When my brother died, there wasn’t enough money to bury him in a casket, or to cremate him. No money to keep him cold in the morgue until funeral preparations were done, either. A night sister who sold on the corner gave me the funeral robes she’d originally prepared for herself, saying that she had time to buy another set, but my brother didn’t. I did my best to clean his mangled body before it went too bad. The robes didn’t fit right on him. I wrapped him in our only set of bedsheets and dragged his body out of the city, into the mountain, to bury him myself.

Everyone knew he’d been killed by Lim Cheolhun, so no one came to help. No one came to the shitty memorial I scraped together afterwards, either. Lim Cheolhun and his gang kicked over the memorial table and smashed my brother’s photo. The fruits I’d picked from the mountains went into their mouths, while the flowers were trampled in the streets. With my brother out of the way, they wouldn’t kill me, but they’d make me into an example. Kick me around, order me around and make an example of me. Make sure no one dared to stand up to Lim Cheolhun again.

But I could endure it. And I could wait.

The night sister who gave the funeral clothes got sick and had to stop selling. I didn’t want to visit, for fear of bringing trouble to her doorstep, but I pushed some money through her window when I could. I don’t know if it helped. She died soon after. Her clients didn’t attend her funeral, and her sisters were afraid to let me come.

The day after she died, I went to my brother’s grave. It was far from where he’d buried our parents, hidden on one of our trapping routes, so it wouldn’t be disturbed. I carved a wooden stick with her name on it. Myeong Seungyeon. I placed it next to the one I’d made for my older brother, my hyung, who would never come back again.

Jeong Eunjin.

No matter how long it had been, it hurt to say his name.

I stayed there until the sun began dipping low over the mountains. Then I picked myself up and began climbing the slope.

By the time the sun’s last lingering warmth disappeared over the horizon, I made it to the mountain temple. It was leaky and collapsing, and too far away from a water condenser to make it a worthwhile dwelling, so no one but vagrants and my crackpot brother cared to visit it anymore. I shuffled in under the cracking eaves and broken roofs, entered the inner temple, and stopped before the shrine where there stood a cracked and chipped statue of a multi-armed bodhisattva whose head had been lost.

My brother hadn’t even known which bodhisattva it was. He just said it was whoever he wanted to pray to that day. Most of the time he prayed to Gwanseeum, the bodhisattva of compassion.

But today I didn’t want to pray for grace, or compassion, or salvation for the world. What I precisely needed was a broken bodhisattva. I lit the leftover incense under the statue, offered fresh herbs from the mountainside, and prostrated before it more sincerely than I had ever done before.

Please, I prayed.

Give me a chance. Just one chance to kill Lim Cheolhun and his gang and everyone who had ever taken alms from my brother’s hands but didn’t make it to his funeral. Just one chance to send them to the deepest layers of hell. And once they made it there, I prayed, make it so they would never reach the Pure Land. So that they would suffer in Naraka forever.

Above me, stone scraped, and an eerie laugh rang out. Scrambling back, I raised my head.

The back of the alcove was gone. In its place was an open door, behind which was nothing but empty void. The bodhisattva statue had changed, too; it had stepped down from the dais and grown a head hidden by the dark mist that drifted out from the door.

In one pair of arms, it held a snake and a knife. In the next, a mask and an arrow. In the last, a dark lantern and a key.

My heart thumped, and my head went cold.

This wasn’t a being from my memories, or from my world.

No, this was…

[Jeong Eunseok.]

The dark mist thinned until I could finally see its head.

Like some of the bodhisattvas, it had three faces, each featureless and roughly hewn from stone. As I watched, the one facing me squirmed and formed itself into a human face with upturned black eyes, an oval face, and rosy skin framed beneath long and silky black hair. Light freckles were scattered across the cheeks. The snake and knife in the statue’s arms shone a brilliant black, lighting her slow and easy smile.

I trembled.

[Congratulations,] said my sister’s face. [Because of your actions, the weight of your existence in Kosmonymia has increased.]

My chest hurt.

“Don’t talk to me with that face.”

