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The moment he received the news that three beacon fires had risen, he had to leave Yunseo. He had promised to return, and Yunseo had said he would wait — yet an unknown feeling born from the thought that he could lose him on this very road crept up from the tips of his feet.

But had he not decided to let him go? He was going to lose Yunseo in the end. Since he had never had him, and Yunseo was not his — even the word "losing" was not quite right. But still.

Contrary to his resolution, the emotions burning with a damp heat swelled together with the burning pain. The further he moved from Yunseo, the more the agony became something unfamiliar. The pain he had carried for nearly twenty years and grown so accustomed to came at him wearing a different face, biting savagely at his skin without mercy.

Running without pause until he at last reached Geumju Fortress — when he climbed the fortress wall and faced the monsters pouring down — an unbearable revulsion shook the ground he stood on.

His feet would not move.

For the first time, the wish that he did not want to set foot down there made itself known. Something black and viscous seemed to grab at his ankles and drag him down.

Just as it had always been — for the rest of his life, he would have to give everything to that hell. Nothing had changed. Yunseo, who had not been at his side before, was simply not at his side now.

He could see the Yongrin fighting monsters on the field below. The creatures he had clashed with so endlessly they now felt like the air around him. Stopping a third-level beacon fire without the dragon-descendant was not impossible — but sometimes, as if sensing the absence of their leader, these things would not withdraw easily if the dragon-descendant did not fight, and the Gate would open more frequently.

Two consecutive days of third-level beacon fires — the Yongrin Guard would have expended much of their strength. No further deliberation was necessary. Hwi leaped lightly and plunged into the fray.

The fight was monotonous to the point that he could manage it with his eyes shut and ears stopped. At times he thought it might be better to fight an opponent that had some will of its own. The melee with these things gave him the feeling of slashing at a wall that kept appearing no matter how many times he destroyed it.

Sacred energy that seeped from his fingertips tore apart a wall of darkness. The poison coiled and twisted deep within him radiated its malignant energy, trying to bind his limbs. His movements were heavier than usual — but this too was sickening in its familiarity. He had managed just fine wearing these same fetters on his wrists and ankles all along.

Cold sweat broke out and his stomach lurched. Invisible sharp thorns stabbed through his head. His fingertips and toes curled up and his tendons reared as though they would tear through his skin and spring free.

But what was truly unbearable was the void that had taken firm root in a corner of his chest. Yunseo's ringing laughter, his breath one couldn't help but listen to, the heartbeat that only chirped more when he drew near, those dewy upturned eyes looking up at him as though wanting something — these surfaced again like visions, widening the void's malevolent reach.

Hwi bit down hard on his back teeth and cut, cut, and cut again at the monsters swarming before him.

It had been no more than two weeks and some odd days. When he had been with Yunseo, the night sky he had never truly looked at, the spring scenery he had passed over carelessly, the gentle air he had only barely felt in passing — all of it brought with it a longing that felt alien. That brief time was becoming a road cutting straight through the middle of his life.

Hwi swallowed a savage smile and swung his sword all the more ferociously.

The earth rumbled faintly as the Hell's Gate closed its maw. The strained breathing of the Yongrin and their thudding heartbeats crossed and struck at his ears. The noise filling every corner roiled his stomach with nausea.

"Your Majesty."

Huije, who had come up beside him, moved to support the swaying Hwi. Hwi pulled his arm free from her hand, planted his sword into the ground, and stood straight.

On the blade there was only dust, nothing more — no bloodstain or trace of flesh to be found. At the end of a battle, only nothing — Nothingness. Only the poison raging through his body bore witness to the ferocious fight.

Jeongju brought a palanquin. Normally he would have waved it off and walked — but to conserve his strength, he climbed in. Even so, a rueful laugh pressed through his lips.

Was he truly intending to go back?

Yunseo's face — looking at him with eyes that didn't know what to do, wavering — was etched somewhere inside his eyes as though carved there, and would not leave. Yunseo had been carrying a longing he himself did not know. A gaze that sensed something and pleaded.

Going back — to do what? To send him off warmly as he boarded a ship and left this country? To say a generous farewell so as to remain a good memory?

Hwi's expression cooled and sank inward. He was not the kind of person who could do that. So it would be better, perhaps, to break his promise and not return at all.

Perhaps the Hell's Gate opening at just such a time, and the matter of letting Yunseo go being played out like this, was simply a road that had always been laid out. Was it not?

