Chương 35: S.04 Memory of the Clock 07(01) - Parousia

Scene 01. Behind the courtyard of the 감사원(Gam-sa-won_The Inspectorate), a building cradling a 밀실(Mil-sil_Sealed Sanctum) sat squat and low. The scuffle of early morning had already collapsed into something one-sided. Yeong-min walked a slow pace, a 싸리(Ssa-ri_Bramble switch) in hand, and watched the company bound by 금줄(Geum-jul_Ritual Taboo Rope to suppress power) without a word.

The betrayers Yeong-min commanded had stripped consciousness from their former comrades and sliced them apart with the blades their own sisters had once trained with. Soo-a and Eun-jae, Jeong-in and Chae-rim, Na-hyun, and roughly two hundred others sat hacked and ruined — some pinned to 주릿대(Ju-rit-dae_Torture stocks), others forced to kneel on the dirt floor — waiting for the interrogation the twenty-odd turncoats would soon deliver. Yeong-min jerked her chin.

She meant to isolate Eun-jae, the one she judged most dangerous. Wrapped in Ritual Taboo Rope, Eun-jae could no longer hold her human form; at some point she had reverted into her true shape, a small 도깨비(Dokkaebi_Goblin). On Yeong-min's signal, two defectors moved, lifted the small Eun-jae, and carried her toward the Sealed Sanctum. Watching Eun-jae disappear into that door, Soo-a wrenched her wrists hard against the stocks that bound her. Soo-a: What are you doing!!! Yeong-min: Nothing, I assure you.

Cast aside by the king of 요승 (Yo-seung_the Between World) or not, she is still the most dreadful thing here. I merely set her aside for now. We could hardly do anything worth the name to her regardless. Save your concern for yourselves, and hear me out. The wounds had already quieted under a dusting of 잿가루(Jaet-garu_Grey Ash), but nothing could bury the guilt of having stopped none of this — and the fact that every headquarters building was sliding into those hands, right now, in front of her eyes.

Yeong-min rose from her seat and walked toward Soo-a, who had thrashed the hardest. Soo-a sat pinned to the stocks, her whole body swollen with rage. To meet her blood-streaked eyes at their height, Yeong-min lowered one knee and crouched. Yeong-min: Soo-a. A small sigh, a steady voice. Soo-a gave no answer, so Yeong-min continued. Yeong-min: Don't you think this is wrong? Soo-a: What. Yeong-min: Your blood sister. She was a 후보자 (Hubo-ja_Candidate). She died in the first cataclysm.

And afterward — what did you swear? Soo-a: That I'd destroy the Key. Yeong-min: But that very Key is about to become the Oldest of our Covenant. Not a candidate. The real Key. Can you swallow that? Soo-a said nothing. This was the deepest knot she had buried. Yeong-min: They cherished her and raised her in secret, under all our noses. Your sister, Soo-jeong's little sibling — all of them thrown into the cold burial dirge, reduced to the Grey Ash we grind and pour.

And while that was happening, that real Key bitch was eating well, sleeping warm, fattening herself — and now she wants to sit on our heads. Soo-a: I, Yeong-min: Can you live with that? Soo-a lowered her head little by little. Not wavering — sorting. Her head still bowed, Soo-a began to shake her shoulders faintly, and a thin, hollow laugh leaked from her throat. Soo-a: Ah, seriously. Sis …. Yeong-min: Yes. Say it. Soo-a's laugh cooled into something chilly.

Her head tilted up slowly, and blood-smeared tears slid down her face. Soo-a: If the Former The Oldest, who has passed, had been the kind of person you're describing — none of us would be sitting here tied up, listening to your Jiral. Yeong-min: What? Soo-a: That's right. I did waver. That's why you came to me first, isn't it, sis? But why do you keep leaving out the important part? Yeong-min, meeting Soo-a's tear-laced sneer, couldn't even summon her usual smirk. Soo-a: I chose to follow the Former The Oldest.

I chose to carry every single thing she left behind. And the ones who convinced me to choose that way were all of us here — and Eun-jae sis, the one you just dragged off. You're abusing those very people. What kind of answer do you think you're going to pry out of me? Yeong-min: Look around. No one here can do anything. We've already won. We can persuade you again, Soo-a didn't continue. Her mind was set.

