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The stillness seeped into the air.

A tranquil lake flowed gently.

The scent of grass brushed against my nose.

There was a warm light that could easily be mistaken for sunlight, and an unknown breeze that continued to tickle my hair.

These were things that were rather ordinary, almost painfully mundane.

And there was even an ordinary tree that was no different from the other trees I had been touching.

In the midst of all this normalcy, a special figure appeared before me, prompting me to frown.

‘What is this?’

What am I looking at right now?

My heart raced!

It felt like my body had come to a standstill, and the flow of my blood had slowed down significantly. It must be because of the figure before me.

Our gazes locked.

Her eyes were a deep, radiant pink, reminiscent of the aurora that flowed through the night sky.

She had white hair cascading down, a complexion as pale as her locks, and a gentle voice that called out to me.

As I gradually absorbed each detail into my mind, my frozen body slowly began to react.

‘How?’

How is she here before me?

Did she follow me?

That could be possible. The nature of a master was unpredictable, so it’s conceivable she could manifest this way.

‘……Just now.’

The words she had just spoken instilled a sense of instinctive comfort that transcended my wariness.

‘My son.’

The words from my master. How could I not understand that?

“……Mother?”

As I carefully uttered the title I wanted to express, she smiled brightly.

Then, she reached out her pure white hand and caressed my cheek. Her advance was incredibly slow, but I couldn’t bear to brush it away.

Finally, her fingertips grazed my cheek.

And then it happened.

“Ah…”

As I felt my mother’s touch, I finally realized something.

I felt no sensation at all.

I’m not talking about temperature. There was truly no tactile feeling.

This means…

‘Thoughts?’

The “mother” before me is not a living being.

However, since I know she’s clearly alive, calling her just a thought feels inaccurate.

‘Is this also a power of formations or sorcery?’

It didn’t seem like a mere illusion. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was one of those two.

Realizing this, disappointment flooded over me.

I figured out that what was before me was a fake, and right then.

“I’m sorry.”

The illusion of my mother offered me an apology.

“You look quite disappointed, don’t you?”

“……Mother.”

“Still, I had no other choice.”

With those words, my mother changed her expression.

The sorrowful smile she wore crushed my heart. It was a face I could barely remember now.

Yet, I couldn’t forget the expression attached to that face.

The very last look she wore as she left me.

“I can’t ask you to understand… but meeting you in this form means there was no other way, right?”

“……What is this situation?”

What could possibly be the matter? How did my mother’s illusion appear here?

Unable to grasp the situation, I asked her, and my mother replied.

“This is the only way I could convey a message to my son.”

“……A way to convey a message?”

“Yes, and this is also thanks to you touching the Divine Tree.”

My mother pointed to the tree behind me, the Divine Tree.

“And it also means that child has put in the effort.”

“……Child?”

“That boy who took care of you instead of me.”

“……Are you talking about Shin Noya?”

“Exactly.”

“…….”

I had to momentarily blank out at her words.

Calling Noya a “child.” Just by appearances, he could easily be seen as a daughter or even a granddaughter of my mother.

“Thank you. It seems he worked hard.”

“No….”

It wasn’t wrong to note that I had a few things to critique, but the situation was not right for that.

There were countless questions piled up.

“Was it you who called me Mankye?”

At my question, my mother stared at me quietly for a moment. She seemed to pick her words carefully as her lips murmured.

“Yes.”

Moments later, she nodded affirmatively.

“Your presence here… it was surely because I called for you.”

As expected.

It was a fact I heard already, but just to be sure, I asked to confirm.

The reason I came to Mankye was that my mother called for me.

This meant that the next inevitable question was one.

“……Why did you call me?”

What was the reason behind summoning me?

Additionally.

“Am I truly a being meant to become a calamity?”

“…….”

Just as Shin Noya said.

It wasn’t just anyone; it was me, specifically, who was meant to become the calamity of the Central Plains.

