The King Lives
On the day the Demon King died, the Throne's Flame went out.
The great hall of the Demon King's Castle was littered with the scars of battle.
Several black pillars had snapped midway through, and long white sword-scars left by the Holy Sword stretched across the floor. Beyond the collapsed walls, the faint shapes of the human coalition forces could be seen withdrawing.
At the innermost reach of the hall, upon cracked steps, sat the black throne.
The flame that had burned atop its backrest flickered weakly, thinning to a thread—then vanished completely.
The demons still remaining lifted their heads as one.
The Throne's Flame symbolized the bond between king and throne. It never went out, not when the king slept, not when he rode out to distant battlefields. Even when Kang Sihyuk had marched deep into the human world, even through battles where his fate had been unknown for three full days, the flame had held its place.
That flame had disappeared for the first time.
A moment later, the shattered doors of the great hall were wrenched open.
A woman in black armor strode inside. Silver hair falling to her waist swayed with each step. Blood-red eyes swept in turn across the blood still pooled at the center of the hall and the throne beyond it.
It was the 1st King.
"Report."
The messenger who had followed her dropped to one knee.
"The human coalition is withdrawing from the castle."
"And His Majesty?"
The messenger could not answer at once.
The 1st King's eyes narrowed.
"I asked you a question."
"The Hero's Holy Sword… severed His Majesty's head."
The air in the great hall grew heavy.
The messenger's brow pressed to the floor.
"But the instant his head was taken, His Majesty's body vanished without a trace."
"Vanished?"
"Yes. Neither head nor body remained."
The 1st King's gaze fell to the dark crimson blood still staining the floor.
It was unmistakably Sihyuk's blood.
And yet there was no corpse.
"Who saw this with their own eyes?"
"The soldiers who remained in the hall, and the Hero's party from the human world. The Hero himself is said to have stood frozen for some time after His Majesty disappeared."
"And the Hero?"
"Withdrew with the coalition."
The 1st King looked to the throne.
The flame was out.
But something was wrong.
If the throne had felt its king's death, it should have shown the signs of a master lost—emptied its contract and prepared itself to receive a new successor. A cry announcing the king's death should have rung through the entire Demon King's Castle.
Nothing of the kind had happened.
Only the flame had gone out.
"Search the castle again."
"We have already searched three times."
The 1st King's gaze pinned the messenger where he knelt.
"From the dungeons to the outer walls. Everything."
"…Yes."
"Once more."
The messenger bowed his head deeply.
"As you command."
Even after the messenger withdrew, the 1st King remained standing before the throne.
At her feet, blood that had not yet dried still marked the stone.
She did not step in it.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind her.
"No matter how many times you search, the result will be the same."
A broad-shouldered man entered the hall. Dark reddish-brown hair, an old scar cutting across his forehead. On the thick armor covering his chest was engraved the crest permitted only to candidates for the throne.
It was the 2nd King.
Behind him, the 3rd King and the 4th King appeared as well.
The lean-framed 3rd King, the moment he stepped inside, studied the flow of magical energy around the hall before so much as glancing at the throne. The 4th King, wrapped in a black longcoat, stopped a short distance away and looked down at the scars the Holy Sword had left behind.
The 2nd King walked toward the throne.
"We cannot leave the throne vacant for long."
The 1st King stepped into his path.
"We have not even found His Majesty's body."
"There are those who watched his head leave his shoulders."
"And yet there is no corpse."
The 2nd King's gaze cooled.
"That is not proof of survival."
"Nor is it proof of death."
The 2nd King pointed at the darkened throne.
"The border wards are already beginning to waver. If the throne's current remains severed much longer, the Demon Realm will collapse first."
"Not even a day has passed."
"So you would have us wait?"
The 1st King did not yield a single step.
"We confirm His Majesty's survival first."
"With what?"
The 2nd King's eyes shifted past her shoulder.
"The throne will answer for itself."
The 1st King's hand moved toward the hilt of the sword at her hip.
At once the 3rd King stepped between them.
"Neither of you is wrong."
The 2nd King's voice dropped low.
"Out of the way."
"If you mean to fight, do it after we have confirmed the matter of succession."
The 3rd King glanced around at the shattered pillars and the cracked floor.
"There already appears to be more than enough that needs repairing."
The 2nd King did not answer, but neither did he advance any farther.
The 3rd King circled the throne at a measured pace.
"We need only confirm whether the contract has fully dissolved. If the throne accepts a new king, then His Majesty is dead. If it refuses, then some other cause is at work."
The 4th King, who had been silent until now, spoke for the first time.
"I see no reason to delay."
His voice was quiet.
"The 2nd King has prepared longest as the next successor. Simply standing before the throne should give us our answer."
The 1st King regarded the 4th King for a moment.
She did not care for it.
But she could not block the path forever.
The throne was no mere chair. It was the being that gripped the Magi and the boundaries of the entire Demon Realm, that chose a king fit to wield that power and bound itself to him by contract.
If the king was dead, a new one was required.
Slowly, the 1st King stepped aside.
"This is confirmation. Not succession."
The 2nd King passed her by.
"If the result is the same, the distinction means nothing."
The succession rite began that night.
The bodies of the fallen and the wreckage of battle had been cleared away, but the scars left upon the great hall itself could not be erased.
High-ranking demons and the four Kings gathered before the throne, the cracked floor between them.
No one spoke.
Only the hundreds of newly set candles between the black pillars flickered faintly in the dark.
The 2nd King stripped off his armor and stood before the throne.
Scars earned across countless battles marked his torso.
He drew a blade across his palm.
Dark crimson blood fell upon the pattern carved into the stone beneath the throne.
"The previous king has fallen."
His low, settled voice rolled through the hall.
