Prologue — An Indulgence Received

“A coming-of-age gift sent by Her Ladyship, young master.”

Shin Hweein watched the small wooden case being set down on the table, and a single thought surfaced.

Ah, that’s right. Today’s the day.

When he forced his eyes open to inspect it, the servant who had carried the case tilted his head aside, as if to dodge Shin Hweein’s gaze, and went on.

“A relic excavated from a ruin in the West. It is called an Indulgence.”

The eight noble families that upheld Aeshin Korea¹, the land of curses and demons, were the Eight Pure-Blood Houses, and they were famous for the extraordinary gifts they bestowed upon each house’s direct heir at the coming-of-age, the day he turned eighteen.

It might be a powerful talisman or warding charm with a sorcery or shikigami (a familiar spirit) sealed within.

It might be a sorcerous implement that First-Rank or higher sorcerers of the house had poured their spiritual power into, day and night, for months on end.

Or it might be a divine relic kept sealed deep in the family vaults.

Such formidable gifts were reserved, of course, for the most promising heirs alone, the rare prodigies who had revealed exceptional talent from a young age even among the direct successors.

“…An Indulgence, you say?”
“The very same Indulgence that is said to absolve a person of their sins.”

In other words.

To receive a meaningless gift at one’s coming-of-age, or worse, a harmful one, was, legitimate-heir status notwithstanding, all but the same as having one’s ties to the house severed.
Such was the gift Shin Hweein received this day, the direct heir of the Shin House, a family renowned² even among the Eight Pure-Blood Houses for commanding particularly powerful shikigami.

“Th-this can’t be! An Indulgence is just a scrap of paper! The Specter Realm Gatekeeper Rite is tomorrow — this is the same as telling our young master to go and die!”

The only handmaid serving Shin Hweein within the house, Geum Moa, snapped at the servant across the table on her master’s behalf, since he could not stop coughing.

“Lady Geum Moa, mind your words. This is not Her Ladyship’s will alone.”

Even with Geum Moa’s voice rising at him, the servant answered politely, and without once glancing at Shin Hweein, the very subject of the coming-of-age, he carried on in a calm, measured tone.

“The young master was born with a body covered in inflammation, like the ash a fire leaves behind, frail in every part. He limps on one leg, his lungs and heart are weak, his hearing is poor, his vision is dim. Even the vast spiritual power that alone marks him as a bloodline of the Shin House is barely enough to keep his breathing tethered.”
“You—!”
“Hence it is plain that the young master bears upon him the unredeemed sins of a past life. After much deliberation with the head of the house, Her Ladyship procured this at great pains, in the hope that the weight of the young master’s sins might be lessened, if only a little.”
“Young master, don’t listen! It’s all nonsense!”
“…”

Shin Hweein was a malformed thing.
A child born with so many sicknesses and frailties that everyone whispered he must have come into the world bearing every sin in it.
But he wanted to confront the servant, the man who spat his lies without so much as wetting his lips.
If the burdens forced on him from the moment of his birth, the things he had never asked for, were to be called sin, then who exactly was meant to answer for the countless things he had been denied as a cripple?

“…Cough. Leave.”

Yet even when he managed to part his lips through the chronic inflammation and the lung disease, the thing before him was nothing more than a dog moving at its master’s whim.
To waste his breath on a beast would be too great a tribute.

But the servant still had one last message to deliver.

“Her Ladyship has also stated that, by this gift, the sins the young master has accumulated thus far — the disgracing of the Shin name, the squandering of the family’s assets — shall likewise be absolved. Tomorrow morning, upon entering the Specter Realm, the young master shall be released from the common duty shared by all of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses.”

“What… did you say…?”

The handmaid Geum Moa trembled, as though the words had struck her.

To say he had disgraced the Shin name meant that he, the legitimate heir, had been born a cripple and so drawn the world’s contempt. To say he had squandered assets meant the money the house had spent merely feeding a child who could do nothing, keeping him alive.
Yet these were burdens any parent ought to bear for their child.
To brand them as the child’s own sins, then to declare them absolved at will, was nothing less than a formal disownment, a permanent banishment of Shin Hweein from the family.

“Then, the gift delivered, I shall take my leave. …Ah, Lady Geum Moa.”

Without once meeting Shin Hweein’s eyes, the servant finished his piece, and then, as though this were his true errand, he turned to Geum Moa with a glint in his gaze.