At my question, my mother widened her eyes.

Then, she made a bittersweet expression compared to before and gave me her answer.

“……So, you’ve reached that conclusion. Regrettably.”

“…….”

Those were words more frightening than either silence or affirmation.

My fist clenched by instinct.

“Are you saying that I really am a calamity?”

My mother’s response dictated that I was to erase all living beings in the Central Plains and reconstruct them anew.

That was me.

Though I had expected this.

I was already aware that it could be true based on my conversation with Noya, and the possibility was certainly not low.

“……Why?”

Could I fully accept it?

No, I couldn’t.

“Why me?”

I wasn’t sure what my face looked like, but I knew it must have been contorted.

“……Why am I the one? How have I lived up to now?”

The joy I felt from meeting my mother whom I longed for, even if just an illusion, faded, replaced by a complicated mixture of frustration that I had kept inside.

“Damn it! What have I been doing all this time?!”

It has barely been under ten years since my return.

Compared to my previous life, that’s a short span, but in that time, I hadn’t done very little.

At first, I aimed for a slightly better life.

At the very least, I wanted a life better than my previous one. I wanted to live quietly, avoiding entanglement with what lay ahead.

That was the initial resolve.

As time passed, thinking I needed to stop the Heavenly Demon myself to protect those precious to me became my second resolve.

I had done a lot for that.

I was a body too rusty and dulled to pursue beliefs and ideals.

I wouldn’t mind the means and methods.

I set aside the diminishing conscience inside me, staining my hands with blood that shouldn’t be touched.

I didn’t chase after honor or fame; I even regarded those as mere means.

Everything was for the path that lay ahead.

Having come this far, having lived and died for those I took with me.

Yet here I was.

“Why am I the calamity…”

Is it really me who will kill those that I cared about?

“Why the hell…? Why me? I shouldn’t be the one.”

How could I be labeled the calamity? I couldn’t understand.

“Anything but myself. It shouldn’t be me.”

“…….”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

I remembered the Blood Calamity wreaked by the Heavenly Demon in my previous life. The wind that blew through the Central Plains was tinged with blood scent.

Only screams and desperation remained from that time.

The flames that burned so horrifyingly and the agonized wails of mothers who lost their children.

A husband holding his wife’s corpse under the collapsed residence, consumed by the flames.

The moon waned and stars fell.

On the day the many heroes who could have illuminated the world died, the petty and bleak became the rising.

So much blood was spilled that it filled the heavens and stained the earth red.

If you ask me what hell is, I would surely point to that.

“Why am I the calamity?”

Wasn’t it the Heavenly Demon who caused all that chaos, and now I’m being called the calamity?

No matter how much I pondered, I couldn’t understand it.

“……What did I do…?”

To say I did nothing would be a lie and egotistical. Still, even if I had done something, it was nothing compared to the Heavenly Demon in my previous life.

As I poured out that mixture of confusion and resentment, my mother’s response was.

“……I’m sorry.”

It was a brief apology.

Damn it, of all things.

“Ha…”

I exhaled in despair. A smile emerged despite myself.

“How I longed to see you… I never thought it would be like this.”

How much had I missed her?

And paradoxically, how much had I wanted to forget?

To me, my mother was like an endless thirst.

A thirst that could not be quenched due to the holey jar, leaving it empty and unable to fill.

I spent my whole life parched like that, and now I hear words like this upon our reunion.

“……Just….”

What a joke.

I barely swallowed the words that were ready to spill.

“So, the reason you called me is to make me the calamity…?”

I recognized my tone was laced with anger. But there was no way to revert it now.

They say my soul was twisted, right? That’s why the fate of being a calamity couldn’t take hold correctly.

But that was said to have changed by consuming the Fruit of God.

The problem here is.

“That Fruit of God was your doing, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Following Yarang, it was indeed my mother’s doing that led me to consume the Fruit of God.

