Chapter 14 — The Sorcerer And The Two Faces Of The Shadow (3)

Taking on the form of his past-life self did not mean Shin Hweein could examine his own face at leisure or move about as he pleased.
This was, after all, the memory of the North Sea Dragon Princess. He could only speak and act as she remembered him.
Invoke his dream sorcery and he could seize control back, but from that moment the dream would turn unstable and soon come apart.

Not yet. I must wait a little longer. At the very least, until my thralls outside have done enough damage to her, I have to hold out.

Even as he turned over in his mind how to kill the woman before him, the voice that came from Shin Hweein’s mouth was unbelievably gentle.

“Miu, as I told you before — I cannot be any man’s husband.”
“But why? Now that we are to be of one family with the Four Seas Dragon Kings, what objection could there be to our being bound as husband and wife?”

Of one family with the Four Seas Dragon Kings?

Come to think of it, the very first words this woman had spoken in the dream were that she had won a promise from the elders.
With his dream sorcery, Shin Hweein had drawn out the scene the North Sea Dragon Princess remembered most vividly of her time with him. The promise she now spoke of could be no light thing.

— And what if that promise were tied to the reason she had become an undead spirit?

“I thank you for winning the Dragon Kings’ consent to move the Dragon Palace into the Specter Realm. Now humans can sail forth without falling prey to the whims of the Dragon Kings. …I swear to you, the Dragon Kings will not suffer for it. The keeping of the seas remains theirs.”
“Yes, and they have all chosen to trust in my husband and in me! Because we are family!”

So it was true. His past life had touched the founding era of Aeshin.
Hearing this much alone had made the attempt at dream sorcery worth it.
And yet something in the terms of the promise did not match what he knew of the present day.

So my past-life self was the negotiating party, and he drew the North Sea Dragon Princess to his side to persuade the Four Seas Dragon Kings…? But the content of the promise differs from the present. Somehow the negotiation broke down, the Dragon Kings lost the dominion of the seas entirely, and they were driven into the Specter Realm. In which case—

What came next would be the crucial part. Even as he thought it, a still less believable exchange was passing between the two of them.

“If we are to share the Brand together, then certainly that would make us family. But surely that is a separate matter from being bound as husband and wife?”

The Brand?
He doubted the words his own mouth had spoken.
Surely she did not mean the Gatekeeper’s Brand?

“But I have already staked my own life to the elders as the guarantor of my husband’s promise! We are already of one body, one heart!”
“What…?!”

In that instant the thread of fate connecting the two of them straightened and shone in a single unbroken line.
There was nothing more to say.
The bond between them that Shin Hweein had seen had come into being at this very moment.

“It was too dangerous. The contract was something I should have entered into alone!”
“This was the only way I could have the bond between you and me that I longed for. My husband’s will is my will; my husband’s promise is my promise. Come, then — will you take me at last as your bride?”
“Even so… I am sorry. It cannot be. If I were to take a bride every time my promises grew, I should already have more than a hundred brides by now.”

Wrestling down the shock of what he had just learned, that the Dragon Kings and a human and a yokai had all shared the Gatekeeper’s Brand, Shin Hweein only then managed to refocus his attention on the two voices.
In any case, one thing was certain: no Dragon King of the present age bore the Brand.
The promise had not been kept. The bond between these two was already a thing fated for ruin.
And a premonition came over him that he would soon learn precisely how that bond had reached its end.

“Even one of a hundred would suffice for me. Compared to the countless other beings who can never win my husband’s love, I should be overwhelmingly the happier one!”
“That, I cannot allow. To me, all are precious; all are mine to keep safe. If I love them all and yet pick out one for special treatment — whether one of a hundred or one of a thousand — the number of those I can no longer look after only grows far greater still.”
“…My husband, surely you do not mean to live this way still, even after all your plans are done?”

The clear-eyed girl who looked up at him now, so utterly unlike the undead spirit he had seen, gazed at him without resentment, without hatred at his refusal, only with pure worry and concern.

“Surely others greater in number than myself, and others wiser than myself, have already spoken to you enough. Yet since you still do not seem to grasp it, I too must add a word. My husband, if you continue on as you are, ruin will come of it.”
“I shall be fine. I have already accepted that the shape of my life is somewhat different from other people’s, and even as things stand I am content enough. To treat one person as more important than another — that is something I cannot do. Not for people, nor for yokai, nor for gods either.”
“No…? I am speaking of what comes after.”

