Chapter Text
The path is dark, only slivers of moonlight making its way through the dense canopy above him. The forest makes no sound; not even the chirp of a bug or the rustling of leaves break the silence. There's only the footfall of his horses hooves, softened to near-noiselessness by the damp soil of the path. It had been raining, when he'd entered the forest all those hours ago, but over time it had lightened to a drizzle and now it had stopped, leaving the air damp and cold. He didn't mind. He almost didn't notice, in fact.
This wasn't about him. This was about his family.
His people.
His kingdom.
Hyunjin closed his eyes, sighing. His horse remained steady beneath him. He had fled from the palace five nights ago, a travelling sack full of his possessions slung over his shoulder and his horse his only company. He had been in worse conditions, on the campaigns he'd accompanied his father and brother on, but this felt different. This time he was alone; this time, the fate of the entire kingdom rested on only his shoulders. Besides that, this wasn't a campaign - this was a search for help at best; treachery at worst.
The southern tribes had stormed the palace; years and years of tensions had mounted until they could no longer take the inconsistent, harsh rule of his father. Honestly, Hyunjin couldn't blame them. He didn't know how much longer he could survive under his father's rule, either. The attack had been largely unsuccessful, however; many of the invaders had been struck down or imprisoned, although a shadow had fallen over the palace. There were still rumours of tribal leaders and the smaller clans banding together to overthrow the crown; more concerning still were his fathers plans to put a stop to the opposition.
Hyunjin remembers visiting the southern tribes as a young boy, on a diplomatic visit with his mother's brother and his older cousin. He had loved it; the way the people there had built their lives around the water they worshipped. The boats that littered their ports could have been intimidating, but Hyunjin had loved seeing the structures - the only boats he had seen before that were war vessels. The brights colours of the towns had been eye-catching, so different to the somber colours of the palace. The people had been welcoming and cheerful and Hyunjin had promised, as he'd left, that he'd be back soon, because he knew he'd miss the place.
He hadn't been able to keep his promise.
It wasn't long after they got back from the southern tribal lands that relations had soured. Hyunjin hadn't realised at the time, kept apart from such politics by his age and position as the second son. He still didn't know, not for sure, exactly why the tension started. He had never dared ask his father.
Not even after those tensions had culminated in an attempted coup.
He breathes deeply, tilting his head back to stare at the dark canopy above him. He had tried not to fixate on that night; he had thoughts of little else.
He had been in the palace when it was stormed and he had been in the palace when his father had the first insurgent beheaded. And the next. A show of strength, his father had said. To show anyone planning to follow that they wouldn't stand for it.
Hyunjin had spent the attempted coup with the archers, a defensible position that kept him safe. He was the spare prince - he couldn't be risked, in case something happened to his brother. His brother, who he'd kept track of as the crown prince made his way through the courtyard, cutting down insurgents as he went. Hyunjin thought it was a stupid system, keeping him out of direct danger even as the heir to the throne was right in the thick of it. He didn't know if he would ever demand he be allowed to fight, though; he hated the thought of the indiscriminate slaughter a battlefield held. He didn't think he would be able to follow the examples set by his father and brother in previous wars.
Now, he had been called down to stand beside his father, his brother to his father's other side and the crown's closest advisors to their backs. There was a group of men knelt in the dirt before them, resigned and angry and something in their eyes still fighting, even as the king stared down at them. Hyunjin resisted the urge to squirm.
"Why have you attacked your crown?" His father's voice boomed, echoing around the empty.
The men stare back at him, their lips staying tightly, defiantly, shut.
"The crown stays strong." His father continues, unimpaired by their silence. "Your attempt today only proved that further." His grin was bloodthirsty. "The crown will reap the rewards of your attack; we will continually grow stronger against those who wish to cripple us. Whilst you, dirty traitors, will lose your lives. And your cause will lose their soldiers."
There was a roar of triumph from the crowd of courtiers and nobility around them, led by some of the younger higher nobles. Hyunjin curled his lip in distaste - people were about to lose their lives for fighting a cause they believed in enough to risk it all, and none of these people cared. Hyunjin understood not speaking up against the decision, for he dared not speak against his father for risk of extreme punishment either. Sometimes he wished he had the courage to do something.
As he watched the defiance in the men's eyes die only when the very light inside of them was extinguished, he thought, maybe this was the push he needed. Knowledge that someone - that groups of people, armies - were rising up against his father's rule, that they were willing and able to attack the palace itself... Hyunjin wasn't alone in his disagreement with his father's decisions. It was hard to hear such talk in the palace, the inhabitants largely agreeing with his father and the ones who didn't keeping their silence out of fear.
Hyunjin had spent many hours feeling like his insides were crawling their way up his throat, warring with himself over what to do. He had paced his room for hours, weighing the advantaged of actively disobeying his father's rule.
His father had called him to a meeting later that evening. It was the final push he'd needed. It was that night he'd left.
"There are rumours that Shin Ha-Joon is marching on the palace."
The speaker is old. Very old, with grey hair and a stooped back, his hands hidden in his ornate sleeves. Hyunjin hated him; hated him with a passion he had never felt before. This man had led his father in every decision the king had ever made - the good and the bad. Especially the bad. Son Jong-Soo had been the one to suggest the public execution of so many of the invaders. Needless death.
Hyunjin was also fairly sure that it was Son Jong-soo who encouraged the souring relations with the southern tribe in the first place, if only out of spite. The daughter of one of the leading clan heads had refused his hand in marriage and that apparently wasn't something the old man was willing to let go of.
