Chapter 104
Chapter 104
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 104
Chapter Title: Slash the Iron Bars (3)
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It was a name that had now lost all sense of reality, like something out of a fairy tale.
Guardian. When the adults spoke to young Anya about the Guardian, they tried to scare her by describing how ruthless and terrifying the Seonwoo Clan’s Guardian was.
A monster that chased only swords, obsessed with leaving wounds on the world, injuring everything that approached it.
How many nights had she spent tossing and turning, thinking of that monster? There had even been times she’d grabbed her pillow and run to her mother’s room. The Guardian was a monster.
And now, that monster stood before her.
No, that monster was actually the person she had long held in her heart.
*That can’t be.*
She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t. All the moments she’d seen of Ban, the ones she’d dismissed as quirks or brushed off—they all fit together the instant she thought of him as a Seonwoo.
Her legs gave out. Ban’s hand caught her. Without thinking, Anya shook it off and stumbled back.
“...Seonwoo.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not just Ban. You’re Seonwoo Ban.”
“...And I’m still Ban.”
Her heart raced like a wild colt with a broken rein. She didn’t know what to say, what expression to make, what to think... Anya couldn’t judge anything. She felt like a child who couldn’t even speak a single word. White Flame rose like heat haze from her cheeks, her shoulders, her fingertips, then vanished.
Suddenly, she recalled a conversation she’d had with Ban before.
—Hey, Anya. Let me ask you one thing.
—What?
—The one who extinguished the northern flames... was it really the Nahar Clan?
—That’s the kind of talk the Revolutionary Corps spreads. It was an accident. Don’t even think like that.
—...Yeah? That’s a relief.
—What? Why’s that a relief for you?
—Good question.
Ban had laughed.
—Why is it a relief?
...What thoughts had lain behind that smile back then?
*Ban.*
*My Ban.*
Anya looked at Ban. She had gazed at him for so long, owed him so much for so long, engraved him in her heart for so long.
The face once full of youthful mischief now carried the weight of maturity. He no longer laughed childishly or spoke lightly. Anya loved all of him—the boyish parts, the grown ones, the lighthearted moments, and the heavier ones now.
“...Don’t cry.”
Only after hearing Ban’s words did Anya realize her world had blurred with tears. She didn’t wipe them away. She knew they wouldn’t stop even if she did. She bit her lip. She tried to raise her voice as proudly as possible, but in the end, it came out choked with sobs.
“I, I waited, and worked hard, sob, worked... worked hard, then, then...”
Dams eventually burst, no matter when. So did her pent-up grief. With reddened eyes, Anya gasped between hiccups. Ban approached her slowly. She tried to back away, but he was faster. He placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Anya. I know what you’re thinking. But you don’t need to. The issue between you and my clan is just between the clans. So, we...”
“I’m a Nahar!”
“No, you’re Anya. And I’m Ban.”
Had her shoulders always been this narrow? This small frame had faced down the night so fiercely all this time, the thought struck him.
But now, Ban would place an even heavier burden on those narrow shoulders. He gripped her arm tightly, turning her trembling face toward his. Staring straight into her eyes, he spoke in a soothing, earnest voice, like coaxing a child.
“Anya. Whenever I grew weary of life and thought of a place to return to, your face was always there.”
Anya couldn’t find words to continue. The time she’d barely endured, this world itself, was crumbling around her in its cruelest form. So Ban held her tighter. If he didn’t, she might collapse entirely.
The world was broken enough.
He couldn’t let her break too.
“I loved you. Even in the moments I tried to convince myself otherwise, it was you.”
In the damp prison, before the iron door where one of the world’s most horrific secrets slept, the man who dreamed of becoming the strongest made such a pathetic confession. It wasn’t romantic, warm, or beautiful—just all the more true for it.
How could this precious moment be tainted with such bitterness?
Ban gently brushed back Anya’s hair. Even after hearing the words she’d longed for so long, she couldn’t simply rejoice.
She gazed at him silently. Had his face ever been this close? Had he ever held her from such proximity? Had he ever bared his soul so clearly?
It was the expression she’d hoped for. The moment, the words, the actions she’d wished for. Yet she couldn’t greet him with pure joy.
Not even this kiss.
Ban had initiated it first. Anya froze at the warmth and tremor on her lips, but soon wrapped her arms around his neck more passionately, kissing him back. To anyone watching, they were lovers—but what they expressed was closer to sorrow and pain than love.
With each kiss, as they tasted each other and felt their body heat, that soft touch ensnared them like quicksand. As if desperate to forget reality, as if nothing existed in the world but their skin—they caressed each other’s faces more desperately.
The searing passion faded, and cold reality returned. With her forehead against Ban’s chest, Anya spoke.
“...From the first time you saw me, you thought that way?”
“If you’re asking about the Nahar-Seonwoo feud, no. I learned about my clan much later. I wasn’t raised by the Seonwoos. Even now, my impression of them is... just distant relatives.”
“Ban.”
Anya opened her mouth. She repeated words she’d already said once.