The entity laughed. The knife and snake dimmed, and the mask and bow began to glow instead. The figure’s head spun until the second face was looking at me. It grew choppy black hair, dark and down-turned eyes, a map of burn scars that stretched with its crooked smile.

It was my face, after my sister had died.

[Oh, Jeong Eunseok. You’ve been so careful not to call yourself Acacius Duval. When you solved the Fantasm World, why didn’t you use your true name?]

“I didn’t say my name was Acacius Duval,” I said. “I just said that was the name I wanted to use in your announcement.”

I wouldn’t have had to put down an identifier at all if the system had allowed complete anonymity.

[You have already taken his life, his face, and his existence. So why not take his name?]

Even though it wouldn’t make much difference, I felt terrible not having a weapon in hand. I flexed my fingers, hoping for [Caller] to appear in my grip, but it didn’t.

Of course. Since this was some kind of dream.

“Even if I took those things, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m not him.”

[Aren’t you, now?]

I glared.

“Acacius’ history isn’t my history, and his mistakes aren’t my mistakes. The lives he’s touched and the relationships he’s ruined aren’t mine, either. If I really take on his name, isn’t that the same as saying I’ll take responsibility for everything that he has done?”

The mask and bow dimmed. In the third pair of arms, the key and lantern began to glow. The head spun to show me its last face: short black hair, bright eyes, and a chiseled jaw underneath a noble and gallant brow.

With Chen Xiarui’s face, it said, [Living neither as your old identity or your new one, do you intend to deceive everyone, just as you deceived him?]

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

If there was anyone I felt sorry towards for my death, it was Chen Xiarui. I hadn’t intended to become close to him or to die where I had, and I definitely didn’t mean to leave him to only discover the truth after I was gone.

But how could I say I was sorry if, given a second chance, I would have made the same decisions anyways? Should I say, “I’m sorry, but not enough to change the way I hurt you”?

It was better not to apologize at all.

“What do you want from me?” I said. “Do you want me to live as Jeong Eunseok, or Acacius Duval?”

It returned the question right back to me. [Should you live as Jeong Eunseok, or Acacius Duval?]

“I can’t live like I did before,” I said. “This world is too different for that. And I don’t want to live like Acacius did.”

Though if I stuck within the confines of the role of “Acacius Duval,” then that was exactly what would happen.

The statue’s head rotated until it was my sister’s face looking at me again. Her lips curled up in a mocking smile, malicious in a way she’d never been in life.

[So what will you do? How will you avoid repeating your past mistakes? Will you strive to erase all trace of your true self, or will you find the courage to reveal it to someone here?]

I clenched my fists.

“Why are you so interested in me? I’m just an ordinary person. Isn’t it enough that I’ve been dragged back to life by some asshole who doesn’t know how to let the dead rest in peace?”

All three of the faces laughed together, and my hair stood on end.

[Jeong Eunseok, you have earned titles from all three of our domains.]

Three symbols drew themselves in the air before me.

A decorated metal mask, my World Proof, [Honest Man’s Deception].

A black key with a burning eye for the head, the tattoo on my upper right arm, [Keeper of Forgotten Wrongs].

A pair of butterfly wings patterned like a kaleidoscope of eyes, the new title I’d just earned in KP-04, [Incarnation of the Final Kaleidoscope].

The three faces I knew melted away in favor of inhuman and polished stone masks. The masks were perfectly split down the middle, one half obsidian black and one half alabaster white, and they all smiled at me, speaking one by one.

[I am the mask and the one who wears it.]

[I am the mystery and the one who reveals it.]

[I am the circle of history and the one who breaks it.]

[No matter what you accept and what you deny…]

[You are now part of this world.]

[So show us the part you will play.]

Amidst a chorus of laughter, the figure dissolved into a shadowy wind. My surroundings collapsed and fell into the doorway piece by piece. The wind picked me up with a laugh, and the darkness beyond the doorway swallowed me completely.

I woke up drenched in a cold sweat.

It took a moment to catch my breath. When my heartbeat finally slowed, I sat up and found myself in a dim and quiet room that smelled faintly of disinfectant.

It was one of the rooms in the school’s medical ward, where I’d stayed after my duel with Linden.

