man's breath locked shut. In the slack of that grip the brothers twisted and tore themselves free.
"Not bad...!"
Two blows landed as one. Dan Hocheol's face whipped aside, and his groin crumpled. The brothers spent not even a breath and poured a savage assault over him. Like ballerinas who had matched their steps for a lifetime, there was no gap in the attack. For all his years of war, Dan Hocheol was beaten without recourse.
But...
"Huff. Huff."
"Kh—!"
The brothers gasped.
"Is that the end?"
Dan Hocheol wiped his split lip. The lip restored itself as if it had never torn.
"I'll grant you this. You're better than I am. Even if the me of my youth walked in, I don't know how long I could hold."
Thud. Thud. The light of Life ate into the laboratory, and Dan Hocheol was swallowed by a green tide.
"If you'd ambushed me, a decrepit thing like me would have died with ease. Useless righteousness caught you by the ankles."
"...You won't last."
Dan Miryu snarled it.
"However great the Stone of Resurrection may be, the one who wields it is human. How long do you think you can endure in a body already rotted with age?"
"So... you're Miryu, then?"
"......"
"A man can forget a name. Don't make that face."
Dan Hocheol cracked the skull of the son who would not understand a parent's heart. Dan Miryu flew, spinning through dozens of revolutions.
"Dying body or not, I can kill the both of you before it comes to that."
You don't truly know what this clan has guarded.
"A thing that defies death and ignores the laws of the world. Did you think a mere two of you could bear it?"
Not a chance.
"You are precious specimens. The likes of which will never come again...!"
A single red point stamped itself between the green seas.
"I'll take my time playing with you...!"
"Kahahaha!!!"
Dan Hocheol's madness crashed down on the brothers.
"Cough—!"
"Hyuuuuung!!!"
Dan Miryu's scream tore through the lab.
"I hadn't meant to kill him. Not like this..."
Dan Hocheol looked mildly put out.
"Kh— kh—!"
Dan Mihyeong spat blood into his face. It vaporized in the heat of Life.
"Mihyeong. To the very end, you refuse to go as I wish."
"I have never—not once—thought of you as my dad...!"
"I knew."
A wet, sucking sound. Dan Hocheol drew out the hand buried in Dan Mihyeong's heart.
"The heart is completely destroyed. You can't be saved."
"That's because you're incompetent...!"
Dan Hocheol turned on his heel.
"Where are you going...! It isn't over!"
"A shame. A shame. A living body is so much better than a corpse."
He lifted Dan Miryu's head. Dan Miryu stared up at him with pure hate.
"You...! I'll kill you. I swear it...!"
"A matched pair. Both of you so hungry to live."
Dan Hocheol glanced around and shook his head.
"I'll have to scrap this laboratory as well. I thought it sturdy enough to hold, but it's utterly shoddy."
"Kh—!"
Dan Miryu swung.
The fist tapped, and nothing more.
"Swing until the end of time. See if it gets through."
"Graaaaaah!!!"
Ridicule. Contempt. Indifference. Dan Hocheol ignored him utterly. Dan Miryu wore himself out and sagged limp, eyes glassy, nothing left in him but a ragged pant.
"It's over."
Dan Hocheol took him by the neck and tightened, almost gently. Once he was certain the man had fainted, he meant to carry him off to a place prepared in advance.
In that instant, Dan Miryu's hand touched the necklace.
"...?!"
Dan Hocheol recoiled and hurled him far across the room.
"You filthy bastard!"
He fumbled at his throat. The necklace, thankfully, was still there.
"Dan Miryu...! You won't be needing your limbs for the research...!"
"...Kehehehe!!!"
Dan Mihyeong laughed through the blood he spat.
"Dan Mihyeong...! You damned wretch, you're still not dead!"
"Hey. Before you shout at me, take a look at yourself."
"...What?!"
Dan Hocheol watched his own hands wrinkle and wither.
"It can't be...!"
The Stone of Resurrection blazed in Dan Miryu's grip.
"How did you take it?!"
"...It simply came away."
Dan Miryu's wounds closed at speed. His head snapped up, and green light wound around him.
"Give it here! That is not something the likes of you should possess!"
"This belongs to no one."
Dan Miryu seized the throat of the man coming at him. In that short span Dan Hocheol had already shrunk back into a stooped, withered old man.
"No— no...! My youth...!"
A crunch. Those were the last words he ever spoke.
Dan Miryu flung the corpse aside and ran to his brother.
"Miryu. You came?"
"Hyung, it's all right. I'll save you. Just stay still."
Life settled into Dan Mihyeong's body.
"...Why?"
"...Your heart burst. How are you supposed to live?"
"With the Stone of Resurrection, it's possible!"
"I can't."
The Stone of Resurrection could raise even the dead. But that power was also a line that had survived the thousands of years of Dan history only as legend.
"Hyung, you're still alive! So—!"
"I'm not alive. I'm just forcing myself to hold on so I don't go to the afterlife."
His flesh was already dead. All that had been granted was one last reprieve. Dan Mihyeong brushed the corner of his weeping brother's eye.
"You're the last of the Dan."
"Hyung!"
"Dan Miryu! Don't talk weak!"
His hand crushed down.
"The Stone of Resurrection chose you! It chose you as its Guardian! You took it in a single touch, and you still don't understand?!"
"If it had been you, it would have been even easier..."
"I tried while we were fighting. Dozens of times. More. You succeeded once."
Dan Mihyeong's eyes were going dim.
"Miryu. Remember. The mission of the Dan clan."
Our oath.
"Miryu."
There's no one but you your brother can ask.
"I'm sorry."
And thank you.
"I'm counting on you."
"Aaaaaaah!!!"
"From the first thing to the last, I had my brother's help."
Dan Miryu clenched the necklace.
"After that, your dad massacred the Dan clan to keep the oath."
Killing, and killing, and erasing, and killing to the very end.
"Only Soryeong and I were left."
"...Was there no other way?"
"There wasn't."
To be precise.
"I didn't want to leave another path for the Dan clan that took my brother from me."
"...Dad."
"Chuyeon. You don't have to carry this sin."
My brother's son is the debt I have to bear.
"...What are you going to do with that person?"
"......"
"Are you going to kill him?"
"...I never heard of a son of my brother's. Never saw one."
Hyung never let a woman near him.
"Even if that child really is my brother's son."
That child has already crossed the line.
"He laid a hand on you. He laid a hand on Soryeong."
He made hundreds of innocent victims.
"The Dan clan needs only the two of us. You and me."
In my generation.
"I will not permit a single Dan beyond that."
"...And that's enough?"
Dan Chuyeon asked it with a face on the verge of tears.
"...Yes."
Dan Chuyeon dropped his head. Dan Miryu shut his eyes tight. He could not pass a sin down to his only child.
Dan Miryu apologized where no one could hear it.
Probably an apology that would never end, for as long as he lived.