In that instant he felt the temperature of the air around them drop.
The brightness that had filled the place all this while darkened in a single breath, and across from him the face of the North Sea Dragon Princess grew a shade paler.
The look of one slowly dying.

“After you are gone, I mean. You cannot watch over every soul forever. Even now there are many who do not receive your grace. And those whose lives have brushed against yours will only ever want more. You speak as though you yourself are not greedy, yet how can you fail to see that this is already a greed beyond all measure?”

The crackle of kindling catching fire reached his ears.
The cool air that had felt so chill was rising again.
As steeply as if a flame had been kindled directly beneath their feet.

“There is a limit to what your arms can hold. How long do you mean to keep spreading them wide and drawing new bonds into yourself? If you do not soon gather into your arms those who only wait for you, those who pine for you alone — there will surely come some who turn their backs on you.”

He felt that the North Sea Dragon Princess’s gaze, as she raised her face to look at him, had changed at some point.
Love and warmth had vanished without trace. What surfaced in her expression now was bitter accusation, anger, the look of one who has been wronged.
And no wonder. She was bound by ropes, hung high upon a cross.

“?!”

“You see? In the end, it came to this.”

Hsss. Someone had lit the kindling at her feet.

The flames blazed up, climbed her legs to her hips, climbed her back to her throat, climbed at last to the crown of her head and swallowed her whole.
She had been born with the affinity for water and ought to have come to no harm from any such fire, yet she was burning, helplessly burning all the same.

“It hurts. I, who could not protect you — at least I burn like this so that I might share your end. It hurts… Open your eyes and look well. This is the end of the world you wished for. This is the terminus of that empty dream — of coexistence with all things.”

— Because the promise was broken.

No one needed to tell him; Shin Hweein knew it by instinct.
The promise with the Dragon Kings had been cast aside, all of them driven into the Specter Realm and the gate sealed shut behind them. And so it followed.
In the place of the one who had broken the promise, the North Sea Dragon Princess, who had stood as his guarantor, had taken his sin-karma upon herself.
The reason she had died was that she had been cursed by the wrathful Dragon Kings.

And that is because of my past-life self.

It was a laughable thought.
If his past-life self had truly betrayed the North Sea Dragon Princess, then yes, that was a sorrowful thing. But past life and present life were separate. He need feel no responsibility for it.
Yet there was a still more laughable fact than that.

“You who have lingered on with your grudge unspent, you who have wandered as an undead spirit searching for me—”
“Ah…?”

Shin Hweein at last invoked his dream sorcery and slipped into her dream.
In truth, his past-life self could not have stood there watching her in her final moments like this; the dream was, in effect, already broken.

“You who resent me so — why is it that you have not cursed me?”
“My… husband…? Do you mean you can see me now?”
“Yes. I see you now, and I ask. Answer me.”

This had been one of the things he had wished to confirm from the start.
For while there was indeed a thread of fate between Shin Hweein and the North Sea Dragon Princess, it seemed somehow different from those connecting him to Geum Moa, the burning bird, Attila, and Lyl.

“Ah, ah.”

Had she been cursing him, it would have sufficed to invoke the Indulgence once more, using the karma he had accumulated from re-sealing the Nine-Headed Dragon and from sweeping the swarm of yokai inside the Specter Realm this time around.
For all her vast standing, she was already dead and undead; if the Indulgence drew off her power, she would be weakened and Shin Hweein strengthened, and gathering force with his thralls he could surely overcome her.

But it was not so. Sharing her dream and her memory, I am sure of it now. She has not laid a curse upon me.

The bond between them was nothing more than the trace of an unreturned trust.
She who had staked everything on him in courtship, who had borne no fruit of it, who had resented and longed for him by turns, who had at last been betrayed and taken upon herself the Dragon Kings’ curse meant for him. And still she had not cursed him.
She had not held his sin against him.

“…Because you have no sin.”

After a short silence the answer came from her mouth, and at hearing it, for some reason, Shin Hweein’s whole body came to a halt.

“The fox-of-flame… and the bat… and the bird, and the demon. All of them bound you in fetters only out of the selfish desire never to let you slip away. Hehe — but I am different. I had already tied us together, long before any of them, with a far stronger bond.”

