The Masked Ghost
- You're telling me next week it's goodbye...? This is where it ends for us...?
- God dammit I'm losing my mind I don't want to break up TTTTTT one more season PLEASE
- I'll pretend I didn't see anything if they just keep going with the "Myeong-do tree has caught Seoryeong" arc, I swear
With only one week left before the final episode of Gimyodam, the live thread was as raucous as ever today. People had been waiting since long before the broadcast even started, burning through live thread after live thread.
“Ah... here we go...”
Chapter 14: The Masked Ghost
Over a darkened screen, the title carved itself in letter by letter, accompanied by the layered, overlapping instruments of a shamanic ritual.
There was no time left. The realization made both Seoryeong and Myeong-do anxious.
This was no flesh wound that could be patched up with the divine power she had on hand. Yeomga's vicious curse was carving away at Seoryeong's very life.
“Seeing as the Grand Prince has set out in search of you, I can only assume no harm has yet come to the Crown Prince. But as for where His Highness has gone...”
“This is driving me insane. The place where you and the Crown Prince parted — it's the exact opposite of Jinchunji, the last place we need to go.”
Only one place remained where the corrupt energy lingered. There, Seoryeong would have to break her restraint bracelet.
But the moment she did, it would only be a matter of time before Yeomga discovered her location.
“I would pray the Crown Prince is at Jinchunji, but as things stand, the odds of that...”
“...”
Would Yeomga come hunting for Seoryeong, or would she lie in wait near the palace? There was no way to know.
The only certain thing was that the King and the Crown Prince were in danger. Before Seoryeong broke her bracelet, someone had to get inside the palace walls. No one could guess how far Yeomga's wrath would reach.
“Then you should—”
“—If I do that, you'll be left alone, will you not.”
One path remained. Myeong-do returning to his original post. Bound by his duty as a Royal Inspector, he had no choice but to find the Crown Prince and deliver word of the danger.
While Seoryeong went alone to the final place, Myeong-do would have to walk the opposite road. This was that moment.
And though both of them knew it, neither opened their mouth.
Then, far off in the distance, a small figure came sprinting toward them, stumbling and breathless — as if it had been waiting all along. The moment the child reached Seoryeong, she burst into tears.
She was a young shrine maiden whose divine power was too feeble to work charms or cast spells — yet whose gift for prophecy, for seeing the future, was exceptional. She clung to Seoryeong and groveled desperately.
“Save me, please save me... Please. I'm begging you.”
Half out of her mind with terror, the girl gripped Seoryeong's collar as if it were her lifeline and wept.
“I know who you are.”
The child's eyes were rimmed red with burst blood vessels. Six years old, perhaps? A desperation this raw meant there had to be a story behind it, Seoryeong reasoned, and asked:
“Explain. Quickly.”
Grand Prince Seonghwi's grip on their necks was tightening by the day. Left alone, they might fall into his hands before she ever reached Yeomga.
Every coin sent in relief to the isolated county had been divided between the corrupt officials and the Grand Prince. Where else could that mountain of money have flowed but into his scheming? Seonghwi was laying his next plan in case he was never peacefully handed the throne.
He had raised a private army. He was biding his time.
Waiting only for the day he would swallow the throne whole.
“I'm part of a traveling performer's troupe. On market days, sometimes... I would tell fortunes and take payment for it.”
The child's past was, in some ways, a mirror of Seoryeong's own. A tender age, startling talent, and a guardian connected to her by not a single drop of blood.
“Word reached the ears of someone powerful that I was gifted, and he — huk — he ordered me to curse someone to death...”
The rest was easy to piece together. A child who lacked the power to curse anyone would have refused, of course. And the official, displeased, would have resorted to threats.
What could have been done to this child to wring her so terribly? Listening in silence, Seoryeong's face hardened.
“They took our troupe master away and... without so much as a sip of water, they beat him. They said they would keep doing it until I cast the death curse.”
The girl collapsed to the ground and wailed. She rubbed her dirt-blackened palms together pleadingly and pressed her forehead to the earth.
“After three days and nights of torment, our master died in his cell. And when I still couldn't write a single talisman, they took his son this time.... They said they'd arrest the entire troupe, every last one of us, until I cursed someone to death.”
Tears streamed down the child's face as if she had gone mad with grief.
Seoryeong squeezed her eyes shut. If she helped this girl here, everything might go wrong. Facing Yeomga was the kind of thing that demanded caution — and then more caution on top of that.
