Tae-hyun's Last Words: Save the Three Women
The bowstring drew back to its very end.
With the black arrow a breath from release, I looked the sniper on the rafters dead in the eye.
Non-contact Suggestion — Level 3
"Don't open your fingers."
The sniper's fingers locked around the string. I hadn't stopped the arrow. I had only stopped the hand of the person about to loose it.
Binding one finger hadn't erased the strength in his arm. The sniper twisted the bow sideways, trying to sever the string. The arrowhead drifted from my heart to my throat, and from my throat toward the stairs Helga would climb.
"Put the bow on the floor and show me your hands."
When the second suggestion landed, his wrist trembled. A violet film spread across the sniper's eyes — a demonkin engraving that raised mental resistance, perhaps — and unintelligible syllables repeated at the tip of his tongue. Breaking through my first command, his fingers half-opened.
I shoved Tae-hyun's body behind the low wall. The next instant, the arrow flew. The black tip passed beside my ear and buried itself in a stone pillar.
Objects have no will. No command of mine could touch an arrow once it had left the string.
The hand drawing the second arrow was fast. I folded down behind cover and sent out a mana pulse. Even at her quickest, Helga would need tens of seconds to reach me from the warehouse entrance. I had to hold out until then.
"Don't raise your right arm."
This time the elbow locked. The sniper drew a dagger with his left hand and drove it into his own right arm — pain, used to shatter the focus of a suggestion. What reached my eyes first wasn't the blood but the will to resist. This was before I knew the name Belka or the black tablet.
"Come down. Tell me everything about who ordered Tae-hyun's death."
The sniper didn't use the ladder. He freed a single rope from the rafters and slid down to the floor. The dagger stayed in his grip. He had picked out, with precision, the gap in my command — I had told him to come down, after all, never to drop his weapon.
"Throw the dagger and kneel."
The dagger skittered across the floor. The sniper knelt on one knee only. Even caught between mental resistance and my orders, he kept hunting for a crack to slip through.
The demonkin gave his name as Belka, and his mission as the elimination of the summoned hero Park Tae-hyun and the disposal of every witness on-site. He didn't know who had issued the order. Even within the command structure, the directive had come down as a single black tablet in place of a name.
"Recall the moment you received the order."
Belka's eyes wavered. When I layered Memory Reading over the suggestion, a few broken scenes flashed past.
Pushing deeper than that, the edges of the memory bled outward like spilled ink. It looked like someone had deliberately cut the scenes apart — but on my interpretation alone, I couldn't confirm memory manipulation. Not from here.
"Take out the tablet."
Carved into the black glass shard hanging at his neck was a single crownless chair. Neither the royal family nor the demon military used any such emblem.
"Tell me who owns this thing."
"I don't know."
"Don't lie."
"I truly don't know. I only ever heard the voice beyond the mirror."
Memory Reading gave up no name either. There being a blank was one thing; a specific name having sat in that blank was another.
Belka smiled, one last time.
"Kill one of us, and the next vessel comes. An empty seat is always filled."
If I took him alive, I could extract far more. Bind his hands and feet, screen him for poison, cross-check his memory again before the royal interrogators. There had been time to weigh every one of those judgments.
And yet Tae-hyun's last breath was still in my ears.
"Climb back up to the rafters."
Belka took the rope again. He stalled twice against the compulsion, but in the end he stood on the highest beam.
I knew exactly what the next sentence would build.
"Throw yourself off."
Belka's eyes flew wide. His toes dug in; his knees shook. I did not withdraw the command.
His body fell to the stone pavement outside the warehouse.
Thud.
I should have brought him back alive. Read deeper into his memory, handed him over for trial. Knowing all of it, I killed him anyway. Tae-hyun's blood was still wet on my hands, and in that moment revenge was faster than patience.
A line crossed with new power cannot be uncrossed. I picked up only the black tablet and slipped it into my pocket.
By the time Helga reached the warehouse, I was standing beside Belka's body. She swept past my face — the bow, the lodged arrow, the fallen dagger, the position of the corpse.
"What happened here?"
"The sniper fired twice. I subdued him, confirmed his name and mission, and at the end I gave the order to drop."
"Not shoved off in the middle of a fight?"
"No. It was after he'd been made to kneel."
Helga's gaze sank, cold. She didn't rush to comfort me, and she didn't open with blame either.
"Why did you pocket the black tablet?"
I took it out at once and laid it on my open palm.
"I compromised the evidence."
"Take it out of your hand. Set it on the cloth."
Helga cut the lining from her cloak, spread it on the ground, and had me place the tablet on it. She made me state aloud which side I had gripped, where on Belka's neck it had been found, and when it had been moved, then wrote it all in her notebook. So long as the mistake of touching it wasn't hidden, the evidence's value wasn't entirely lost.
"What did you see in the memory?"
"A black mirror. A gauntleted hand. The same chair emblem. And the words — when one vessel empties, the next vessel is sent."
"That goes in a separate record. Don't write it as something you read off the tablet."
"Because objects have no will."
"Right. Make it unmistakable that it's a memory seen while Belka was alive."