“……Did you twist my soul too?”

“That’s also true.”

I didn’t utter a question of how.

What I needed to know now wasn’t how, but why.

“What gives? You went through such trouble to keep me away… why bring me here only to turn me back?”

If coming to Mankye wasn’t merely a miracle or coincidence, then it must have been my mother’s intention too.

What on earth did she desire from me?

Surely not.

“Do you wish for me to become a calamity…?”

“That’s not it.”

Before I could even ask, my mother quickly denied it.

This was a response unlike before.

“……Absolutely not.”

“Then-.”

“Destiny…”

Before I could question further, she interrupted and added to her statement.

“Is a road that cannot be twisted or stopped. It’s a path you must continually travel no matter what.”

“……What do you mean?”

“The meaning embedded in the world was just as such… something that cannot be changed by any means.”

Click.

While my mother reached out to touch the Divine Tree, I found my fingertips not sensing anything, yet a sound could be heard from her fingertips tracing the tree.

“So, I decided that if I couldn’t stop it or twist it, I would blind the eyes of the world. That was my determination.”

“Blind the eyes of the world…?”

What on earth does that mean?

Just as I frowned, trying to comprehend.

“The Central Plains is an unnatural place.”

My mother continued to speak, looking at me.

“It became problematic when the calamity we expected to be unbeatable was defeated.”

This must refer to the first Blood Calamity caused by the Blood Demon.

“You made the impossible possible. That caught the eye of the world… not long after, they discovered the incongruity and contradiction. Winning against ‘the impossible’ meant someone did something they shouldn’t have.”

Something that shouldn’t have been done.

And someone.

The figures of Mu-ah, once called the master of the Central Plains, and Yeon Ilcheon, who had regressed, surged to my mind.

“So, regarding this problem, the world tried to manage it. So that the same mistake wouldn’t occur again.”

“……So, you sent my mother to the Central Plains.”

So that there wouldn’t be two mistakes.

To lower the limits of the martial artists of the Central Plains and cast another calamity.

That calamity was my mother.

“And it failed.”

It failed yet again.

My mother became neither the master of the Central Plains nor descended as a calamity.

The result of the failure that the world experienced led to another plan.

‘Me.’

They turned me into a calamity.

As I had realized everything up to now, all possibilities pointed to that conclusion.

Why me, specifically?

If it were me, how could I become the calamity?

I didn’t want to understand, nor could I, but that was the reality I faced.

No matter how I felt it was a joke, this was indeed reality.

As I ground my teeth to speak.

“……That’s wrong.”

My mother denied my words.

“The world did not fail.”

“What…?”

Didn’t fail?

“What do you mean…?”

“My son, from the beginning, the world didn’t plan to send me as a calamity to the Central Plains.”

“……But you came.”

“Right, I did. But… it wasn’t as a calamity.”

What does that mean? It wasn’t as a calamity?

“The world thought it would be inappropriate to entrust a task to a master who lost its world, and I was just the only one capable of moving, even for a moment, leave my world.”

This was also something Noya had said.

In Mankye, there are things that are possible due to the existence of two masters.

However.

‘…Doesn’t this just mean that’s why you could come as a master?’

The reason my mother could come as a calamity should also be that.

That it failed that she couldn’t come as a calamity, and so here I was as the alternative.

Wasn’t the current situation exactly that?

“I didn’t go to the Central Plains as a calamity. More precisely, not as a master…”

My mother halted her speech and looked at me, brow knitting.

The little wrinkles on her face revealed deep emotion.

The emotion reflected in her eyes contained sadness and regret.

How could she wear such an expression before uttering words like that? Just as my curiosity surged.

“……It would be accurate to say I went as a being that would give birth to a calamity.”

My mother said that to me.

Hearing this, I was struck speechless for a while.

I had no choice but to be.

Because that meant.

‘So from the beginning…’

My entire life was part of the world’s plan.

 

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