To Hell With It
Sagong Hyeok, Commander of the Blood Cloud Regiment, was summoned before the Cult Leader.
The Cult Leader's hall was as chilly as ever. High upon the throne sat the Heavenly Demon, the kind of existence before whom anyone, however seasoned, found themselves holding their breath. Sagong Hyeok, too, bowed his head deep and did not dare lift his face.
The command came, short and heavy.
"The Young Cultress has been found in the western mountains."
"…Yes, my lord."
"Bring her back."
Sagong Hyeok's breath caught for a moment.
The Young Cultress. The Heavenly Demon's only blood, who had abandoned the Cult half a year ago without a word. Branded a traitor, hunted across the length of the Cult's reach — that was who she was.
And now he was to bring her in.
"…Unharmed."
The Heavenly Demon's voice settled down upon him, each word heavier than the last.
"Let so much as a single hair on her head be disturbed, and you will answer for it. See only that she arrives safely. Nothing more."
Sagong Hyeok pressed his forehead low.
"…Your command will be honored."
Walking out with the order in hand, Sagong Hyeok felt a quiet relief settle in his chest.
Truly, a mercy.
It was not an order to seize her. Still less was it an order to eliminate her. Simply bring her back, safe and sound — and untouched, down to the last hair.
Sagong Hyeok knew the Young Cultress. In the days when she still walked the Cult's halls, he had stood in her presence more than once. Frost-cold martial grace, eyes like sheeted ice. A dignity worthy of the Heavenly Demon's blood — one that could, even at her tender age, make grown elders tremble.
But Sagong Hyeok had also seen the other thing, the thing behind those eyes.
A child forever alone. Forever on guard. Glancing over her shoulder while she ate, while she slept — a child who could trust no one, with enemies on every side. Behind that glittering title of Young Cultress, she had been hunted without pause. Even while living within the Cult itself.
When she left, Sagong Hyeok had understood, dimly. It must have taken everything she had.
So this order sat well with him. To escort the Young Cultress home in safety — that much he could do with an easy heart. Without ever laying a hand on his former mistress.
Sagong Hyeok summoned the elite of the Blood Cloud Regiment at once. Fifteen warriors, every one of them First-rate or better. Enough bodies to handle it if the Young Cultress resisted — and no more, for the mission was escort, not subjugation.
And so Sagong Hyeok and the Blood Cloud Regiment set out for the western mountains.
They were perhaps half a day along the road toward the mountains when a body of men barred their path.
"…Elder Cheol-myeon?"
Sagong Hyeok's eyes widened. The Iron Face of the Elder Council stood there with his men behind him, wearing that face of cast iron that no event on earth could crack.
Sagong Hyeok hurried into a bow.
"Elder. To what do we owe the honor of your presence in such a place…?"
"I hear the Cult Leader has commanded the Young Cultress be brought back."
Cheol-myeon's voice was as flat as his face.
"No small matter, that. It troubles me to think of a single regiment escorting someone of the Young Cultress's standing. So I have come to lend these old bones to the task."
"…Ah. Yes. That you would concern yourself so… I am humbled, my lord."
Sagong Hyeok bowed his head — and let his gaze slide, slyly, over the men behind Cheol-myeon.
There were far more than he'd expected. Two hundred at a rough count. To call that 'lending a hand' — it was the scale of an entire strike force.
And they were strangers. As commander of the Blood Cloud Regiment, he knew every notable master in the Cult by sight, yet the vast majority of these men he had never seen before in his life.
…Directly under the Elder Council, I suppose. I'd heard they rarely rotate out into the field.
Sagong Hyeok let it pass.
"Then — shall we?"
At Cheol-myeon's raised hand, the two hundred began to move, soundless as shadows.
But the movement was strange. They did not fall in with the column. Some pushed ahead onto the ridgelines; others dropped back into the valleys. In groups of ten, of twenty, they scattered outward, seeping into every quarter of the terrain — and in the space of a breath, half of them had vanished from view.
"…A wide net of outriders, my lord?"
"It is a mountain road, is it not?"
Cheol-myeon answered placidly.
"Nothing must be permitted to reach the Young Cultress. I've placed men at every pass in advance. Not so much as an ant will slip through."
"…Remarkable. Utterly thorough."
Sagong Hyeok was genuinely impressed. This, then, was what an elder of the Elder Council was — such devotion on a mere escort mission.
…If the Elder himself is taking such care, the Young Cultress truly is someone of consequence.
That was what he chose to believe. Simply the consideration of an old elder who cherished the Young Cultress. Simply reliable reinforcements, arriving in good time.
That morning, Seol-ah woke with a start.
She couldn't have said why. Only that the instinct ground into her body over long years had shaken her from sleep — and the moment her eyes opened, something cold came crawling up her spine.
Killers' auras. Still distant — far below, at the foot of the mountain. But unmistakable. Not one of them. Many. Well-trained, familiar movements.
The Demonic Cult.
…They found me.
Seol-ah rose quietly to her feet. It was bound to come eventually. She had run for half a year, but she had always known it would end like this. The Cult's net was vast and woven tight. Something at the market town must have given her away. She'd grown careless. That outing with that man — that had been the mistake.
