The Eye of the Storm

Sowol bit down hard on his lip and drew a slow, measured breath. Out, then in. Out again, and in once more. As he forced the surging emotions back down, reason returned to him little by little. The name could wait. What mattered now was finding the child.

Sweeping his gaze across the courtyard, he sank to one knee and studied the ground. Baekya's footprints, left by a headlong rush out of the inn, stretched away toward the gate.

He's not one to leave a trail behind him.

Sowol's expression darkened. Rising, he returned to the main hall and checked behind the long cabinet. The sword that always hung there — Baekya's sword — was gone.

Either something had happened that forced him to draw it, or he had fled before it could. The worst possible picture flashed through Sowol's mind, but he shook his head. It was too early to jump to conclusions.

He let his eyes take in the wrecked inn once more. Shards of broken dishes lay strewn in every direction, yet there was no smell of blood. No unfamiliar footprints, no sword marks either. If Baekya had crossed blades with anyone in here, it could never have been this clean.

Thankfully, it seemed no fight had broken out inside the inn. But then — what in the world had caused this mess?

Brow furrowed, Sowol picked up a single shard rolling across the floor. Every fragment of broken crockery had been pushed from the inner reaches of the hall toward the outside. The overturned tables and chairs were no different. They had toppled in all directions, but he could see they had all been flung from the same place.

The cradle.

Something had burst out of the cradle and swept through the entire hall. Sowol's eyes narrowed.

……The baby used its strength? Its acupoints came undone? What on earth happened?

Questions tailed one after another — nothing like this had ever happened since the sealing. But right now, finding the two of them came first. Sowol headed straight out into the courtyard and followed Baekya's trail.

The footprints passed through the gate and vanished on the slope where the road split in two. Left led to the village. Right led into the forest. As Sowol weighed the two paths, he set his foot on the right one — if the boy had taken his sword as well, he would far sooner choose the deserted woods than a village full of people.

Yet before he could take even two steps, Sowol stopped dead. A memory surfaced — the warning he had given with his own mouth.

'If anything happens, you call Auntie Wang next door at once. Understood?'

……He might have gone to Wang Yeom after all. Sowol wheeled around and made for her house at once, nearly running the whole way, and only slowed when her gate came into view.

"Whew."

One deep breath, the urgency wiped from his face — and then Sowol knocked on the gate.

"Auntie Wang, are you home?"

"Who is it? Oh, Master Yeon?"

The door opened and Wang Yeom appeared. Beyond her shoulder, laundry fluttered on the line in the breeze, and her hands were soaked through — she had evidently come out mid-chore. Wiping her damp palms on her apron, she asked, "What brings you by at this hour? What about the inn?"

"Have you by chance seen that rascal Baekya?"

"Baekya? No, not today. Why? Is something the matter?"

Sowol shook his head with practiced calm and improvised. "It's nothing. I sent him on an errand and he hasn't come back yet. Thought he might have wandered over here."

"Ah, I see. Well, he hasn't."

"If you spot him, tell him to come back to the inn."

"I will. But what about the baby? Don't tell me you left him home alone?"

"He's asleep. He's right there — what could happen?"

"Aiyo, leaving a sleeping child and coming out here! Go on, hurry, hurry." Wang Yeom flapped her hands, shooing him off and pushing at his back. Sowol turned away as if he had no choice.

The creak of the closing door had barely faded before the smile drained from his face. So Baekya hadn't gone to Wang Yeom either. That left only the forest.

Backtracking the way he'd come in a single breath, Sowol entered the woods without hesitation. Past the well-trodden outskirts, where the villagers' footsteps had trampled them away, Baekya's footprints reappeared.

He had barely followed them a few paces when a snapped branch caught his eye. Judging by its height, it looked like a trace of Baekya's passage. Sowol stopped and examined it. The broken end still glistened with sap — it hadn't been long.