Helga held no authority to seal my ability on the spot. So instead, she ordered me as operation commander.
"From now until the Queen Consort's review is finished, no suggestions that decide life or death — outside of emergency defense. Do you agree?"
"I agree."
"Not just 'I agree.' If you have an objection, say it now. This goes into the report as an order."
"No objection."
Only then did Helga check Belka's pulse and close his eyes for him. She didn't kick the enemy's corpse over. To put responsibility for a death on record, the dead man had to be handled as part of the incident too.
I carried Tae-hyun down to the first floor. The body was lighter than I'd expected. Karin, Eva, and Sophie were waiting outside the warehouse.
Karin's green eyes were fixed on Tae-hyun. Eva tried to smile and managed only a trembling lip. Sophie stood like someone who saw nothing at all.
"Tae-hyun... is it because of us?"
There was no lying to that question.
"He sent you out first and stayed behind. His last request was to save the three of you."
The shock hit all three at once. Instead of sweeping over them together, I called each name in turn. Level 3 could have placed a different sentence in each of them simultaneously — but parallel processing that never stopped to hear a single answer would be control, not care.
Helga dispatched a messenger for medics and a carriage. I asked the three of them, each separately, whether they wanted to see Tae-hyun's body now, have it covered with cloth, or wait until it had been made presentable in the mortuary. Karin wanted to see his face. Eva couldn't bear to look yet. Sophie couldn't answer at all.
With their choices split three ways, I let no one's decision bury the others'. Helga draped a coat over Tae-hyun's body, leaving only his face. Karin stepped close and looked. Eva and Sophie moved behind the carriage, out of the line of sight.
"I won't use mental interference on you tonight to change memories or erase grief."
I said it first, where all three could hear.
"If any of you can't breathe or might hurt yourself, I'll suggest only a brief stabilization to help you come back to the present. You can refuse it. And one person accepting doesn't mean the rest have to."
No one can take in a long-term sentence in the middle of shock. The third rule Helga and I had set down last night existed precisely for this moment.
I stood in front of Karin first.
"May I hold your hand?"
Karin held hers out. In her memory, Tae-hyun's order to retreat and the moment she'd come down the stairs were tangled together.
"You didn't run away. You carried on the time Tae-hyun chose for you. Feel the ground under your feet right now."
"May I use my ability to help you steady your breathing? It won't touch your memories or your judgment — and only until sunrise."
Only after Karin nodded did I open Emotion Manipulation. I didn't rewrite the source of her guilt; I only lowered the intensity of the fear that was rising fast enough to choke off her breathing. I never planted 'you didn't run' as a suggestion. I left it in words alone, so that tomorrow Karin could weigh Tae-hyun's choice and her own actions for herself.
"When the anxiety hits, whose voice do you want to find first?"
"...Do-hyun. I'd want you to tell me it's going to be all right."
"Then use my voice as a temporary anchor. Only until you get your own judgment back."
A temporary marker that confirmed safety — not an owner. I ended the sentence on Karin's recovery, not on me.
"Let's pick one more person besides me."
Karin looked at Eva. Then at Helga.
"Eva. If Eva's struggling too... then Instructor Helga."
"Good. That's a sequence that holds even when I'm not there."
Bind all of someone's stability to my voice alone, and help curdles into dependence. A temporary anchor had to be split between at least two people and one place. Karin chose Eva, Helga, and the medical room with its lamps lit as her markers of safety.
Eva was trying to build a smiling face. She'd done the same three years ago, when her comrade Rita died. Convinced that if she fell apart, the ones left behind would only suffer more, she had always been the first to smile.
"You don't have to smile today."
At that one sentence, the corners of her mouth came down. When Eva's breathing began to race, I counted the things she could see and the sounds she could hear, out loud, together with her.
"Tae-hyun didn't send you out so you'd keep smiling. He sent you out to stay alive. You can cry — your breath keeps going either way."
Only after Eva nodded did I use Emotion Manipulation. The belief that welded brightness to survival I would deal with later, in a clear state; for now I brought down only the hyperventilation. Whether asking for help was weakness or not — that was Eva's to judge again, not my ability's.
"When you can't bear it alone, where will you go?"
"Karin and Sophie. And if that's not enough... to you."
"You've even settled the order. Remember it exactly like that."
For the first time, Eva didn't smile. She cried.
I didn't stop the crying. I told the medic not to push a sedative right away — to check her breathing and consciousness first. Sleep forced by drugs might look like comfort, but it would take from her the chance to decide for herself when to view the body and where to ride.
"When do you want to see Tae-hyun?"
"After sunrise. After someone has washed his face."
"I'll record that choice."
Sophie was last. The focus of her silver eyes had drifted somewhere far away. She was the kind of person who froze at a man's touch, so from two steps back I showed her nothing but my open palm.
"Sophie. You don't have to look at my hand. Just follow my voice. You're outside the warehouse now, and the ground under your feet is dry earth."
No reaction. A long while later, a single finger moved.
"My hand... you can hold it. Just for today."
I hadn't closed the distance — Sophie had crossed it. When her fingertips touched mine, the dissociated sensation began, little by little, flowing back into her body.
