Shadows of the Fatal Duel
“Lord Clan Leader, you stand before the Supreme Family Head.”
Wijicheong spoke quietly. Geum Jeokgeol struggled to steady his ragged, humid breaths and slowly lowered himself into his seat.
“...The Supreme Family Head hid it, said nothing, and yet sent Hyeon-seong out to the duel I requested.”
“Ha! I remember exactly what people whispered as they watched our Danmok Clan decline. Not a single word have I forgotten.”
The events at Dongjeong Blood Temple had spread far and wide, and everyone knew how gravely wounded Danmok Cheon-gi—the Danmok Clan head and the world's greatest martial artist at the time—and his eldest son, Danmok Hyeon-seong, had been. After that bloodbath, as Danmok Cheon-gi secluded himself within the clan estate, rumors flew that his injuries hadn't healed. Even when Danmok Hyeon-u showed his face, people secretly speculated that he must still be suffering.
“They all chattered that our clan was crumbling because you and Hyeon-seong couldn't overcome your wounds. Are you saying you didn't know?”
“I believed it!” Geum Jeokgeol clenched his lips. “I believed it had to be slander from the world. Hyeon-seong... he wasn't someone who could weaken like that... He couldn't be...”
He had believed the rumors swirling through the world were nothing but nonsense, of course.
Danmok Cheon-gi sighed as he gazed at him.
“And so? Should I have told you nothing while sending the duel challenge? That Hyeon-seong still hadn't recovered from his battle with Blood Valley? That on the day Ryeon was born, he spat blood blocking that raid, wasting away day by day, so he had to avoid your duel? No matter what I said, people would have prophesied our clan's fall and pointed fingers at us for cowardice!”
“Were those pointing fingers so terrifying that now you push even Hyeon-seong's daughter into the fray like this?!”
“Lord Clan Leader!”
As Wijicheong's voice rose once more, Geum Jeokgeol finally fell silent. In his fury, he stared at the sky to compose his welling eyes.
Danmok Cheon-gi watched him quietly for a moment, then slowly softened his expression. The feigned rage scattered like mist in the sunlight, returning to the weathered, faintly hazy look worn by time.
“Is that why you've been sending those herbs all this time?”
“...!”
Geum Jeokgeol, who had barely calmed his anger and caught his breath, flinched.
Danmok Cheon-gi turned his head with a bitter expression.
“Did you think I wouldn't notice if you sent a few herb gatherers around? Even if our clan is said to be ruined, we still have that much power left.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
His feigned ignorance looked terribly awkward. Danmok Cheon-gi gave a wry smile.
As the Danmok Clan's fortunes waned over the years, the debts and grudges piled up within the clan had gradually eroded away. Those who owed favors settled them swiftly and washed their hands clean before departing. Those harboring resentment seized the moment to strike. By the time everyone assumed no such ties remained, suddenly a few people began thrusting rare herbs upon the clan. With no one owing favors yet payers appearing out of nowhere, it was naturally suspicious—they dug in, and at the end stood Geum Gajang.
Danmok Cheon-gi, shadows deepening in his eyes, quietly pressed his brow.
“...Why didn't you say anything?”
“What should I have said?”
“Why didn't you tell people back then, at that duel, that you didn't know about Hyeon-seong's condition?”
For the first time, Geum Jeokgeol's expression crumbled. A mix of injustice, rage, resentment, and guilt left him at a loss.
A heavy silence passed over the table.
“...How... how could I say such a thing...”
If he were truly the sort to do something like that—a clan heir who, knowing another was bedridden, requested a duel to seize the chance and murder him—then perhaps he could have. He might have claimed ignorance, attended the funeral, and shown a heartbroken face.
But Geum Jeokgeol hadn't. He couldn't.
Whether he knew or not, how could the man who let their son die brazenly attend the funeral and confess to the father, wife, and daughter that he'd simply requested the duel in ignorance?
Would that bring the dead back? Would it give Danmok Cheon-gi something else to hold onto? Would it give his children a way to explain their father's death...?
