Page 113 of Reign of the Talon
But one cannot stop the howling of the winds or the violent tides of the ocean.
One cannot stop an irrefutable force of nature.
So she cannot stop the dagger as it flies from my hand, a comet against the night sky. She cannot stop it from slicing through a small gap in the fires, nor can she halt its route as it splits through the air toward Bonseyo’s emperor—and strikes his throat in a spray of red.
Haneul is shouting something, words hoarse and broken, face contorted in sheer terror.
And the mortal emperor is falling, limp and lolling. He does not die right away, of course. Haneul tries to save him, to staunch the blood as it pours from his neck. He coats his fingers in it, tears off pieces of his robes, tries to bind the ripped flesh back together.
It’s no use.
I tilt my face up toward the sky and smile as the earth moves beneath my feet. As roars from somewhere belowground rip through the air, muffled but growing stronger. As I am lifted upward by the powerful, powerful force of Fulfillment, wind whipping through my hair, head tilting back, body arching toward the cloud-hidden stars, the Dokkaebi fire extinguishing on my chest as the storm erupts in full.
The emperor is dead.
The Prophecy has been fulfilled.
Long live the Goddess of Wrath.
PART FOUR
A HOME IN A HALL
INTERLUDE
Power.
Beneath the earth, it surges through them, a white-hot energy that scathes their blood in its extremity. The serpents scream as they battle, as their sparkling teal scales shift and ripple, turning from that ocean blue to a molten gold, the color seeping over their bodies as if they are being painted by some phantom hand. Burning, glittering, bright, the gold shines in the darkness of the Bonseyo Shadowshafts. Sinuous bodies bulge and lengthen, growing larger, larger—four black-clawed feet tear through the flesh at their sides, bursting outward with wet, sickening noises. Flat heads begin to ripple and shift, hair—silken, flaxen hair—bursting from their scalps, beards erupting underneath gaping maws, jagged horns sprouting from atop their skulls.
Shin Lina’s Imugi unleash earth-rattling roars as they transform into Yong, into the extinct dragons of old, the power of Fulfillment reaching within them and changing all that they are, all that they should have remained.
The gods stumble back, eyes wide as they watch, defeat heavy in their bones as Sonagi bellows out a victorious war cry, stretching toward the earth above, rocks tumbling onto the army below. “The tunnels!” Haemosu roars. “It won’t hold them!”
There is barely room for the soldiers to breathe, to move, as the Imugi transform, widening, lengthening. Iseul the Gumiho shifts back to her human form, breathing hard, backing away from the serpents—as their teal scales are slowly gilded with gold, as they thrash in triumph, magnificent and towering.
“FALL BACK!” Kang shouts, tightening his grip around Kim Chan, whom he has rescued—but his voice is lost beneath the roars and the thundering of the earth as rocks fall, splitting into twos, as the Yong lurch upward—breaking through the earth above, bringing avalanches of dirt and rocks down upon the opposing army. Kang does not see Chan jerking to consciousness and snatching a fallen firesword from the ground. The advisor’s mouth tastes too much like terror and tears to notice, and he grabs the nearest soldier he can find—Iseul—and steps back into a portal of his making just as the earth begins to cave in around them, as the Yong plow upward through the tunnels, intent on reaching the night sky far above.
Jeon Eunwoo screams as his sight is enveloped by darkness and earth. He forces himself to keep flying through the sea of soil, unable to breathe, unable to see where the underearth ends and the surface world begins. Dragons shoot upward all around him, and he flaps his wings faster, desperately hoping to make it out alive. To not be buried like the troops below him. He chokes on soil, yet desperately he flies, relying on instinct more than sight to dodge the tumbling rocks that fall upon him. His father must be dead if the Prophecy has been Fulfilled. Dead, before he could learn to love his bastard son. As Jeon Eunwoo finally breaks into the world above, he unleashes a primal scream of hatred and grief.
The twin gods, the moon and sun, grab each other’s hands as the broken earth crashes down, a monstrous wave against humanity. They cannot save them, these humans, and it is with heavy hearts that Dalnim and Haemosu vanish, leaving hundreds of soldiers to die in the Bonseyo Shadowshafts. Wretched and winded, they collapse before Hwanin—Sang-je, the Heavenly Emperor, King of the Gods, who sits upon the star-dotted throne amongst the clouds.
Hwanin’s eyes widen as he glances below, where terror and chaos reign.
And somewhere, fingers lazily strumming a red thread of fate, Gameunjang smiles.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
The Prisoner
It is a dark, pulsing mass, with tendrils hooked into the winding grooves of my mind, as ancient as the stars itself. An accumulation of abused power, crooked fate, and wrongful destiny.
I see it now as I sprint desperately up the staircase, my widened eyes transfixed upon the grayish-pink, glistening brain hanging overhead, suspended in a sea of stars. Iseethe Prophecy for what it is—that unnatural, deadly puppeteer of my body. That affliction. Thatparasite, latched onto my brain as surely as a leech on skin, sucking and sucking the life and will out of me, drinking down my agony like the finest wine.
You, I seethe, and I hear its smug voice in response. The mass shifts, like a giant black spider stiffening atop its prey, and I can almost swear that it looks at me.
You.
My feet leave the ground, and in an overpowering flash of light, I am gone, plunging down into an ocean oflife. The staircase has led me to a place where the physical does not exist, and neither do I—I am blood and I am bones. I am millions of small, small cells and tiny compositions. I am the beating of my heart and the inhaling of my lungs. I am a golden light, stretching further and further through the body…coiling around the fibula, nestling underneath the sternum, battling away the dark splotches that leak from that mass atop my brain, shredding them into nothingness one by one.
