Chapter Text
Prologue
A/N: This prologue takes place in Part 2 Episode 6 (P2E6) and it’s placed here without spoilers as foreshadowing. But if you haven’t yet seen the whole series, don’t actually watch P2E6 unless you want MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS. MAJOR. DON’T DO IT. An extended version of this prologue will show up in the flow of the narrative below when you get there, and it will make more sense the second time around.
But for now, especially if you haven’t gotten this far in the series yet, read it and wonder what it’s all about.
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The motion soothed him.
Torso twisting fluidly, legs advancing the rhythmic dance, swords rising on the earth's breath around him, blending and lifting his own weakened core energy torrent; Seo Yul gave himself to movements his body knew by heart, his cobalt and robin’s egg blue robes flowing around him.
Relaxing his will, the energy of the world—crackling with blue electricity all around him—accepted the invitation to guide him, carrying his body so that his mind and soul could rest.
As it had for some time, sleep had eluded him once more. The day ahead weighed on him like the penance it was. His body strained, making him question whether he could see his plans through to the end.
Returning to one of the first forms he’d learned in this very training yard over two decades ago, surrounded by energy-lit lamplight in the predawn chill, the fluid practice forms carried him through the thrusts and dips and leaps he knew so well he needed no words or thoughts to follow.
First the breath forms, one through twenty seven; then the physical forms over the breath forms, moves twenty eight through eighty four. Finally the repeat of all eighty four forms, laying the energy forms within them, eighty five to one hundred and seventy two.
For the first time in his memory, his body struggled to hold the energy forms. Without the earth’s breath supporting him, he couldn’t have done it at all. A tremor flowed through him, wobbling his left wrist and right forearm and sending a shimmer down the length of the swords he held. He realized that before the sun rose he'd be lucky to reach form one hundred and twenty, his favorite shift from East to West. But he let that thought go. Closing his eyes through forms ninety four to one hundred and six, he released all thoughts to disappear into the energy around him, as more and more of him had done with every breath and move he’d made for the last three years.
Since he was a boy, Yul had found his way back to the Jeongjingak training yard whenever he became lost. This bare space, vibrating with the energy of a thousand souls through time, had always been the place he most easily found himself again.
Today was different. With every move he felt more lost, more dispersed and unformed. His motion through time and energy compelled him forward into the flow of the day, which only had one ending. It was the only ending possible. It was the only ending that preserved all he believed in and the mantle that had lain on him since he could remember. It was the only ending that preserved who Seo Yul wanted to be, and redeemed who he had become. He’d rehearsed the day ahead in his mind so many times he felt it had already happened. Time was falling in on him and he’d stopped looking for a way out.
This morning, as he collapsed at form one hundred and twenty nine, clutching his heart and straining not to give its pain his voice, Yul realized that he was as lost as he’d ever been.
Let the day come, then.