"Today's exception is one you set, Sophie. It isn't that my hand is special. It's safe because you chose it, just now."
I used no Common Sense Alteration on that sentence. The rule held: no permanent sentences inside extreme shock. The surest way to keep my hand from turning into a passkey was to plant no principle with the ability at all.
Sophie's silver eyes finally found me.
"Tae-hyun's name... please don't forget it."
"It goes on the first line of the record."
"My hand... you can let go now."
The instant she said it, I let go. If Sophie held the right to begin the contact, she held the same right to end it.
"Who rides in the carriage with you?"
"Karin and Eva. The men, up on the driver's box."
"I'll have it arranged that way."
Sophie didn't grant the next contact just because she had chosen my hand once. That clean, unblurred line was the first sign she was finding her way back from dissociation.
Before we left the warehouse, Helga examined Belka's corpse. In his mouth, a poison tooth for suicide. On his left palm, the same chair emblem, burned in like a brand.
"Even if we'd wrung him out in a long interrogation, he'd likely have died anyway."
It wasn't a word of comfort. The fact that I had hurried that death along stayed exactly as it was.
I asked Levran and the messenger about the emblem; neither knew it. The messenger called the special orders handed down from above the command structure nothing but "vacancy directives." Once a target was killed, one never asked who would fill the seat — that was the rule.
"Who comes to fill Tae-hyun's place?"
"The human kingdoms do the summoning, don't they? We only receive word that a seat is empty."
Which meant the enemy knew even the timing of the summonings. Whether that was a leak inside the royal palace, or a greater power watching the summonings themselves, I couldn't say.
I drew both faces of the black tablet without wiping it down. Length and breadth. A surface like glass that reflected almost no light. A temperature that didn't change even near a flame. I opened Memory Reading against it and felt nothing at all. The tablet wasn't hiding its thoughts — it had never had a mind to read in the first place.
Helga counted the grooves along its edge.
"Thirteen."
"The forged papers that mimicked a royal request — they had thirteen black dots too."
"The spacing?"
I took out the dot arrangement I'd copied at the time. I couldn't swear they were identical, but two features matched: the gap between the first dot and the second was narrow, and after the eighth came a long blank. Whether that was coincidence or a maker's mark, I'd need more samples to say.
"Could it be a line sitting above Levran's organization?"
"It could. But if we fix that as fact now, we'll start reading every next piece of evidence to fit the conclusion."
"Then the report says: 'array similar, connection unconfirmed.'"
Helga kept a hard line drawn between conjecture and observation. You couldn't build the mastermind's face out of one black tablet. What remained was the possibility that the palace forgery, the thirteen dots on the front line, and the assassination of a summoned hero were all pointing the same way.
Helga wrapped the tablet in cloth as she spoke.
"Don't hide from the Queen Consort what you did today. All of it, down to killing the sniper. The moment you start hiding things, you're moving the same way as the bastards who made that emblem."
On the first line of the report I wrote my own name, not an execution order.
[Sniper Belka — deceased. Direct cause: mental interference by Kang Do-hyun.]
Beneath it, I wrote the sentences I had wanted to avoid.
[Belka was in a subdued state after two attacks; the final command was not an act of immediate self-defense.]
[Commander Helga was not present at the scene when the command was given. Kang Do-hyun decided alone.]
[Scenes witnessed through Belka's memory are recorded separately from the physical evidence of the black tablet.]
My hand stopped three times writing that report. If I wrote 'judgment clouded by rage,' it would explain the act — and it felt like it would blur the responsibility too. In the end I put my emotional state in the supplementary field, and left the subject of the choice as me, to the very last word.
The three of them stood before Tae-hyun's body, holding each other's hands. And I knew that if I leaned on their shock, I could have implanted commands far stronger than anything I'd used tonight.
Believe that I am the safest man alive.
Rank my orders above the knight order's.
Never refuse my body.
Level 3 stood ready to accept every one of those sentences. That is exactly why I made a point of not using them. The dying wish I had to keep today was the three women's lives — not their ownership.
At two in the morning, Tae-hyun's body was moved to the royal mortuary. Karin, Eva, and Sophie said they would spend the night in the same waiting room — not in their separate rooms.
"From tomorrow, the three of you will have counseling together."
At Karin's words, Eva and Sophie nodded too.
"All three of you will start together, and if you want, I'll set aside time for each of you to talk alone. As for today's stabilization — we'll confirm it's fully worn off after sunrise."
"All right."
Karin answered first, and Eva and Sophie agreed in their own voices. A decision to share a room was not blanket consent to share a treatment.
I had the mortuary keeper write down Tae-hyun's name, his age back in Korea, his identity as a fire-attribute summoner, and the story of the family he had spoken of at the very end. Even if a road home never opened, what he had asked to be carried to his mother and younger sister could not be made into something that never happened.
Before the mortuary doors, Helga spread the sealing cloth open once more. The crownless chair. And along its edge, thirteen lines so fine the eye could barely find them.
Helga said she had never seen the emblem before either.
Tae-hyun's death was not a debt to be collected from a single demon spy. Someone out there was counting the empty seats of the summoned heroes.