Danmok Cheon-gi gazed quietly into Geum Jeokgeol's eyes, then lowered his own in quiet regret.
“...If even you wouldn't speak, how could we?”
Confusion flickered in Geum Jeokgeol's eyes.
* * *
Geum Jeokgeol stood before the ancestral shrine with a deeply unfamiliar expression. Danmok Cheon-gi and Wijicheong lingered a step behind him.
“That was... one of the things he regretted until the very end.”
“What... is?”
Geum Jeokgeol turned to look.
“His needless greed...”
Wijicheong gazed at the shrine with distant eyes. Within rested her husband's spirit tablet.
When Wijicheong first met Danmok Hyeon-seong, he was a man left only with twisted cynicism toward the world and a gloomy tenderness. Yet in his final moments, he had looked at her with eyes crinkled in a smile as soft as spring flowers.
She tried not to recall it, lest the longing overwhelm her, but it blurred in memory—only to flood back with fresh grief when she forced it to mind.
“The duel challenge from Lord Geum... As you said, he could have avoided it, but he wanted to face it.”
Danmok Hyeon-seong remembered Geum Gajang's eldest son—the persistent challenger from a family of dojo leaders, whom he'd never once lost to.
In those times when his once-brilliant, clear future grew dim and hazy like a candle in the wind, when such a chance to prove himself arose, Danmok Hyeon-seong had seized it.
“He... didn't have much time left.”
A crack formed in Geum Jeokgeol's expression.
The year Danmok Hyeon-seong turned fifteen, he had followed his father to protect people from Blood Valley. In the end, frost settled over the prime of his life, when others bloomed brightest.
But Danmok Hyeon-seong had never spoken of it. He loathed pity from others.
Only when that endless winter finally showed signs of thaw—when he accepted there was truly nothing more he could do—did the oblivious Geum Jeokgeol send his duel challenge.
“So after that duel ended, he felt... so, so sorry.”
The ones Danmok Hyeon-seong regretted most were Wijicheong, Danmok Ryeon, and Danmok Bi. He had burned what fragile time he might have shared with his family to prove himself.
And next...
“He worried you'd carry needless guilt from then on...”
Even if Danmok Hyeon-seong had stepped forward to defend Geum Jeokgeol, people would only admire his magnanimity, while Geum Jeokgeol would shift from ruthless schemer—willing to duel the injured for his clan's rise—to mere clumsy third-rate warrior who accidentally killed his foe.
A weak righteous man only harms himself. Entrusting justice to the frail would drag them both down—that was why the Danmok Clan could say nothing first to the silent Geum Jeokgeol.
* * *
Geum Jeokgeol beheld Danmok Hyeon-seong's spirit tablet for the first time.
He pondered whether to light incense or clasp his hands, but gave it up and simply stared long at the carved name.
In Danmok Hyeon-seong's lifetime—when Geum Jeokgeol, younger then, was far more boyish—he had harbored many feelings toward him: an inferiority bordering on premonition that he'd never surpass him; a shared burden as the burdened eldest son; defeatism that no one in Jeolgang Province could best the Danmok Clan; a burning desire to beat him just once; and even an unspeakable wish that he might one day cast it all aside to become ordinary friends.
Thus, the young Geum Jeokgeol had challenged him to a duel the moment he felt progress in his arts—clinging to hope, uncertain of victory, that he had drawn one step closer.
But when Danmok Hyeon-seong died at that duel's end, that hope shattered. Unwanted guilt and aimless resentment swirled, tormenting him.
There was nowhere to vent. The Danmok Clan wouldn't believe his claim of ignorance; those eyeing his downfall would abandon him; those scorning his cowardice would deem him a liar too.
And so he had come this far.
Before witnessing his own young son commit such an act against a Danmok Clan he loathed even hearing the name of, Geum Jeokgeol had never imagined stepping foot in this estate in his lifetime.
Nor that, years later, in a duel between his daughter and that son, he would see shadows of that fateful day anew.