“Many within the family desire your talents. Her Ladyship is, of course, one such person. And the elder young master has indicated he intends to formally instate you as his wife.”
“I am young master Hweein’s handmaid!”
“For the moment, yes. But…”
“You—!”

A cripple, hurled into the Specter Realm without even a proper sorcerous implement. Surely you know what becomes of such a man? His gaze carried that meaning, and at last Geum Moa erupted.

“If you’re done talking, then get out!”

The servant met her fierce glare unshaken, bowed his head to her as if in apology for the rudeness, and withdrew.
He had paid no mind whatsoever to the already-doomed Shin Hweein, and observed proper courtesy only toward Geum Moa, who was likely to become the heir’s wife.

“As if anyone gets to decide on their own that I’d belong to that pervert—!”

Having driven the servant out, Geum Moa fumed for a long while, glaring at the empty seat. Then she sprang to her feet, fetched salt from the kitchen, and scattered it meticulously from the room outward, all the way to the entrance of the annex where they lived.
That done, she dropped herself into the very seat the servant had occupied moments before, across from Shin Hweein, and said sharply.

“Let’s go together!”
“Where?”
“Where else? The Specter Realm, of course! I’ll be the one to take you in. To hell with the trial — the moment we’re inside, we find another exit and the two of us run. You’ve been disowned anyway; there’s no reason to cling to this excuse for a household any longer. Let’s go find freedom!”

“Ha, haha…”

Freedom. At the hollowness of the word, Shin Hweein could only laugh.
He knew well that Geum Moa had said it out of deep concern for him, but his body was already a prison. There was nowhere he could go where freedom would be allowed him.

He hadn’t told her yet, but Shin Hweein had been quietly coming to understand that his body was nearing its limit.
That his defect-riddled body had endured to the age of eighteen at all was nothing short of a miracle.
As that servant had put it, were it not for the vast spiritual power native to the Shin bloodline guarding his flesh, he would have died before his first birthday.

“…Moa.”
“Yes, young master.”
“You should — cough — live by your own will. Go find freedom… in my place.”
“I refuse!”

She answered without a moment’s hesitation, and at her firmness Shin Hweein could only manage a bitter smile.
It pained him that the bandages wound round his body for the inflammation kept him from seeing her clearly.

“If we die, we die together. I made up my mind to that the moment I entered your service.”
“Was I, cough, was I really so special to you…? I’m afraid I cannot say I was.”
“It’s all right if you don’t remember. I’ll remember enough for both of us. All you need to know is that I will never give up on you.”

The weight in those words was more than Shin Hweein could bear in that moment.
He could only laugh.

“If I had two more loyal hearts like yours, I could have founded a country. Cough, cough…”
“And only one country, at that?”

Geum Moa returned her master’s faint smile with one of her own, and reached across the table.
The small, narrow wooden case the servant had tossed down as Her Ladyship’s gift still sat there.

“I’ll throw this trash out. It’s nearly time for your meal, and the table’s filthy.”
“Give it to me.”
“Hm? It’s obviously rubbish — let me handle it. I’d hate for any of its bad luck to rub off.”
“Even so, give it to me. Cough, cough… It’s the first gift my little mother has ever given me.”
“…”

Geum Moa wore an expression that said she truly did not want to hand it over, but unable to overcome Shin Hweein’s resolve, she reluctantly placed the wooden case in his bandage-wrapped hand.
He gazed at the thing in his palm through his clouded vision, swallowed against his quickening breath, then straightened his aching back and leaned upright against the bedrest.

He opened it slowly to check the contents… and burst out laughing.

“Hah! Khh — cough! Ahahaha—!”
“Young master?! It was a cursed object after all, wasn’t it?! Give it to me, I’ll take proper measures right now—!”
“An Indul— cough — gence, a talisman — cough!”

What lay inside the wooden case was a single, vertically elongated talisman.
A talisman on which the three Chinese characters, Indulgence, had been written in a bold, confident hand.

Properly speaking, an Indulgence was merely a certificate of remission (the absolving of one’s punishment), issued by the religious bodies of the West in exchange for a donation, and what he held in his hand was a single talisman that seemed to deny the very root of the concept. How could he not laugh?
It looked for all the world like something a naïve child had scribbled together after hearing only the word Indulgence, without knowing what it actually meant.