She stepped into the courtyard and reached out to gauge the auras below the mountain.
But something was wrong.
There was no killing intent.
That wasn't how the Cult hunted. Chasing down a traitor, they would carry their killing intent openly, crushing their prey with it from far off — sowing terror to bait mistakes. A technique Seol-ah herself had used countless times back when she was the Young Cultress.
Yet what was approaching now carried no bloodlust at all — only disciplined, measured restraint. Not a hunt. A formal procession, almost. These were not the footsteps of men coming to kill.
…They've come to take me back.
Seol-ah's brow creased. If they were not here to kill her, then they meant to carry her away — alive. By her father's order, most likely. If the Heavenly Demon had commanded that his traitor daughter be dragged back alive, then—
She caught herself and shook her head.
Hope was a luxury.
Whatever her father's intentions had been, the outcome was written. Interrogation as a traitor, or standing once more upon that poisonous stage of succession politics. Either way, it meant returning to the hell she had run from.
Then the answer was simple: vanish from here, now.
And yet — Seol-ah did not immediately move.
…Wait.
This was too clean. The Demonic Cult, closing in on the one who had been its Young Cultress — and they walk in this honestly, without a drop of killing intent? Impossible. The Cult's hunts were never what they appeared. While a respectful hand was extended from the front, the rear had already been sealed and the web drawn tight. That proper little procession was, nine times out of ten, a driver pushing her toward the net.
But if it wasn't.
If, genuinely, purely, they had come only to bring her back.
…Then perhaps I could hear what they have to say.
Why they'd come. What message her father had sent. At the very least that much, before she ran.
It startled her, a little, to catch herself thinking this way. Half a year ago there would have been nothing to weigh — the instant she felt those auras she would have fled without looking back. But now she was actually considering listening.
Had her days on this mountain dulled her? Or had having somewhere to return to given her just a little room to breathe?
Seol-ah glanced back toward the inner room.
The man was still asleep, dead to the world. Through the door drifted the steady rhythm of his breathing.
He knew nothing. Not that she was a hunted woman. Not that the Demonic Cult was marching on this mountain at this very moment.
…I can't drag him into it.
Seol-ah made her decision. Whether she listened or whether she ran, it all had to happen away from here — before the Cult's eyes turned toward this place, toward that man.
She tugged her straw hat down low. And without a sound, she began to walk down the mountain — straight toward the tide of Demonic Cult auras. Before that man could wake. Before he ever knew a thing.
I woke up in the morning and Seol-ah was gone.
The girl who always sat in a corner of the courtyard, watching me paint — nowhere to be seen. At first I didn't think much of it. Maybe she'd gone to the outhouse, maybe she'd stepped out for an early stroll in the morning air. I yawned my way out into the yard.
But something about the air was off.
The mountain was too quiet. The birds that always made a racket at dawn hadn't sung a single note today. The whole mountain seemed to be holding its breath.
That's what a mountain does when predators appear — all its small creatures go still and hide.
…Something's come.
And more than one something.
I peeked into the room Seol-ah had been using. Her things were still there.
So she hadn't run for good. Leaving her belongings behind meant she'd gone out in a hurry — quietly, without telling me.
And I knew why.
Seol-ah. No — Han Seol-ah. The girl I'd spent ten years drawing. Daughter of the Heavenly Demon, the Young Cultress of the Demonic Cult. How she'd ended up turning her back on the Cult and washing up here in these mountains, I didn't know — that part I never wrote. But what kind of person she was, I knew better than anyone. Because I was the one who made her.
She was a girl who lived hunted.
She was that way in the story, too. Even enthroned in the glittering seat of Young Cultress, forever glancing over her shoulder, trusting no one — a child with enemies on every side. That's how I drew her.
And that same girl had just walked down this mountain, alone, carrying something on her shoulders — exactly as she always had.
…So it's the Demonic Cult down there.
I stood there for a moment.
Frankly? It was a pain in the neck. This wasn't my fight. Demonic Cult this, Young Cultress that — that was a story from my manhwa, not my life. And if I stuck my nose in for nothing, the Cult's eyes would turn toward this mountain, and my quiet little hideaway would go up in flames of noise, guaranteed.
It wasn't like the thought of playing dumb and going back to sleep hadn't crossed my mind.
……And yet.
Her face from a few days ago drifted into my head.
The way her eyes went round at the first bite of dongpo pork. The way she flinched in shock tasting cola for the first time. The way she let out a snort of laughter, almost against her will, watching the tiger try to read the gatekeeper's mood.
She laughed here for the first time, that girl.
Because the ten years I drew for her were a life with nothing to laugh about. Because I gave her nothing else.
…Good grief.
I scratched the back of my neck.
Don't the makers owe their creations a little responsibility? I was the one who drew her into that life, and I was the one who got to watch her finally, at long last, start to smile.
Well — that's not the only reason.
It's just that without the girl who trembled with outrage at every meal while stealing my dongpo pork, breakfast was going to be a little lonely from now on.
"…Ah, to hell with it."
In the end, I picked up my brush.