I was on a sickbed covered in white and blue sheets, dressed in a clean linen smock; the worst of the wounds I’d sustained with Luka had almost completely faded away, and the blue dragon pendant hung around my neck emitted a gentle glow. I touched my throat gingerly. Somehow, the skin there was smooth with no hint of scarring. It didn’t hurt to swallow or breathe.

My body was mending, but my mind was a mess.

That thing I’d met… It must have been the Tripartite, right?

Talking to them all had been terrible, but it was the one who took my sister’s face that made me feel the worst.

In KP-04, my mask had slipped pretty badly. It wasn’t a situation where I could give a lot of priority to keeping up Acacius’ facade, of course, but still. I’d used casual and vulgar speech, opened up to others when I hadn’t planned to at all, and thanks to that stupid bridge I’d made with Luka, he knew how I’d felt when he suggested killing him, too.

I’d survived, but it still felt like everything had spiralled wildly out of control.

So what should I do now that I’d made it out?

Return to upholding Acacius’ life?

His material needs were more than provided for, which I liked, but I didn’t want to live like him.

Then should I change his image, act like myself, trust and befriend others? Let them come to know me under a false name and a false past? Convince them they knew me, when in reality they only came as close as the smokescreen I gave them?

I’d done that to Chen Xiarui. I’d had my reasons, of course, but… it really had been cruel.

The Tripartite would probably love it if I repeated the mistakes of the past.

I had to change the way “Acacius Duval” lived, but until I was ready to live openly as Jeong Eunseok, it was better not to let others too close.

As for when it would be safe to live as “Jeong Eunseok”…

Probably when I felt like I could defend myself against someone like Tiziri, or Cyprian Duval.

I used to think it would be a simple matter of running away whenever I felt like it, but after seeing how crazy powerful people could be in this world, I was getting the feeling that it wouldn’t be so easy after all.

I needed to obtain information, and I needed to get stronger. I guess it was a good thing that I’d been shipped off to an academy that was invested in helping me do just that.

What else was there to do but to keep moving forward?

I buried my face in my hands and gave myself a few moments to wallow in complete and utter despair. Then, after taking a few deep breaths, I considered what to do next.

First, I should see what I’d gained from solving KP-04.

When I checked my Record of Existence, the black pages at the back of the book remained unchanged. However, [Inevitable Survivor of Disaster]’s description was slightly different.

Passive Effect: As long as the title bearer is determined to survive, close observations of their surroundings will increase the accuracy of their danger sense and survival instincts. The title bearer possesses increases resistance to perception-warping abilities. They may also extend their perception of danger to threats against nearby friends, family, and allies, even if it does not directly threaten the title bearer.

However, the title bearer will be easily entangled with dangerous situations as well.

Given how many perception-warping abilities I’d run into so far, I was pretty happy with this change. Nice to know I could keep an eye on others, too… Though I hoped I wouldn’t need to use it too often.

And then there was my new title. I hadn’t had time to examine it carefully before Luka woke up and went crazy.

Title: [Incarnation of the Last Kaleidoscope]

Symbol: Kalos butterfly

Description: The embodiment of the Eye of the Kaleidoscope. The one who used this power to break the circle of history is qualified to bear it.

Title Skill: Grants the title bearer the abilities and inheritance of the [Last Genesis of the Kaleidoscope]. That which is “seen” must surely become true.

Passive effect: Enables the use of the kaleidoscope perspective frame at all times, even in conjunction with other frames.

I checked my body and found the new butterfly tattoo fluttering near the flowering thorns tattooed on my wrist. The title seemed really useful; I definitely wanted to keep the perspective-hopping ability. Should I verify that I still had it? I willed the title to activate.

A current of power gathered between my shoulder blades.

Oh crap. Wait—

With a loud rip, a pair of wings tore the back of my hospital gown open and unfurled into the air, and my vision went black.

Fuck me.

A pair of footsteps came running. Through the kaleidoscope of perspectives now unfurling in my mind’s eye, I saw someone outside the room reach for the door and fling it open. I quickly grabbed my patient gown so it wouldn’t fall off and expose me.

“Acacius, you’re awake!” said Veric. “Are you okay? How are you feeling?”

