Honbul: Flame of the Soul

SF Chapter 294

Hwirim’s question sent gentle ripples across the surface of Myojeong’s heart, which had once been as still as a calm lake.

His thoughts remained tangled for the entire day.

Before he realized it, night had already deepened. After parting ways with Hwirim and returning to his quarters at the Jaseonwon, Myojeong lay down and closed his eyes, but sleep refused to come. He tossed and turned for a long while before finally sitting up.

Unable to endure lying there any longer, he reached for a book to pass the time.

The book he picked up was a historical record used as a textbook at the Jaseonwon, a text that explained the origins and history of the Office of Narye.

Resting his chin against the floor, Myojeong quietly began to read.

It had been an unimaginably long time ago when the Bangsangsi first came to this land.

The Bangsangsi was the messenger of the heavenly homeland, the servant of the heavenly homeland, and the chariot of the heavenly homeland. It was also called by other names, such as Bangsangssi and Bangsangje. During an age overflowing with evil ghosts, disease, and calamity, it descended upon the world.

Appearing in human form while wearing a golden mask with four eyes, the Bangsangsi possessed the divine authority to proclaim judgment. It shattered and scattered impurities, driving away evil ghosts. It also bestowed upon weak humans the primordial power to commune physically with spirits, a force known as spiritual force.

Those who inherited this spiritual force spread throughout the world across generations like dandelion seeds, and people called them gwijae—those blessed with a precious gift.

The Bangsangsi settled in this land, established the foundations of the Narye, and lived among humankind. And when peace finally came to the mortal world and its duty was complete, it declared that it would return to the heavens.

The humans who had served the Bangsangsi grieved endlessly and clasped their hands together as they pleaded.

“We are afraid, for our divine master is leaving us.”

Taking pity on them, the Bangsangsi chose a single human, handed over the golden four-eyed mask, and spoke:

“This mask is my entirety. Therefore, you are my incarnation.”

The human who received the mask lowered his head in reverence, and only then did the Bangsangsi ascend toward the heavens.

Myojeong blinked slowly as he stared at the page.

History was merely a record passed down by others.

And records could never truly be trusted.

Every historical account carried intent. Depending on that intent, truths could be subtly twisted, lies carefully hidden, and impurities mixed in without end. By the time history reached later generations, it had already been trimmed and refined countless times over.

This book was full of lies.

And Myojeong knew exactly which parts were true and where the lies began.

The text claimed that after passing down the mask and making a human its incarnation, the Bangsangsi returned to the heavens.

But that was not the truth.

The Bangsangsi still remained in this world.

It had never returned to the heavens.

No—

it had never been allowed to.

As the Bangsangsi attempted to ascend, humans seized it and imprisoned it within the mask. Whether they feared losing the protection the Bangsangsi provided or whether it had simply been born from naked greed was impossible to know now.

But trapped inside the mask, the Bangsangsi itself became a fetish.

How could insignificant humans capture a being revered by all creation, a transcendent existence beyond mortal reach, and imprison it inside a mask?

How could mere humans dare to turn a god into a tool and claim possession over it?

Whatever method had been used, it could only be called the terrifying greatness of humanity.

The one who obtained the Bangsangsi’s mask gained the authority of divine proclamation simply by wearing it.

It was power no human should ever have possessed.

Anyone who wore the Bangsangsi’s mask could become a god.

And the Bangsangsi, betrayed by humanity, was reduced in an instant to the servant of man.

The Bangsangsi, imprisoned within the mask, laughed loudly as though deeply impressed and left behind these words:

“Ah! Admirable desire and grotesque greed!

“I shall become both your strength and your stigma. In exchange for possessing me, I grant you one season of prosperity and a lifetime of decline.

“I will seep into your bloodline like serpent venom. Every history touched by your blood shall be exposed before the world, and no one born from your lineage will ever escape this karma.

“You and your descendants shall gain honor, glory, achievement, and reverence beyond what any human could enjoy.

“And yet, you shall never possess the one thing that truly matters.