Her lips trembled.
“In the future that you see — what did it say...? That I would help you?”
Seoryeong's divine power was still sealed. She had pushed it far too hard while shackled by the restraint bracelet, and now her reserves were all but drained.
Even Seoryeong, who could read the past, still could not see the future with any real clarity.
An uncertain future. But one thing was certain: she would tear this kingdom of Yeomhoguk out of Yeomga's grasp.
“I don't know. All I know is that you were fated to arrive here.”
The girl's sobbing answer reminded Seoryeong of something Jeong-an had once said.
“The future splits into a thousand branching paths, so the uncertain always outnumber the certain. What I can glean is the great trunk of the tree — never its branches.”
Jeong-an's voice echoed in her memory.
Unmoving as a mountain — unmoving, and steadfast as stone.
“Whew...”
After a long breath, Seoryeong extended her hand to the child kneeling on the ground.
She simply could not pretend not to see.
She had wandered too many isolated places and witnessed too many people trampled under the heels of corrupt officials. When the powerless were crushed, not one soul ever stepped forward on their behalf.
Her duty as a shaman stirred deep within her chest.
There were things in this world that only Seoryeong could do.
“Where is the troupe master's son being held?”
That was why Seoryeong made up her mind. Once this was done, she would go to Jinchunji alone.
It was time for Myeong-do to take up his role as Royal Inspector again. He could not turn his face from that duty forever.
And yet — she wanted, just a little longer, to stay by his side. She tried her best to bury that greed beneath a noble pretext. What hid inside her desire to help the weak was, plainly and simply, budding love.
Yield not to another when righteousness calls — if the path is right, do not turn aside.
Myeong-do watched with startled eyes as Seoryeong took the child's hand. She raised the girl to her feet, then met his gaze.
The bright road shines through to the very end.
As if the road they had to walk together held no fear for her at all.
The King's eyes were closed.
The bed beneath its thick coverlet was steeped in darkness. A scent like burning medicinal herbs drifted from either side of him, wreathing the room in gloomy smoke.
“This was the best path available to me.”
Kneeling before the bed, Seonghwi murmured the words with a self-mocking smile.
“If only you had passed the throne to me, none of this need have happened...”
In the end, Seonghwi had cursed even his own father to death. Night after night, the corrupted things in his dreams had broken the King down. Too wasted to rise from his bed, the King could no longer even push himself upright.
Yunhwi's whereabouts were unknown, and the King had collapsed. There could be no better moment to become the new heaven of this realm.
“May you dream pleasant dreams.”
Mockingly, Seonghwi raised the backs of both hands to his forehead. Then he bowed — twice in quick succession.
His impeccable form looked for all the world like a son truly mourning his father's final moments.
With unhurried steps, Seonghwi left the King's bedside. The sliding doors closed softly behind him.
“...”
The moment Seonghwi was gone, the King's sealed eyes opened.
“Come hither.”
Believed to be fast asleep, the King gave his command in a voice stripped of all inflection.
At once, a guard who had been hiding his presence behind the folding screen stepped into view.
“Prepare the troops.”
He was the warrior Yunhwi had sent. The guard bowed his head to accept the order, then drew something from inside his robe.
It was Yunhwi's talisman.
On the screen, Yunhwi's past rose to the surface.
“Report to the palace. Tell them I am staying here to recuperate. Add that my body and mind have grown frail, it seems.”
Having dispatched a single guard to the palace, Yunhwi had lingered over that handshake longer than seemed necessary.
“See that it reaches my royal mother exactly as I have said.”
It had not been a mere clasp of hand against hand. Something had passed between them — something held in Yunhwi's palm.
Concealed within his long sleeve had been a talisman. Yunhwi had entrusted Jeong-an's charm to the guard. Praying for his father's safety, Yunhwi had thrown himself into the nightmare alone.
“One must teach the corrupted things that this is no ground on which they dare tread.”
The King, receiving the talisman, tore it in two.
From the very beginning, the King had never once been tormented by the corrupted things.
When heaven falls, the people fall with it.
Yunhwi knew this better than anyone.
He had endured to this day with an unbending heart. Ten more tormented years would not have changed him.
He had not spent a single talisman on himself. Only for a peaceful nation. Only for a heaven that would not fall. Only for his people.
For he was a Crown Prince who knew how to sacrifice himself gladly.
And everything — all of it — had been bait to ensnare Seonghwi.