If he did not return, Yunseo would be sad. He might weep. He might think he had been abandoned. And if Yunseo could not forget him because of that — well, that was not so bad either. The corner of his lips that had faintly risen fell back down.

As he entered the fortress, Noble Consort Hyeon was waiting for him. The cold sweat that had drenched his back was already dried, and the illusion of his head blazing hot and the skin along his lifelines peeling away scattered.

He swallowed a groan and held out his hand, and Noble Consort Hyeon immediately took his wrist. Her eyes flinched.

"Your Majesty. How long has it been since you have slept?"

"No different from here."

"But you have not received treatment all this while."

Noble Consort Hyeon composed her expression severely and concentrated on the treatment. The flowing protective star traced through the tangled threads of poison, but brought only the kind of stability that comes from placing a cold towel on a burning forehead.

What would Yunseo's protective star be like? The hope that it would completely take away his pain was a baseless fantasy. Like looking up at fruit out of reach and turning a wish into a certainty that it would surely be sweet.

But even living the same moment… if someone worried about whether he was lonely, with a heart that pure and tender, and held his hand — he thought he could endure. Was this also wishful thinking?

Hwi's gaze turned toward Noble Consort Hyeon. Noble Consort Hyeon — Heo Seollan — was a person who would not speak falsehoods or offer empty courtesies even to Hwi. The reason he had taken Seollan as his first consort and raised her to the rank of noble consort was of course partly because of her protective star, but more so because of her character and conviction.

"Noble Consort Hyeon."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"If I were to return now as things are… I would end up forcing that one to come with me. Even knowing that — should I still go?"

Noble Consort Hyeon paused and raised her eyes. Without any further explanation, she seemed to grasp the situation and kept a careful and heavy silence before asking.

"Have you checked the noble concubine's protective star?"

The same response as Jeongju's. When Hwi let out a short laugh, that alone was enough to give her an answer — and Noble Consort Hyeon furrowed her brow.

"Your Majesty. Right now, more than anything else, the well-being of your body is paramount. For this nation, for Your Majesty himself — a more suitable protective star is essential. If there is even one-tenth of a chance, you must follow the greater cause."

When he had come of age, the royal physician — with a deeply sorrowful expression — had carefully delivered her diagnosis.

'Your Majesty. I dare not say this — yet… as things stand, Daeryeong's future cannot be guaranteed.'

What had he thought upon hearing those words? Yes, it must be so. He had seemed to take it in calmly. It was more of a miracle that one could live long while carrying such a body.

The mission yet to be fulfilled — to produce a dragon-descendant heir.

The fact that he needed to have a child in order to pass down this shackle, to prepare someone who would leap into that hell in his stead and absence — that had never quite made sense to him, in truth. If he said it felt barbaric, some would be horrified and others would laugh — but still.

It was also a time when he had been absorbed in the not-yet-well-grounded hypothesis that the absence of a dragon-descendant might actually be a blessing for Daeryeong. Back then, it had felt as though clouds of death were always drifting above his head. He hadn't wanted to die — but had he, without thinking, contemplated the very definition of death?

And then he had lived four more years. Demands rained down from court to properly establish a crown heir. When it even came to arguments that the concubines were failing their duty and should be punished and new ones brought in — it was only then that, for the first time in a long while, he recalled Yunseo.

'The noble concubine of the So family — was to enter the palace next year, wasn't she?'

'Yes, Your Majesty.'

Then let us wait until that young man enters the palace, he had decided, as though telling a joke. He had reached the limit of putting off the matter of succession any longer. That he had extended that limit a little further, staking it on Yunseo — was nothing more than a willful stubbornness swung like recklessness.

But then — had he waited?

The reason he had never held any concubine was a kind of defiance — not wanting to become a dog groveling and begging for a protective star out of madness. He knew better than anyone that since there was no one in this place with a protective star compatible enough to make him lose his reason, intercourse as a form of treatment was meaningless.

But — had he waited?

When he was young — when a pure curiosity and longing for a nameless destined one had not yet been entirely obscured — he had wanted to give his heart and his purity to that person. As he grew older, he had resolved not to repeat the path of his predecessors, who had squandered their affection and their bodies before even finding a destined one, and thereby stirred up affliction-like conflicts.

All of it was just talk from a long-ago past he could barely remember. He had spent years no longer swayed by the fantasy of a destined one.

But — had he truly waited?

Hwi's expression clouded with a thin, bitter smile. A gaze sharpened to a cold edge moved toward the very fingertips where Yunseo had first touched him.