"Than we must prepare." His father grumbled, tapping his fingers on the table. Hyunjin had been allowed to sit in on meetings between his father and the advisors for only a small handful of years now, although he wasn't encouraged to say anything. He had been taunted by many that he was only there as a pretty face for the old men to look at as they schemed. He knew, somewhere deep inside, that that was the truth. They didn't want his opinion; they only wanted his face.
In his darker moments, he thinks that's all he's good for.
"Send some of their own warriors back to them." Advisor Woo snarled. He got a number of surprised noises from around the table, but his ruthless grin soon soothed any dissent. Hyunjin felt his heart sink. "Young-Hee has prepared these."
He puts a little, straw bag on the table. There are gasps, although none of them of protest.
Hyunjin can't stop his own gasp. Its a hex bag - the worst sort of curse. His father had drawn the kingdom further away from the wildness of magic than even his grandfather had, who had put laws in place to limit its use. His father hunted magic and only permitted it for a number of limited uses. One of these was why Young-Hee was still in the palace - an old woman, a witch, who had been with the royal family for longer than anybody could remember. She was the crown's only defence against magical attacks, and since Hyunjin didn't know of any such attacks, she must have been successful, either as a deterrent or as the defence. If she had the power, the immorality to make a hex bag...no wonder she'd lasted so long under his father.
He doesn't know much about the southern tribes or their use of magic, if they'll be able to sense the presence of the hex bags, let alone defend themselves against them.
His father's grin shows that he doesn't care about that.
"Lim!"
"Your majesty!" Advisor Lim stands.
"Pick out three prisoners. We must... prepare them."
Lim bows obediently, turning to leave.
Hyunjin honestly can't say he remembers the rest of the meeting. It had been full of cruelties, of brutality and deception and jarring revelations. His father wouldn't negotiate; wouldn't try for a peaceful end to this. He should have expected it, but as he meandered back to his rooms, he was still shocked.
"I heard they want to defeat the southern tribes because of the port."
He stopped at the whisper. It travelled down the hallway, so light he couldn't tell where it was coming from.
"But - " He couldn't hear what was said next, a different voice to the first, distorted by the distance. "The dungeons?"
The dungeons? What was in the dungeons? All the prisoners from the attack were in the cells on the outskirts of the property. Only the main house even had dungeons - a dark, dank room, built of stone on all sides hidden under the house. Hyunjin hated it. The chains on the walls only made it worse.
"Its been in there for nearly thirty years - " The voice became mumbling again. Hyunjin strained his ears, trying to hear what they were saying. "The southern tribes are trying to free -"
Was someone in the dungeons? Hyunjin had only seen it a few times and there had never been anybody in there, not that he could remember. But had the voice said someone - or, something - had been there for thirty years?
"His majesty is - "
"Curses - "
"Disease?"
Hyunjin leans agains the wall, absently wondering who it is talking, if they know about the plan with the hex bags. If what they're saying about someone being in the dungeons, being the reason the southern tribes attacked, then Hyunjin...
Hyunjin doesn't know what to think.
He stumbles into his room, closing the door behind him and immediately going to look out of the window. There are warriors out there, running drills. He stands there, staring at them as they practice their sword-work and their archery, their hand-to-hand combat, for hours. He doesn't move until the sun starts to set.
He's made up his mind.
He doesn't go to dinner with his father; luckily, its not an unusual occurrence. He has a reputation for being a dreamer, always losing track of time. His father scoffs at him, but does little to correct it. Hyunjin knows its because he's just the spare - he's not important enough for his father to waste time, not when Hyunjin will be married off in the next few years and no longer be his problem.
He shakes the thought from his head. He knows he's not just a pretty face. It doesn't matter what everyone else thinks.
He goes to the dungeons as soon as night falls.
The room will haunt him forever. In a hidden corner, sigils burned into the stone telling him to stay away, to pass over, to ignore, there was a man, gaunt and haunted and half-dead, even as his eyes burned brightly.
"To the east and slightly south," The man had said, voice raspy and barely-there, "is a god."
"What?" Hyunjin fumbled.
"Find him."
Hyunjin had turned and fled and he didn't stop, not when he exited the gates unimpeded, not when his horse was galloping down the dirt path in the opposite direction of the town with no guards following, not when they reached the first outlying village, nearly a full day later. Hyunjin couldn't stop; couldn't be caught, some deep-buried instinct spurring him on.
Find him.
Hyunjin opens his eyes with a gasp, scrambling to find a tighter grip on the reigns as his horse jerks.
"Shh." He soothes, reaching out to pet along the horses neck. The horse has done well, with little time to rest over the past few days. Hyunjin hasn't seen anyone following him, but he doesn't dare stop for long. He can't predict what his father will do, how he'll react. If he'll know Hyunjin ran away, that he went in the dungeons, or whether he'll think the southern tribe did something. Think that someone else did something.
Hyunjin doesn't know which he'd prefer. Whatever kept his father away from him, he supposed. But if he thought someone had done something, would he hurt even more people to find out?
It didn't bare thinking about. Not right now.
He had spent the past five days wondering why he was doing this. Why he was listening to that man's words. He still hadn't found the answer. But he hoped - he knew, somewhere inside himself - that this was the only way to save his people and stop his father's path of destruction at last.
He just had to find a god.