He lowered his head to study the ground. One set of footprints. No tracks pressing close behind, none walking abreast. Baekya wasn't chasing anyone, and no one was chasing him.

But relief would have to wait. There was still no telling whether Baekya and the baby were even together.

Steadying his breathing, Sowol closed his eyes and slowly unfurled his qi-sense. A flood of countless presences filling the forest rushed in all at once, and he began to strip them away one by one.

A wildcat stalking its prey. A mountain hare burrowing beneath the brush. Birds hunched on the branches, even the tiny insects turning over the soil at his feet. With each presence he set aside, the forest grew quieter. And when at last he pressed down even the sound of his own breath and heartbeat —

Two presences snagged on his qi-sense. Baekya, and the baby.

Only then did Sowol release the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. But the instant the tension drained from his rigid shoulders, the baby's energy convulsed violently.

Sowol's face twisted. The Natural Qi scattered throughout the forest was streaming toward the child — far more than that tiny body could possibly contain.

His eyes snapped open.

KWAAAAAH!

A furious gale erupted from deep within the forest. Startled birds burst upward from the treetops in a clatter of wings.

"Damn it all."

Swallowing the curse, Sowol kicked off the earth and ran. Far ahead, a colossal whirlwind was churning the air.

He had seen every manner of strange sight the Jianghu had to offer, but nothing like this. Kugugu! Kugugugu! Trees that could not withstand the wind pressure were torn up roots and all. Ancient trunks soared skyward, spinning in great circles, while beasts fleeing the maelstrom brushed past him in their flight — and Sowol ran against the current, straight through their midst.

The dirt and dust sucked into the air blotted out the sun, and the sky went dark. The deeper toward the center, the more savage the wind became. Dead leaves slapped his face without mercy; branches shredded his sleeves and raked his forearms. Red lines welled up across his skin one after another, but he had no time to spare them a thought.

The day he had undone a single knot in the baby's sealing, the child had run a fever. And now the entire forest was being turned inside out. Left alone like this, the baby would surely fall into qi deviation. He had to act — this very hour, this very moment.

Gritting his teeth, Sowol pushed forward. At last the trees parted, revealing a small clearing, and there at its heart raged the whirlwind.

Beyond the churning vortex of tangled dust, a pale shape came into view. Baekya. He knelt with the baby clutched to his chest, shielding it from the wind with his back, one hand locked around his sword driven into the earth. Through the swirling white of his hair, Sowol could see his clenched jaw.

"Baekya!"

At Sowol's shout, Baekya lifted his head. "Hyung-nim!"

"Are you all right? The baby?"

"Baby crying! Keeps crying!"

"Hueeeeng……"

A thin wail squeezed its way through the wind. The baby had been crying so long its voice was worn completely hoarse. As Sowol strode toward the whirlwind, the gale rose up like a wall to bar his way.

Dropping his stance, he gripped the earth with his toes. One step. Another. He dragged his trembling legs forward with all his strength, but the distance refused to close. All the while, Baekya rocked and soothed the baby in his arms.

"Hyung-nim come. Come soon."

But the baby only wailed until it could scarcely breathe. "Uwaaang! Huaaaang!"

"Little one!"

At the sound of Sowol's voice, the crying baby's eyes flew wide open. "Ah, oo!" The small head turned this way and that — searching for him.

Sowol called out again. "Little one!"

Baekya quickly turned the baby toward him. And when Sowol's face reflected in those damp golden eyes, the wailing stopped with a single hiccup. Even inside the raging wind, the baby looked at Sowol and no one else.

There, in the eye of that tiny storm, the baby stretched both arms out toward him.

In that instant — the wind that had been shoving Sowol back visibly slackened. The vortex that had held like a wall split apart along the line of the baby's outstretched fingertips. Without a moment's hesitation, Sowol walked into it. A stray pinecone drifting in the air scraped his cheek, but he paid it no mind.

The name he had rolled over his tongue a dozen times only to swallow it back rose up to the very tip of his throat.

"Riri."