"You know, you should pray to die… Nuwa." Jaehyun's body began to shift, his form elongating as he transformed. Keith now stood before her, towering at an astonishing six feet five inches. His eyes gleamed a menacing red, matching the colour of his hair. His expression was one of pure disgust and grim determination.
Iseul snarled but kept her composure. Keith was one of the main antagonists in her book, a tribal shapeshifter whose life was ruined when Ryong massacred his village and killed his father. Since then, Keith had vowed to send Ryong to his grave. As the leader of his tribe, his visit to Iseul was long overdue.
Keith's hand shot out, gripping Iseul's neck with iron strength, strangling her. "All this time, I blamed Ryong for what happened, but the reality is that a teenage girl planned this story. It's all your fault that my tribe suffered so much, all because of your stupidity—because you wanted to play god."
Iseul didn't struggle. Her eyes locked onto his, meeting his hateful gaze with calm acceptance. Everything he said was true. It was her stupidity that had caused these disasters. She had killed his family, endangered her own, and brought peril upon Jaehyun—all because she refused to listen. She was a curse, just as her grandfather had said. She should have been killed before she was even born.
"You're right. It was my stupidity," Iseul replied, her voice carrying a small, bitter smile.
Keith's brow furrowed in suspicion at her easy confession. "Are all humans this weak, or are you a special case? Whatever it is, your stupidity ends here." His grip on her neck tightened, cutting off her air.
"But I refuse to die. Not yet." Iseul slowly revealed her hand from behind her back, blood dripping from her palm onto the floor. The crimson liquid seemed to pulse with a strange power, and Keith's grip on her throat slackened in surprise.
"Obey!" she commanded. The word reverberated through the air like a thunderclap, and Keith was forced to his knees by an invisible force as if an unseen hand was pushing him down.
"H-how—" Keith stammered, struggling against the crushing power that held him in place.
Iseul crouched down to his level, her voice cold and steady. "Surprised that I know about this?"
After Jaehyun had explained what happened when she was unconscious, Iseul began to piece together the truth. If Ryong were her, what would he do? She remembered the broken scale. Ryong had eighty-one scales on his back, each taking more than ten years to grow. After Yeouiju, his scales were his only weakness, his only true armour. If the scale had fallen off after she lost consciousness, it meant something she did before passing out had triggered it. The connection became clear: her blood, her voice, held power over them.
"Even if it's a curse, there's a reason why I'm your creator and god. It struck me as strange that in the two months I was unconscious, there were no attacks. Isn't it odd that the moment I woke up, it wasn't Ryong who came for me, but you? My blood can command you, even kill you, can't it?"
Keith's eyes widened in shock. He had never imagined that a sixteen-year-old girl could figure out the truth.
"However, I am curious. How do you enter this world?" Iseul questioned, her face unreadable.
"What makes you think I will tell?" Keith smirked, refusing to give in to her threats. He would rather die than let her have the upper hand.
"Julian…" Just one word and his face suddenly turned grim.
"Your notebook." Keith muttered, "The one where you wrote everything about us.
The sudden realisation hit her as the memory of her profile appeared in that red notebook. It wasn't a dream. Iseul clearly remembered her mother burnt everything, especially the notebook in the fire.
"It was already burned to ashes. So you can even come out of destroyed objects."
"It wasn't destroyed. Yeong has it."
Iseul spared a glare, raising her brow. The 'One with Thousand Faces', the brain behind Ryong. A mere thief from West Meadows whose life finally turned around after Ryong took him under his wing. No one was more obsessed with Ryong's winning than him.
Iseul knew Ryong might be ruthless but not more than Yeong. To achieve he has no boundaries. Jaehyun's face flashed in her mind as the danger of Yeong loomed over her head. Suddenly the tranquillity was unbearable, it couldn't be.
Iseul took steps towards the door, the two months in bed were enough to make her struggle like a baby walking for the first time. It's been a long time since Jaehyun was gone. It might be nothing but the place and situation that said otherwise. Iseul slowly dragged her body out of her room trying to figure out where he might have been.
"Iseul, where are you going?" She heard her grandfather's voice from behind, catching up to her.
"Jaehyun…" Her voice trailed off as her peripheral view fell onto something.