“Oh…”
The revelation struck Aldrit deeply. A quiet, trembling sigh escaped his lips as his chest tightened. His throat burned with suppressed emotion, and his eyes stung. The final journey he had always known felt cold, a narrative of resignation and inevitability. But this… this was something entirely different. A tale of hope and fulfillment.
“Please,” an elder urged gently, their gaze steady and earnest. “Share the true meaning with everyone.”
“…Yes, Elder,” Aldrit replied. He took a moment to steady himself, calming the whirlwind of emotions that had stirred within him. Once his breathing evened, he turned back to his original question, his tone quiet but insistent.
“Elder, why did you make such a deal with Mara?”
“Why do you need to know?”
Startled, Aldrit spun around, his eyes darting in search of the disembodied voice.
“Have you been listening this whole time?” he demanded, his tone sharp.
“You idiot,” the voice retorted, dripping with sarcasm. “Did you forget where you are? How could I not hear conversations happening inside my own body?”
“What an insufferable creature,” Aldrit muttered under his breath, his irritation mounting.
The elders clicked their tongues, their collective disapproval palpable.
“If Aldrit is curious, you should answer him,” one elder said, their voice firm as they addressed the empty air.
“There was no promise not to talk about our deal,” another elder added pointedly. “So don’t you dare complain.”
The air grew still, but Mara didn’t reply. Even so, Aldrit could almost imagine Mara’s human form—smirking in that infuriatingly smug way of his when he had no retort.
“That’s nothing more than an illusion,” Aldrit muttered, a wry smile tugging at his lips. Once again, he realized he was slipping into the habit of thinking of Mara as human despite knowing better.
One of the elders sighed heavily and began to speak, their tone weighted with memory. “Our clan was on the brink of extinction back then. Life was so harsh that more than half of the children born didn’t survive past their first year. With each passing generation, fewer and fewer children were born. We could see the end of our lineage approaching like a shadow over us.”
They paused, their expression darkening with the weight of the past. “Because the infant mortality rate was so high, we couldn’t cast the sorcery on a newborn immediately.”
Aldrit nodded slowly, the grim reality sinking in. He understood the implications all too well. Sorcery demanded sacrifice—one life given for another. If the child didn’t survive, the loss was compounded. It wasn’t just the death of the child; it was the wasted sacrifice of the life given to sustain them. A tragedy that doubled with every failure.
“To protect the children who hadn’t yet been bound by sorcery, we had no choice but to seek refuge in the domains of Hwansus during the active season,” one elder began, their voice heavy with remembrance. “One day, we stumbled upon a colossal Hwansu in the middle of the desert.”
“It was massive,” another elder interjected.
“We had never seen anything like it,” added a third, their gaze distant as if reliving the moment.
The elders nodded collectively, their expressions a mix of nostalgia and lingering fear.
“Although,” one elder mused, a faint smile tugging at their lips, “now that I think about it, it’s even bigger today than it was back then.”
“True. At least back then, a person couldn’t just walk straight into its throat,” another quipped, shaking their head.
“Don’t you dare compare me to my past self,” Mara interjected, his voice dripping with smugness.
Aldrit couldn’t help but chuckle softly, though he shivered at the memory of his first encounter with the crimson-eyed serpent. Despite himself, hearing Mara’s familiar tone brought an odd sense of reassurance. For all its arrogance, this was the same Mara he had come to know.
Choosing to ignore Mara’s self-aggrandizing interruption, the elders pressed on with their tale.
“Unlike the larks, Hwansus don’t always attack humans,” one elder explained patiently. “It’s about a fifty-fifty chance. Through experience, we learned that as long as we stayed at the edges of their domain and remained quiet during the active season, most Hwansus would leave us alone.”
“But the beast we found that time…” another elder added, their voice trailing off. “It wasn’t like anything we’d encountered before. That enormous black serpent was coiled tightly, its eyes shut, completely still. Something felt… off. But with the active season fast approaching, we didn’t have time to find another refuge. So, we settled nearby.”
As the active season began, the clan initially thought they were safe within the serpent’s domain. But then, disaster struck.
“We were suddenly attacked by larks—an entirely unexpected event,” one elder continued, their voice tinged with frustration. “Normally, the stronger the Hwansu, the larger its domain. And its strength is usually proportional to its size. Based on the serpent’s size, we calculated the boundaries of its domain and set up camp at the very edge. That strategy had never failed us before.”
But that time, it had.
With the larks descending upon them, the clan had no choice but to flee toward the serpent itself. It was a desperate gamble. If the larks didn’t kill them, the Hwansu might.
“When we reached the point where we could see the serpent up close, something strange happened,” the elder recounted. “The larks suddenly stopped their pursuit, as though they dared not go any further. It was baffling.”
Left with no other options, the clan began to coexist uneasily within the serpent’s domain. Though it offered them a fragile refuge, the tension lingered, a constant reminder of the precariousness of their survival.
“At first, we watched it anxiously,” one elder began, their voice tinged with the weight of past fears. “But as days passed and it didn’t move at all, we started to relax.”
“We all thought it was strange,” another elder chimed in, their brow furrowing as if the memory still unsettled them. “It seemed almost… dead. But of course, a Hwansu isn’t just an animal. It couldn’t be the case.”
Aldrit, completely absorbed in their recounting, leaned forward. “Why was it like that?” he asked, his curiosity piqued.
“It was… well, as we later learned, it was something akin to a human falling into utter despair, giving up on everything.”
“…Excuse me?” Aldrit thought to himself, struggling to reconcile the image of the monstrous creature with the delicate emotions described. That thing? Feeling such things? He could hardly believe it.
The elder nodded, as though anticipating Aldrit’s disbelief. “A Hwansu’s domain is both a shield and a display of power. But in that state of despair, its domain had shrunk drastically. It was so vulnerable at the time that another Hwansu could have easily devoured it.”
“―What nonsense,” Mara scoffed from the depths of Aldrit’s mind. “Even then, there wasn’t a beast capable of devouring me.”
One of the elders, unfazed, retorted, “What about that creature from the Sacred Capital?”
Mara fell silent, and Aldrit could almost hear the smirk in the elder’s voice. The elder shot a knowing glance into the air before continuing.
“During the active season, one of our clan members was gravely injured in a lark attack,” the elder said. “Their recovery was slow, and they were nearing death. Before they passed, they insisted on casting the sorcery on a child. What happened afterward…” The elder shuddered, his voice dropping low. “It was chilling.”
“It really was,” another elder agreed, the memory still haunting. “When that black serpent’s blood-red eyes locked onto us, I nearly froze.”
“That wasn’t even the worst of it,” a third elder added with a grim chuckle. “When it spoke to us… I thought I was going to faint.”
“Yes, that was terrifying,” they all murmured in unison, sharing nervous laughter as the tension in the room eased—if only slightly.
Aldrit, his curiosity intensifying, pressed on. “What did Mara say?”
The elders grew quiet, exchanging glances before one of them cleared his throat. Lowering his voice dramatically, he said, “You know the sorcery,” he recited, as though the very words still held power.
A chill ran down Aldrit’s spine. For a moment, he could almost feel the oppressive weight of the serpent’s gaze upon him, as if he had been there, frozen in that moment.