“I’m honestly speechless.”

His body screamed in pain from every quarter, and still Shin Hweein could not stop laughing, and at the sight of him Geum Moa crept closer to peer into the case herself. The look that came over her face was one of pure incredulity.
Had it at the very least been a genuine surviving Indulgence, one actually drafted by some medieval Western pope or cardinal, there might have been hope that it had become a relic with real efficacy. But to offer up this ridiculous scrap of paper as a coming-of-age gift!

“Throw it away — no, I’ll throw it away!”
“Enough, enough. Hehe… It’s an object with not a trace of malice in it, is it not?”
“It’s a gift made of nothing but malice!”

Shin Hweein managed, with some effort, to defend the talisman from Geum Moa’s violent attempts to seize it.

“I know. I can see it. Discerning goodwill from malice was always a talent of mine, was it not?”
“Ugh, you’re impossible — so you really mean to march into the Specter Realm holding nothing but this one paper, proud as you please?”
“If turning this away would have earned me even one other implement or one other talisman, I would have done so long ago.”

Perhaps it was because his heart had grown so unexpectedly light. Having laughed freely, he found even his throat less raw than usual.
Meaning to keep it close, Shin Hweein took up the artifact, that East-meets-West misunderstanding, in one hand.

In that instant, countless flashes of light burst across his mind.

“Ah—!”
“Young master?!”

The faces of many people Shin Hweein did not remember surfaced one by one in his mind.
There was a young woman, and an old man; a great and beautiful beast, and a strapping youth; a kindly old lady, and one who soared upward like a dragon; even a great bird forever burning itself.

Shin Hweein felt a thread reach out from each of them and connect to him.
Threads so thin and faint he could not even tell when they had been tied, yet so tough they would never break…

The instant the hand gripping the talisman flared as if it had caught fire, one thread among the countless others shone with a particular brightness and grew vivid.
It was the thread connected to the burning bird.

— I resent you. I curse you. May you suffer without end, in agony, may you wish for death and never receive it.

A chilling, beautiful voice, drenched in resentment.
The sheer rank of the being made his brain feel as though it might burn away entirely from merely hearing the voice echo through his mind.

— You’d cast me aside, and then alone seek your freedom? I will not forgive you. I will never let you go. I will find you, without fail.
— Until then, enjoy your little stretch of freedom.

“Gaaaaaahhh—!”
“Young master, young master Hweein!”

When Shin Hweein, clutching the talisman, let out a scream of agony, Geum Moa flew to him in terror and seized him in her arms.
She realized at once that his entire body had grown hot enough that spontaneous combustion would not have surprised her, and yet she did not let go.
Believing some trap she did not know lay within the talisman, she tried desperately, suffering all the while, to pry it from his grasp.
But it would not come free.

But the next moment, as abruptly as it had begun, it ended, and Shin Hweein’s body went cold.
It felt as though she were touching a corpse, and Geum Moa cried out in horror.

“Young master, are you all right?! Young master!”
“Moa…”
“Young master!”

Barely regaining his senses, Shin Hweein leaned back into the bedrest with Geum Moa’s support, and realized one thing.
His vision was just a little clearer than before.
The itching of his inflammation-ridden skin had subsided, just a little.
The same with the heat that had burned through his lungs and throat.
A portion of the spiritual power that had labored to shield him from all that pain had been set free…
…and he sensed that a red heat had taken up residence within it.

“…”
“Young master, please say something. Please…”

“…Moa.”

When Shin Hweein, his self-examination finished, finally opened his mouth, Geum Moa pressed her face close to his as if she had been waiting, and whispered.

“Yes — perhaps we shouldn’t even wait until tomorrow. Let’s run now? And tear up that disgusting paper while we’re at it!”
“I can — wield — flame.”
“…What?”

After speaking, Shin Hweein laboriously snapped his fingers.
A brilliant red flame rose, burning away part of the bandage wrapping his hand.
And there his hand, long buried under inflammation, its very shape impossible to make out since birth, could be seen plainly, clean.

Geum Moa’s eyes went round.

“Huh…?”
“The sins I was said to have carried from a past life…”

Shin Hweein cut himself off, struck by sudden feeling, paused to catch his breath, then drew up one corner of his mouth in a self-mocking smile and finished.

“Have, it seems… been forgiven. At least in part.”