Even as her whole body burned, gradually reverting to the form of the maiden-ghost he had first seen, the voice with which the North Sea Dragon Princess answered him carried strength in it.

“And so I have every right to claim the place of my husband’s bride! I have no need to rely on a curse to do it! Even hating you, I trusted you to the very end… and I have been waiting here for you all this while.”
“…”

The cross blazed up in the wild flame, and her body was flung down into the fire.
The cursed flames did not die; they wrapped themselves around her and tormented her with stubborn persistence. Yet now she no longer cried out, no longer groaned.

“And let me say it again: you have no sin.”
“Even though I broke the promise and so caused your death?”
“It was not you who broke the promise. It was those who turned their backs on you. You have already guessed, have you not? That you are not the only one who, through this dream, has come to share another’s memory…”

In that instant a bolt of lightning crashed down on the head of the North Sea Dragon Princess.
It looked for all the world like a further punishment laid upon her for having spoken a secret she ought never to have spoken.

“Aaah, my mind is growing clearer. You have given me a gift. As you always did — once again you are showing me a sight I have never seen before.”

But this only lent her voice more vigor.
Shin Hweein had feared he was drawing closer to death, when in fact it was the opposite.
She who had been consumed by death, who had lost reason and lost her standing, was now, connected to him, drawing nearer to life again, recovering what she had lost.
Even though all of this was only a passing phenomenon, in this moment she carried the standing and dignity of the North Sea Dragon Princess of her past life, intact within her.

“Speak no more. It is dangerous. Whether this place is within my consciousness or within yours, there is some vast restriction here that we cannot govern.”
“I am already dead. If by speaking I can lighten the weight on my husband’s heart even a little, I do not mind if my soul is extinguished for it.”
“No, it has already lightened well enough.”

A smile traced the corner of Shin Hweein’s mouth as he answered the North Sea Dragon Princess.
He thought, in all sincerity, that he had been right to use his dream sorcery.

“Of all those who know my past life, you are the first to tell me that I have no sin. I thank you.”
“Then may I call you my husband?”
“That, you may not.”

Shin Hweein felt the talisman come alive, radiant in his bosom with a brilliant light.
As though it had read his intention to use it, it had come to him once again, even here within the dream.
If Moa knew now what he meant to do, she would call it the height of folly, and he would gladly hear her say it.

“I, too, think you bear no sin.”
“My husband…? You must not.”

She must have read something in his voice, for the North Sea Dragon Princess made a horrified face and tried to refuse him. Yet Shin Hweein reached into his bosom all the same and drew out the blazing talisman, the Indulgence.

“This is the result of your having recklessly bound the two of us together as fellow travelers of one fate. I never consented to it; therefore it is not right that you should bear a curse in my stead.”
“You must not!”

His heart would not permit the sight before him.
Even if this was only a dream showing him a thing already passed.
Even if the North Sea Dragon Princess was already dead, and lifting the curse from her now would change little.
Even if, having only just managed to release a few curses and so let himself breathe a little, he would now be shouldering a heavy curse all over again.

“Please, stop — kill me instead! There is no bride who would slay her own husband!”
“Do you take me so lightly? I already bear hundreds of curses; a Dragon King’s curse on top of that will not so much as faze me. Moreover, you bound us together of your own accord first — so you have no cause to complain when I take back from you the curse you stole from me.”

Without hesitation, Shin Hweein lifted the Indulgence and gathered his power into it.
Perhaps because they were inside a dream, or perhaps because this space was built of the North Sea Dragon Princess’s own power added into it, the spiritual power that poured into the Indulgence was vaster than he had imagined.

“And besides — did you not say so yourself, that I bear no sin? In that case, even if I undo your curse here, the price for it will not return to me.”
“No… no!”

Even as her whole body burned, she hurled herself at Shin Hweein.
To stop him from taking her curse back.

But.

“Miu.”

Her hand stopped just before it touched the talisman, halted by the word that had slipped from his lips.

“Miu, grant me the right to save your soul.”
“Ah…”

Meeting the round-eyed gaze of the North Sea Dragon Princess, Miu, who could only stare at him, Shin Hweein gave a quiet, faint smile and held the Indulgence out to her, murmuring low:

“Release.”