"I will inherit his authority, guard the borders of the Demon Realm, and end the vacancy of the throne."
The pattern drank the blood.
Black light began to spread along the floor.
Soft intakes of breath rose from every corner of the hall.
It was responding.
Black energy flowing from the throne coiled around the 2nd King's ankles. It climbed his legs, spreading through his waist and chest.
The 2nd King took one step forward.
No one stopped him.
He set his hand upon the armrest of the throne.
In that instant, the black energy erupted.
BOOM!
The 2nd King's body was hurled backward. The cracks in the floor split wider still, and every candle in the great hall snuffed out at once.
He twisted in midair and landed on both feet, skidding several meters before he finally stopped.
His palm was blackened and burned.
Every gaze in the hall fixed upon the throne.
The flame that had vanished was rising once more.
It was far smaller than before—trembling as though it might go out at any moment—and yet it was unmistakably alive.
The 2nd King looked down at his scorched hand, then walked toward the throne again.
"State your reason for refusing me."
The throne did not answer.
He reached out a second time.
This time the 1st King caught his arm.
"You already have your answer."
"Let go."
"A second attempt is not confirmation."
Magi rose from the 2nd King's body.
The 1st King did not release her grip.
In the instant their two powers were about to collide, the flame above the throne flared hard.
At the same moment, a voice rang through the minds of everyone present in the hall.
It was neither low nor high. It was less someone speaking than the will engraved into the throne itself driving straight into their thoughts.
Succession is refused.
The 2nd King's expression hardened.
"State your reason."
A brief silence followed.
The flame upon the throne swayed in one long, slow ripple.
The King lives.
No one in the great hall could speak.
Strength left the 1st King's hand.
She took a single step closer to the throne.
"His Majesty is… alive?"
The King lives.
The same answer.
The 2nd King clenched his teeth.
"His head was cut off."
The throne said nothing more.
The 2nd King's voice filled the hall.
"The Hero severed his neck with his own hand. The flame went out. And you claim he lives?"
The 1st King turned to face him.
"The throne has no reason to lie."
"It may be mistaking the lingering trace of a dead contractor for life."
"Then it would have accepted you."
Killing intent flared in the 2nd King's eyes.
But the 1st King did not back down.
The 3rd King studied the fractured floor as he spoke.
"At least one thing is certain."
Every gaze turned toward him.
"In the present state, no one can succeed to the throne."
The 2nd King asked, "Then what is the method?"
The 3rd King looked up at the flame trembling above the throne.
"We find the king whom the throne judges to be alive."
"We don't even know where he is."
This time it was the 4th King who answered.
"If we do not know, then we search."
The 1st King looked at him.
The 4th King continued in the same unchanging tone as always.
"If body and all vanished the moment his head was taken, it may not have been a simple death."
"Meaning?"
"If he remains in neither the human world nor the Demon Realm, he may have been moved somewhere else."
The 2nd King's brow twitched.
"Among countless dimensions, where exactly are we supposed to look?"
"There is no need to send anything large."
The 4th King's gaze settled on the 1st King.
"The 1st King can carve a brand upon a living creature, can she not?"
She understood his meaning at once.
Brand lesser magical beasts. Push them through the unstable gaps between dimensions. Most would die before they ever reached a destination. Even those lucky enough to arrive in another world would have almost no chance of finding Sihyuk.
But there was no other way.
The 1st King looked up at the flame swaying above the throne.
Small—but not yet extinguished.
"We search."
The 2nd King glared at her.
"On what faith?"
Her blood-red eyes gleamed cold.
"The throne said His Majesty lives."
She rested one hand upon the hilt of her sword.
"That is enough."
From that day on, countless rifts were opened.
They were not proper dimensional gates. Whenever the sorcerers punched a brief hole in an unstable boundary, the 1st King shoved a lesser magical beast bearing her brand through to the other side.
Some brands severed the instant they crossed. Some beasts fell into barren deserts. Others drowned in worlds filled with nothing but water, unable even to draw a breath. There were places where not a single living thing could be seen, let alone a civilization.
On rare occasions a beast reached a world that held cities—but Sihyuk was never there.
Failure piled upon failure.
By the time counting how many beasts she had sent ceased to mean anything at all, one brand that had clung on, faint to the last, finally answered.
The signal was vanishingly brief.
The 1st King surged to her feet.
At the same moment, a blurred vision flooded her sight.
Strange buildings thrusting toward the sky. Humans fleeing. And standing before the magical beast—a black-haired man.
The face was unchanged.
The clothes he wore and the place he stood were unfamiliar, but there was no mistaking him.
The brand carved into the beast's chest burned hot.
The man looked down at it.
His gaze seemed to reach through the beast, all the way to her.
In that instant, the beast's final will came through.
Found him.
The vision cut out.
A subordinate in the room sucked in a sharp breath.
"Just now—that was…"
The 1st King did not answer.
She seized the faint remaining coordinates in both hands.
They were unstable—far too faint to open a gate someone could cross at once. But they were real. Different from the countless failed rifts she had opened before.
"Secure the coordinates first."
The subordinate examined the fragile trace.
"For Your Majesty to cross in person, we would need to draw a considerable portion of the Magi stockpiled in the Demon King's Castle."
"How much?"
"With what remains, one crossing is the limit."
"Open it."
"Once the gate is opened, we cannot create a return gate until the reserves have built back up."
"How long will that take?"
"I cannot say with certainty."
The 1st King looked at the place where the vanished vision had been.
"It does not matter."
Her blood-red eyes narrowed.
"I will cross and leave a marker. Open the gate again by following it."
The subordinate bowed his head.
"…As you command."
The 1st King's lips moved slowly.
"I have found His Majesty."
The King was alive.