“Even if I’m Anya and you’re Ban, in the end, we’re Nahar and Seonwoo. Do you know what that means?”
“I do.”
Ban answered.
“But I won’t care.”
Ubowo believed in fate. He thought everything in the world was predetermined, making any rebellion against it pointless. But Ban was different. He didn’t believe in fate’s existence or nonexistence. He simply refused to yield to the given situation. He had no intention of walking only the paths already laid out. So.
“...Why say it now?”
Anya clenched her fists.
“If you’d said it on a better day, when we were happier, then I could have...”
“I wanted to. Believe me.”
Ban smiled bitterly. He hadn’t wanted to confess like this, cornered and desperate. But now, this was his only choice. He nodded toward the iron door.
“But it’s come to this. If I don’t get you out now, I might never. Because I’m about to do something very sorry to you. Starting now.”
“...Something more sorry than this?”
Being captured in the north, learning their clans were enemies, and confessing his love—what could be more cruel? By now, Anya dreaded whatever lay beyond that iron door.
Ban silently extended his hand to her. She didn’t have to take it. She could turn away, say she wouldn’t look at whatever he wanted to show her. Maybe that was the way to preserve their fragile bond, to avoid greater pain.
Yet Anya took his hand. Lovers, after all, were those who couldn’t help but grasp the hand offered.
They descended the stairs in silence. An unspoken understanding echoed quietly with each step, fading into the levels below.
And there, before them, stood a pure white tree.
“......Ah. Aaaaaaah........ Ah........!”
A groan like she might collapse formed in Anya’s mouth. Ban wondered if these might be people she knew. Probably. The Nahar Clan wasn’t so vast that she wouldn’t recognize them.
“This is the true nature of this prison.”
“How, why......”
“The time they first tried to abduct you.”
Ban continued quietly.
“They said they meant to turn you into this tree... That’s what they told me.”
At those words, Anya barely suppressed her nausea. The thought that her life might have ended as nourishment for this tree. Staring into their empty eyes, like dead fish, Anya confronted the world’s raw face in a way different from Ban’s.
White Flame surged from Anya’s fingertips. Ban spoke slowly.
“If you’re going to unleash that flame, be careful. Anya. They’ve shown me goodwill, but if this tree vanishes... they’ll seek a substitute for the White Flame, one way or another.”
“They’ll never reduce me to this. Whether it’s me or them, when the fight ends, one side won’t even leave dust!”
“And that’ll be you.”
Ban said quietly. He wasn’t provoking her. He didn’t want to hurt her. But now was the time to face reality. Otherwise, only ruin awaited them.
“You could go back. If you pay a plausible price on the surface, they’d probably let our expedition go to the lighthouse. Burning them means burning us... and Pendel too. Starting with the revolutionary zealots, down to innocent children.”
“........”
“Anya, should we... let them go?”
To Anya, the answer was obviously yes. But the real issue came after. Granting them peace—what would they have to sacrifice?
“Truthfully, I hope you say no. I wish you were selfish. That no matter what happens to the world, or how much they suffer, the living must live first. I’d like to hear that from you.”
Ban’s voice was forlorn, the weakest she’d ever heard. Yet because of it, it rang more sincere than ever. He hoped she’d say to forget it. That these were unavoidable sacrifices, that they lacked the strength to bear this injustice now.
“...But if you say the opposite.”
Even if they were powerless and weak, if she said they must do what must be done.
“I’ll be your sword.”
“...What will you cut?”
“The world’s injustices.”
“Is that possible......?”
Anya might not have uttered such weak words before. But seeing even the Revolutionary Corps, who called themselves pilgrims, drawing sustenance from roots like this... She couldn’t believe the world could change for the better.
“If one man and one woman can overcome their clans’ enmity and not hate each other, then... eventually, the people of this world can stop hating too.”
“...We can’t leave them like this.”
But she couldn’t drag them all to death either. From the moment she saw this place, Anya had only one choice. Ban looked at her, still burdened.
“Should I not have brought you here?”
“...Don’t say that. They needed an end.”
Vines of White Flame grew from Anya’s body. They spread across the floor, slowly beginning to burn the Nahar corpses and the tree.
Ban watched silently. The meaning was far from light. Anya laughed emptily.
“What a vicious world. All I wanted was to live lazily.”
“...You’re sick. Hopelessly so.”
Ban replied quietly. In the room filled with White Flame, the two remained unscathed. Anya spoke slowly.
“This prison will stay lit for a long time.”
“...Yeah. Until the end.”
Whether the revolution ended, the long night did, or the kingdom fell. As long as this grueling tale continued, Anya would keep illuminating this prison.
Ban took her hand. Despite kindling this impossible blaze, her hand was ice-cold.
“I’ll hurry. So you can leave this prison even a day sooner.”
By slashing the world, lancing its pus, cutting out its injustices. And so...
The man gazed at the woman, the boy at the girl, the swordsman at the lighthouse keeper, the traveler at the beacon.
The lighthouse keeper smiled.
“Then I’ll light your way back.”
So that at the end of his wandering, he could find the path.