“Even if you possess me, you will never become my master.”

The man who obtained the golden four-eyed mask and grasped divine authority became known as the hyeonsin—the incarnation—and rose to become the master of the Office of Narye.

He was both man and god.

As the incarnation of the Bangsangsi, he donned the mask, performed the Narye, ruled over spirits and humans alike, and inspired reverence throughout all creation whenever he wore it.

Just as the Bangsangsi had foretold, he obtained a dignity and glory no ordinary human could ever hope to attain.

But unfortunately, none of it lasted very long.

From the perspective of a single human life, the incarnation’s fate was deeply unfortunate.

Even as the Bangsangsi’s incarnation, his essence remained human in the end. Like any ordinary man, he fell in love, built a family, and had a child.

But not long after giving birth, his beloved died.

And at the age of thirty-three, he took his own life.

A tragically young age.

After his death, his young child inherited the mask and became the next incarnation.

But the child lived the exact same life as his father.

Without the slightest deviation.

And then he, too, died.

He lost the person he loved and died during the year he turned thirty-three.

At first, it seemed like nothing more than a strange coincidence.

But the same thing happened again in the next generation.

And the generation after that.

As the years passed and the same tragedy repeated itself over and over, the people who had served the incarnations for generations finally realized something was wrong.

One elder who had remained by their side longer than anyone else gathered the birth dates and times of the previous incarnations and examined their fates.

Because even if they were incarnations of the Bangsangsi, they had still been born human.

Perhaps there might be a clue there.

But despite being born in different eras and under different circumstances, they had all lived the same life.

It was not coincidence.

The life of the first incarnation had become a template.

And every descendant afterward was forced to walk the same path.

The elders of the Office of Narye realized that a certain legacy was being inherited along with the role of the Bangsangsi’s incarnation. They concealed the truth and buried it as a secret known only to the incarnation himself and the elders who served him.

They tried every possible method to escape the predetermined death.

But it was all futile.

The legacy of failure passed endlessly from generation to generation, and not a single person ever escaped this karma.

It was an unavoidable death.

A punishment.

A curse carried through blood.

Of course, if it had merely been called a curse, someone else might willingly have borne its weight.

After all, every human {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} dies eventually.

And losing someone beloved was a grief almost everyone experienced at least once in life.

But the true agony lay elsewhere.

It lay in knowing the exact day of one’s own death.

As time passed, none of the incarnations retained the will to struggle against their fate.

Just like a trapped beast that thrashes wildly until it finally realizes escape is impossible and collapses in surrender, eventually none of them tried to resist anymore.

A life without certainty might be unstable and frightening, but every moment of it still contained joy, rage, grief, and happiness.

At times, life could even become an adventure.

A journey.

But a life lived while already knowing its ending became nothing more than a slow process of dying.

To become someone who spent every birthday counting the number of years left until death instead of celebrating being born—

that was a disability carved into the soul itself.

Myojeong had known his fate since childhood.

The knowledge had settled inside him as naturally as instinct from the moment he became capable of reason.

Because of that, despite his young age, Myojeong possessed a strange detachment that could only belong to someone who had already mastered death.

At first, he thought everyone knew the day they would die.

Later, after realizing that was not true for most people, he had briefly wondered why.

But eventually, he simply accepted it quietly as the fate he had been born into.

Myojeong was not especially pessimistic about his destiny, nor did he grieve over it.

That was because, from the moment he was born, the elders had subjected him to an upbringing that bordered on brainwashing.

They knew the incarnation’s lifespan was limited.

They knew the fate continued through the bloodline.

And they exploited that fact thoroughly.

Just as they had turned the Bangsangsi into a fetish and used it as a tool, the incarnation himself had also become nothing more than a tool for others.

A person confronted by death midway through life might deny it, despair, fear it, resent it, or grieve over it.

But Myojeong was different.

He was someone who became aware of death at the exact moment he entered the world.

So he never despaired.

He had simply realized too early that living itself was a dull and insignificant thing.