4. An End

Ever since they'd departed the capital, A recurring dream plagues Jiwon's nights, and it's inexplicably familiar. It hunts him like a remorseful memory and wakes him up into a state of panic and denial when dawn rips him away from it. 

°❀ ***** ❀。

A setting all the most common, around sunset in a forest like the ones he and his friends spend their days in these past few weeks. A calm river flows nearby, yet its runoff is muffled as every sound felt around Jiwon. As if he was sinking underwater, the forest whispers excruciatingly loudly to him. His blood pounds at his eardrums, louder than he ever experienced before on any of his anxious episodes. Ji's hands desperately push against his ears, tugging at his hair, his wrists stinging from loosely tied rope cutting into them. 

He knows to focus on his breathing, push away the panic growing, and ground himself, but the mind swarms of his control, undecipherable accusations and fears enough for two of him, a loud suffocating crowd screaming at him to run. Run where? To who? To what?

Altho, he's far too aware that he's surrounded, enclosed by a few armed horsemen. They've long restrained, torn, and dragged him away from the innermost, where another kneeled. 

Jiwon's throat ached, sore from shouting, though he feels mute, swallowing dry the lump in his throat. Scorched dust lingers in the air, aggravating his airways and eyes, nevertheless taking in more of his surroundings. A cloaked man straddled his horse among the others, lowering a smoking weapon, one Jiwon could not name but that set aflame another wave of panic in him. 

His vision blurs and tremors as he fears finding the worst behind him. The aggressors leave without a word, a few remaining, but letting go of Jiwon. He stumbles on his feet, making his way to the center of the field, falling to his knees as red pooled under short blondish hair across from him. 

...Leehno.

In disbelief, Jiwon's hands lunch cupping the face, pushing away the golden hair to frame it. He was met by someone else, a woman who bearly even looked older than him. She'd been mercilessly sliced and wounded all over. Wearing the same armor design as the ones he'd only seen San wear, altho never in such a ravaged state. Its sides were dented and ripped up by swords as if the woman had been hunted like a bear, left to fend on her own. However, a wound sticks out to him, something had pierced through her chest, narrow but too deep to be stitched back. So she layed slumped over to her side, limbs tied by the same dirty rope digging at her skin, as Jiwon embraces her head, the golden locks of her hair reflecting the sun's set, slowly staining from her blood.

A wild dream to tell, so he preferred not to, in hopes to leave it as that, just a recurring dream. Yet, in this moment, the same warning sight torments him. 

Only this time, his end is set.

The sun sets over the work mine, weeks away from the castle, cornered by a masked individual and their horsemen. He might not be the royal knight his brothers encouraged him to be, neither is he the wise his parents wished him to be, but he'd fulfill his own quest. 

Today, Song Jiwon stands, sword out, staring death through a metal barrel, for the princess's happy ending he's always wished for.

°❀ ***** ❀。