Last time I saw her, she’d been pulling Luka off me frantically while my consciousness went dim. She’d been yelling for Roxana to hurry up and do something. I had a vague memory of grabbing onto her sleeve because… Well. I’d felt unsafe and I didn’t want her to go. She’d really seen me in all kinds of pathetic states lately.

I dismissed the [Incarnation of the Kaleidoscope]’s power. My wings collapsed and folded away as if they’d never existed, and my eyesight returned, but the gown remained ripped. “I’m doing better than I was in the Fantasm World.” As my vision returned, I examined Veric in turn. She looked better now that she wasn’t in torn-up clothes drenched in her own blood, but there were bags under her eyes suggesting a lack of rest. “How long has it been? Do you know where my clothes are?”

“You’ve been out for almost a full day. It’s Wednesday evening, seven o’clock. I think your clothes got thrown away because of all the blood, but I found your bag and brought it over.”

Veric handed over the bag that I’d originally packed for the field trip, complete with my emergency supplies and extra change of clothes. It sure would have been nice to have this while I was in there. Everyone who’d entered in human form had managed to keep their weapons and supplies, but not me. Wasn’t this discrimination against non-human forms?

“Thanks,” I said. “Can you give me a moment to change?”

To my surprise, she didn’t make any movement to leave. Instead, she said, “Wait, I have something urgent to ask. What exactly happened between you and Luka? Why did he… I mean, didn’t you two…”

This was a conversation I didn’t really know how to have. “Isn’t Luka awake? Hasn’t he said anything?”

“No, he’s… The teachers knocked him out and put him in isolation, and your dad won’t let him out until it’s time to put him on trial, so—”

“Trial?”

“Because he attacked you, but — but he wasn’t in his right mind when he did that, so — I mean—”

Before I could figure out what to ask about first, a cool and languid voice cut in from the door.

“Veric, relax. I’ll take it from here.”

Veric did not relax. Her shoulders tensed, and I followed her gaze to the short woman standing in the doorway.

She wore sunglasses, a bright yellow sundress with a white floral pattern, and a wide-brimmed white hat. Her high-heeled shoes clicked as she walked over, ankle-length white hair swaying.

“Acacius Duval, is it?” she said. “From what I understand, Luka assaulted you in full view of your classmates. During the subduing process, he made attempts on the lives of those around him as well. Your father intends to persecute him with the aid of your testimony.”

There was a heavy presence that rolled off her. I couldn’t tear my gaze away. She felt brighter, bolder, more present in my senses than anything else, as if she was more real — more important — than anything else in the room.

“Telling me your honest thoughts is good,” she said. My thoughts blurred and my head hurt. “So tell me. What do you think of the situation?”

I struggled to form a cohesive thought, and the first thing I managed to say was, “Why would he care?”

“…You mean your father?”

“He didn’t care when I was about to kill Linden,” I said slowly, grasping for the implications through a mental fog. “I didn’t get the impression he cared what happened to us… But it’s not like the school particularly cared either, so why is it so bad that Luka tried to kill me?”

The woman’s visage floated in front of me like a word I’d read too many times in a row, like the image I saw and the thing it represented were splitting apart.

“Why did he try to kill you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it was an aftereffect from when I killed him.”

A sensation I couldn’t interpret crept along the back of my neck, but the meaning evaded me like a forgotten word. Veric gestured quickly at me from behind the woman’s back. It was like staring at hieroglyphs. Had I always been this bad at interpreting what people meant?

“I see,” said the woman. I tried to focus on her face, her tone of voice, her body language. The signs were still there, signing to me. But they didn’t make a single lick of sense. Only her voice drilled into my head, clear and grounding. “And why, exactly, did you kill him?”

“Because in the Fantasm World, he…”

This was Luka’s secret. I shouldn’t speak about it carelessly.

But telling her what I thought was good.

I felt like my head was being squeezed in a vice grip.

“Go on. It’s okay,” the woman said. “It’s good to answer. You’re doing the right thing. Why did you kill him?”

“He…” I pressed my hand against my head. “He said he trusted me. Because he’s crazy.”