Her outward contempt — a sneer wrapped around averted eyes — cut the conversation off cleanly, and Yeong-min had no reply to make. With a small sigh, Yeong-min dropped the wounded-friend act in a single breath, rose, and seized Soo-a's long hair. Gripping the mass tight so the face couldn't turn away, Yeong-min rained down slaps. She did not stop until Soo-a's round cheek swelled, split, and burst, until the blood pooling inside sprayed out.

One of Soo-a's teeth popped free and rolled across the dirt of the Inspectorate's interrogation ground. Soo-a didn't let out a single scream. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it After the brutal beating, Yeong-min smeared the blood on her own hand across the lapel of Soo-a's martial robe and turned back toward the head seat. She moved ostentatiously, deliberately, to the chair reserved for The Oldest.

Turning her back on everyone bound in the interrogation yard, she let out a long breath. She steadied her breathing, cleared her voice, and turned to face the room with a tidied tone. Yeong-min: Even now — accept our will, and your positions will be preserved. Yeong-min sat in the head seat that once belonged to the Former The Oldest and delivered her chilled invitation to everyone bound below. Jeong-in, pinned to the stocks, laughed like it tickled her.

She glanced at the twenty-odd defectors waiting for Yeong-min's signal, then, still laughing, asked: Jeong-in: Tell me. What legitimacy does that will of yours carry? Yeong-min: No legitimacy. But there is necessity. Jeong-in: There is no necessity either. The moment you people rifled through the relics of the departed Former The Oldest!! You lost everything!! Because you have nothing!! You sit in that seat, and you tell us to betray like the filth you are!! Jeong-in's words broke off.

A loyalist-turned-defector, waiting for Yeong-min's order, stepped up, took one of Jeong-in's fingernails, and tore it free, tossing it onto the dirt. One of Yeong-min's collaborators — a headquarters officer in otherwise perfect standing — pulled Jeong-in's fingernails out one by one. Then she sprinkled Grey Ash over Jeong-in's fingers. Bound in Ritual Taboo Rope, those five nailbeds couldn't knit back properly — they only foamed. Pure agony, and nothing else. Jeong-in couldn't finish her sentence.

She could barely keep breathing. Yeong-min: It wasn't me who rifled through anything. The little bitch who actually pawed through her robes has vanished, gone to ground somewhere, can't even be found. That's hardly my faul — Jeong-in: Then!! Who are we supposed to blame!! Chae-rim: We follow only 율법 (Yul-bub_The Code). Because the power we carry is that dangerous. The Code is the accumulated trace of every Former The Oldest's will, stacked layer upon layer, passed down to guide this headquarters.

Yeong-min: Well said. Then tell me — what does The Code say shall be done with the Key. Chae-rim: The Code is the layered will of every Former The Oldest who came before. Yeong-min: I asked what's written in The Code!! Chae-rim: That will!!! Has already told us who we are to serve as our The Oldest!!! Yeong-min: Even if that is the Key!! Seong-hyeon: Of course. Yeong-min's roar met a steady voice. White paper drifted and rippled in every direction.

While Yeong-min stood briefly speechless at the advancing sheets, remaining officers of headquarters, each with a band of white paper wrapped around a sleeve, flooded into the Inspectorate courtyard. Yeong-min studied Seong-hyeon — the one who had answered so calmly — hesitating, eyes widening slowly with disbelief at the sight of a face that resembled Jeong-hyeon yet wasn't quite her.

Yeong-min's arithmetic had never been slow; her head tallied up, belatedly, the presence of the 안내자(Annae-ja_Guide) and Hee-jin behind all of this. But Seong-hyeon herself was far from intact. Shoving out the contaminated consciousness of the headquarters officers she had been forced to purge was, on its own, almost more than she could carry. The 가주(Ga-ju_Head of House)'s incantation, invoked for the first time, weighed heavier than expected.

Protecting the consciousness of the shamans dispatched from the Eastern Province while simultaneously rolling back the possession inflicted on headquarters' own — Seong-hyeon had clearly overextended, and she stood now with the faintest sway. Yeong-min, after a beat of registering that, folded her surprise back and looked across at Seong-hyeon with only a smile. Behind the advancing white paper, shamans from the Eastern Province moved through the twenty-odd defectors, one by one, and began taking their throats.