Veric was gesturing at me again. My head hurt. The sensation on the back of my neck was spreading, out to my neck, to my cheek. I scratched at it, but it didn’t help. What was I feeling right now?

That sharing my thoughts with her was good.

“He said I should kill him,” I said. “Because… of his secret… No. Because he’s an idiot who likes to play the hero.”

Yeah, that made way more sense as the root cause. It wasn’t like anyone with a freaky world-devouring shadow wolf would get the stupid idea to arrange their own death, right? A burning sensation in my chest floated up to my brain, and my headache eased as I began to talk more freely.

“It sure was easy for that crazy bastard to propose whatever plan he wanted, but how does he think I felt, being the one who had to execute it? I bet he just thought, ‘Oh, let’s ask Acacius, since he seems like he can do it.’ And I could. But so what?” The more I thought about it, the stronger the burning feeling grew. “What did he even get for it?”

“Acacius,” Veric began.

I glared. “What? You disagree? Luka wanted to solve the apocalypse of KP-04 at the cost of his life, just to make sure no one else would die, and now the school is putting him on trial even though it’s their damn field trip that endangered us all in the first place. Isn’t he acting like a fool?”

My field of vision was dissolving from information into indecipherable patches of color. Veric shifted on her feet. The movement momentarily brought her back into recognizable focus. “I think the right reaction is to be angry on Luka’s behalf, not angry at him…”

I made some kind of expression. I wasn’t sure what. “Who said anything about being angry? I’m telling the truth. The world is great at putting a knife in your back, so you should just take care of yourself first. Shouldn’t you make sure he knows?”

“Shouldn’t you?” said Veric.

“Why the hell would I?” I said. “We’re not friends.”

The white-haired woman made a strange repetitive, barking noise. It went on for one second, two seconds, three…

As if a fog was lifting from my head, the meaning of the sound began to crystallize.

It was laughter.

The world snapped back into clarity. The woman was laughing, and her expression was amused. Veric was giving me a complicated look, stiff and nervous.

And I’d just said a whole lot of things that would have been better off not said at all.

The heat from [Inevitable Survivor of Disaster] slowly retreated to the back of my neck, and a chill went down my spine. Had I actually been in critical danger just now?

“Surprisingly, you’re right,” said the woman. “To think I’d ever find myself agreeing with one of Cyprian’s spawn. Life does love to play its little jokes.”

I took a deep breath, composed my expression, and spoke flatly.

“Veric. Who is this.”

Veric gave me a wide-eyed look.

“You don’t know? But I thought…”

The woman laughed again.

“Call me Sashenka. I’m Luka’s guardian.”

With a flick of her hand, my bag opened itself, and the spare clothes inside flew out to land in my hands.

“Put these on quickly. We have business to take care of.”

I wanted to ask for more details, but it would probably be better to do that while dressed.

Sashenka pulled Veric out of the room to give me some privacy, and the door slammed shut behind them without being touched. After staring after them for a moment, I pulled off the dragon pendant and got changed.

Once I’d double-checked that I’d buttoned everything correctly and slung the bag over my shoulder, I opened the door and said, “So, what exactly—”

Sashenka appeared next to me in a blink and grabbed my arm. The space around me warped and blurred.

“—is going on,” I finished, lamely.

We were now standing in a decorated, old-fashioned office filled with hardwood furniture and all flavors of purple decorations. The rug, the cushions, the curtains — it was all purple. A holographic projection of Cyprian Duval was sitting in one of the armchairs.

Behind the giant desk was a middle-aged woman whose thick silver-blue braid draped over her lap like a serpent’s tail. Deep purple spectacles hid her eyes from view, but not her thin lips and knowing smile. A matching purple antique cloak, whose capelet was embroidered with suns, moons, and arrow motifs, draped comfortably over her double-breasted vest and finely cut pants. Her hands rested confidently on the armrests of her chair.

PRINCIPAL CRESCENT SUN, said the nameplate on her desk.

Sashenka’s presence had been overwhelming and magnetic. The principal’s was even more so.

Compared to them…

Cyprian seemed to be losing out a bit?

“Hello, Sashenka,” said the principal lazily. “I do hope I got the name right. Names change so quickly these days. If my tongue slips later, you’ll have to forgive me.”