Yeong-min knew by instinct she could no longer win — but her mind kept running the cold calculation. And that calculation pointed in exactly one direction. Yeong-min gave a snort of a laugh. Yeong-min: Your sis died, didn't she. So that's what finally did it. A rolling tide of people swept in, and Yeong-min felt her close allies thinning, vanishing one at a time. Only now did she fully reckon with the Guide's presence, and with Hee-jin's.

The dismay rising in her — and the defeat crouched like a shadow behind the dismay — could no longer be pushed back. She pulled her face straight with effort, abandoned even her smile, and glared at Seong-hyeon. Seong-hyeon nodded without a word. Yeong-min: Whatever. At the end of the day. You're nothing but a demoted one. Seong-hyeon: Still, I thought this might make it a little better. Yeong-min: What. Seong-hyeon: I've done more than a couple of unforgivable things.

Yeong-min watched the paleness in Seong-hyeon's face and let out a bitter snort. Seong-hyeon, who had overworked the white paper past what her body could handle, looked as if even standing was a labor. Yeong-min grasped the shape of it and wore a sneer. Yeong-min: In that shape — what exactly do you plan to do. Seong-hyeon: I was told I only had to move after the first scream. Sis knows, right? I didn't even finish high school. I'm a dumb one, I don't know the details.

I just do what I was asked, like I was told, and buy time. Yeong-min nodded, bored. She let both long arms hang calmly at her sides and moved, once more, to take up the Bramble switch. Chae-rim: All shamans — right now. Roll back every death. The bindings on the people in the hall snapped open, and the company stepped into stance and moved forward in front of Seong-hyeon.

At Chae-rim's word, every one of them began pushing outward — and it was then that Ye-ju's pack, pressing inward from the gate, met them at the entrance and blocked the whole advance. Every defector, every turncoat, found themselves gathered in one place. Ye-ju: If you can get through. Still carrying the bruise of Yu-seok's beating, Ye-ju glared at the people inside. Black shadow began to slide across every direction, thick enough that no sunlight could drop through.

The shadow came with a companion: sticky black water, pooling along the floor. This was not the familiar River of the Dead. Beyond the black water gathered at their feet, a voice none of them knew reached them. Hye-rim: The fifty-fifth The Oldest, Everyone touched by the warped black water caught the voice. The warped black water did not flow only from outside. From the Sealed Sanctum at the rear of headquarters, black water was seeping out too, sticky and alive.

Their incantatory strength pulled away from them all at once, dropping into a strange, soft languor. They could not gather further power — and this was not only true of Seong-hyeon and the rightful headquarters company. As long as any foot stood in the black water, Ye-ju and Yeong-min could work no proper incantation either. Hye-rim: To every soul within headquarters who carries forward the will of the Former The Oldest, Jeon I-sim — I address you.

The consciousness Seong-hyeon had not yet restored to the contaminated was now flooding back on its own. Even Yeong-min and Ye-ju's spells were slackening, losing their grip. Hye-rim: The deaths inside, we will take. See to the matter of your own house. The black water leaking from the Sealed Sanctum, answering the voice, swelled in an instant and broke out like a vast wave.

It tore through the Inspectorate building and the sanctum at its back, and the warped black water shot out into the wide interrogation yard beyond, surging forth in a single breath. Pushing Ye-ju's company aside as if they were nothing, Hye-rim — draped in the black Hanbok of 현교(Hyeon-gyo_The Black Doctrine) — stepped boldly through and bowed deep from the waist to everyone in the yard. Hye-rim paid no mind to Ye-ju at her back or Yeong-min at her front.

Offering proper respect to the headquarters people who had held the line for her arrival — that came first. Caught in the burst of black water from the sanctum, Eun-jae rolled her small blue body out into the open air. Her voice came a little urgent. Eun-jae: Aigoo!! Aigoo!! Soo-a!! Help this sis, will ya!! Soo-a rushed forward, pushing through the black water that had burst from the sanctum.

She caught Eun-jae's small body in her arms — a goblin even smaller than Soo-a's own short frame — and held her as if cradling relief itself. Hye-rim took in the whole scene with composure, grace pouring off her like an overflowing well. Her lips rose gently into a smile, and Hye-rim, in her own real voice this time, addressed everyone gathered at the interrogation hall. Hye-rim: Sim Hye-rim, 육종장 (Yuk-jong-jang_Sixth Steward) of The Black Doctrine.

By the call of The Bishop, I have come — first — to support Headquarters of the Central Province.