Sashenka smiled pleasantly. “As if an ordinary guardian like myself could do anything else, Principal Sun.”

The principal chuckled.

“And this is must be the man of the hour, Acacius Duval. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. There’s no need to pay attention to the status of anyone in this room.”

So… in other words, everyone here was really important. Right?

I sat down in the chair across from the principal uncomfortably.

Sashenka sat down in an armchair on the other side of the room from Cyprian. The tension between them crackled.

“Cyprian, I understand that you are quite concerned as to the harm done to your son,” Sashenka said. “However, as you can see, he is quite hale and hearty. In fact, his account of events is much different from that needlessly accusatory narrative of yours.”

“Is that so?” said Cyprian, folding his hands over his crossed legs. “I do hope that such a testimony was given with a clear mind, free of any undue influence.”

“Now what do you mean by that? How could I, a commoner’s guardian, have the power or audacity to act upon a scion of a Dark Family?”

“What you lack, your ward seems to have in abundance. How can a mere commoner be allowed to touch the bloodline of the Duvals?” Cyprian gave a thin smile. “If you ask me, expulsion from the school is a mild punishment for attempted murder.”

Sashenka sneered. “Then shouldn’t your little brat be the first to go?”

Cyprian spread his hands out. “What do you mean by that, Sashenka? If we cannot agree, then we will simply have to take this matter to a trial.”

The principal leaned back in her chair, tapping her fingers on the desk.

“Now, now. I know that tensions are running high. But this is a school, and the most affected parties are the students, not the parents. The most important opinion here lies not with you, but with the victim himself.”

Victim? I’d gotten some good hits on Luka too, you know…

At the principal’s words, every gaze in the room came to rest on me.

“So, Acacius.” She folded her hands in her lap and tilted her head. “Tell me. What exactly transpired between you and Luka?”

What did I know about the current situation?

If Luka had been given the opportunity to give his side of the story, it had clearly gotten him nowhere.

Sashenka and Cyprian were familiar with each other, and they were not on good terms.

Cyprian was leveraging his political power to force this issue. Given his attitude towards my duel with Linden, I was inclined to think his primary motivation was not concern for his children. Would he get something by opposing Sashenka? Or did he just not like her? In any case, if she could speak to him as an equal, Sashenka was definitely not an ordinary person.

Because of these factors, Principal Sun couldn’t deal with Luka and I as she might normally.

Like Sashenka, I wanted Luka to make it out of this crisis unscathed, but unlike her, I wanted to solve this in a way that didn’t put me at odds with Cyprian.

What should I do?

I gathered my thoughts and spoke.

“Principal Sun.”

“Yes?”

“Because of Nithemoore’s negligence, the students on this field trip nearly all died.”

“That is true.”

“Luka and I had to take things into our own hands to ensure everyone’s survival.”

My mouth felt dry, but I forced myself to sit straight and keep a level voice.

“However, due to the nature of our strategy, Luka suffered serious side effects, and I did too. That’s what everyone saw.”

I didn’t want to come into conflict with Sashenka, who’d just scrambled my brain, or Cyprian, who still had authority over Acacius’ life and had left the moon path realm unscathed. So that left one direction to swing: the person who might actually feel a duty of care towards me. Hopefully that was enough to outweigh any offense in what I did.

“In the end,” I said firmly, “this happened to us because of Nithemoore’s failure and incompetence.”

The principal tapped her finger on the desk. Was it just my imagination, or was the pressure in the room growing heavier?

“Your meaning is?”

“As the principal, this is your responsibility. How will you compensate us for the damage caused?”

Cyprian and Sashenka, in identical synchronity, turned to look at me like I’d just stuck my head into a tiger’s jaws.

The principal smiled.

“Well, now. That is certainly one angle to look at the situation with. What exactly do you wish for, young Duval?”

“Acacius,” Cyprian warned in a low voice.

[Inevitable Survivor] was inert.

Well, if nothing else, it seemed like I’d successfully diverted everyone in a different direction. Might as well go all in, right?

I licked my dry lips and spoke.

“I want a favor worth the lives of everyone that survived KP-04.”

Chapter 35 Back to Index