Chapter 29
The Curator:
At age two, Reen Kyong lived on an island called Eden, filled with dazzling neon lights, picked-clean streets, and welcoming faces adorned with vibrant smiles and cheerful spirits.
He lived on a quiet, homely street with four family businesses entwined with homes featuring flat roofs that clung to each other.
Market stalls propped up early in the morning, while various coloured banners and umbrellas shielded workers from the rippling heat or drizzle of rain.
The city streets smelled of home—a place where a loving parent or grandparent would cook with fresh ingredients, and the overwhelming aroma warmed even the coldest hearts.
Like most protagonists in stories, Reen is “special”.
The chosen one, I suppose, would be a more fitting description.
But for a two-year-old, he acted older—at least four—and stood taller than his peers. His older brother seemed to squirm the more Reen Kyong grew, fearing he would grow taller than him, and he didn’t like it as much, considering most elemny girls swooned over him for being tall.
If Reen kept growing, attention would shift to him, and he didn’t want that to happen. It would separate Reen from his older brothers whenever they played; instead, he would entertain himself when his parents were too busy.
Every morning, Ji-Sun woke her children up with the scent of savoury mushroom pancakes and a warm, thin liquid soup to wash it down before Reen watched his older sister and brothers depart for school.
He stayed home with his father, who often went to his workshop in the shed to build furniture and dream catchers to sell.
Reen usually watched from a distance, his eyes glimmering with appreciation and awe as his father danced his hands in the air and entwined roots and wood with his elemental powers.
When his father finished with the dreamcatcher, Reen grew closer in wonder, yearning to touch its beauty.
Still, like all good things, the flowers on the dreamcatcher wilted from his rippling heat when he grew near it.
The roots coiled in fear as if alive, yearning to free themselves from the power the child never understood.
He often ventured around the street during the day whenever Ji-Sun needed more fruit and vegetables. A few streets down, market stalls flourished, and it was a ritual for them to seek fresh ingredients.
Reen had stared at the fish swimming in their tanks or the lobsters scrambling atop each other.
He found life fascinating, and whenever a fight between two elemny broke out in the streets, he watched longer than the others.
Whenever someone died and crimson pooled from their mouth, he spoke confidently to Ji-Sun that he didn’t understand the concept of killing and never wanted to.
“Sometimes we do things we regret later,” Ji-Sun told Reen. “One day, you may need to protect your family; the only way to protect them is to harm another.”
Her words filled Reen with confusion, and he went to bed that night, listening to his sister complain about feeding the dog again while his older brothers played video games on the computer. But little did Reen know that the following day would shape him.
For the better? Unlikely.
His father asked Reen to help him place the furniture in their family store beside their home. Reen watched the chair with flowers, his hands clenched together, and he chewed on his bottom lip as the flowers shied away from him.
It was as if he were something they needed to fear.
“What’s the matter?” Ji-Sun asked when she found Reen staring at the chair her husband had made.
“It will die if I touch it,” Reen spoke, his voice small and bitter for a child of his age. “Big brother is a fire elemental and doesn’t hurt anything.”
Ji-Sun placed her hand on his shoulder and said, “You are different, Reen.”
“I don’t want to be different.”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she suggested making their way to the market, hoping it would cheer him up.
It did, for a time. Reen watched the colourful fish swim in their tanks while Ji-Sun picked vegetables for dinner that night.
It wasn’t until five minutes had passed that wailing screams and cheers stirred through the markets.
The King and Queen made their way through the crowd. They were magnetic, and the crowd gravitated towards them with awe and adoration. They had crowned King Ragan only five years earlier and had already had three children together. Many at the castle praised the Queen for her fertile lifestyle.
Ji-Sun touched Reen’s shoulder. They were leaving, breaking away from the crowd, when an excited elemny shoved Reen. The bag of fruit he held dropped, and rosy apples rolled across the path, weaving through eager feet scrambling for a better look.
“Don’t worry,” Ji-Sun spoke with a quivering voice, “let’s leave.”
She took hold of Reen’s arm when it tightened to where tears sprang to Reen’s eyes.
Ji-Sun fell to her knees, bit her lower lip until crimson spilled out, and her hand trembled with undeniable pain before a blissful relief shuddered through her veins as the mark of tethering to another filled her lungs and tingled between her legs.
The crowd broke away, forming a line until the other elemny in pain came into focus. King Ragan rose with flames licking his shoulders and bright red eyes alight. The Queen ran away from King Ragan with tears, and the elemny who guarded her hastened their pace to protect the Queen.
“Mumma,” Reen spoke, his voice breaking when he noticed King Ragan strolling toward them.
Then, the thought of protecting his family came to mind, and he stood before his mother with his arms defensively around her, all because Reen understood what it meant to be different. It meant protecting those you love most. So, he stood before her and glared at King Ragan.
King Ragan stopped in his tracks and eyed the boy with curiosity.
But it wasn’t the way he held himself that caught King Ragan’s interest. He felt the heat rippling from Reen and the hint of flames licking across his fingertips.
The boy was two—a toddler whose elemental powers shouldn’t have touched.
A child shouldn’t understand the concept until he begins school.
“What is your name?” King Ragan declared in a deep, low voice.
Reen tilted his head to the side and furrowed his brows at the language he couldn’t understand. Knowing the issue, King Ragan nodded. An air elemny with silver eyes and shiny grey hair stepped forward, smiling at Reen as she translated what the king had said.
“Reen,” he answered without hesitation. “Reen Kyong.”
“Do you want to see the Kingdom of Flesh?”
The air elemny translated again, using more persuasion and a hint of excitement by mentioning the castle.
Aware of the hint of persuasion, Ji-Sun gripped Reen’s arm, dragged her youngest child behind her back, and spat insults Reen had rarely heard her speak…if at all. Unsure of what to do, he kept his mouth shut and balled his hands into fists while his mother and King Ragan sized each other up.
“Where do you live? Escort us there?” King Ragan demanded, but the translation emerged cautiously and more calmly.
“No,” Ji-Sun said in English.
“No?” King Ragan said with an arch of his brow.
“No,” Ji-Sun said firmly.
Without another word, King Ragan left with a crowd of elemny and guards following his every move.
Ji-Sun relaxed her shoulders before quickening her pace down the streets and away from King Ragan.
Breaking through the door of her home, she called the school to pick up her children and fled their city.
But while her family ran around the house, packing their belongings, a shadow formed behind Reen, and with it came flames thirsting for flesh.
His mother left willingly in Reen’s eyes. It was a sense of compliance with others, hoping they would spare her children’s lives. Unfortunately, King Ragan didn’t like how she spoke and used it as punishment.
Reen watched his father’s flesh peel from his skin when he tried to attack the King after breaking through their home.
Then, he witnessed his sister being pulled by her hair before the King glided his blade across her shoulders.
Crimson drenched the walls and floors as his older brothers came out of their rooms… headless.
Reen stood near the doors when King Ragan came forth with his hand outstretched toward the toddler. His hand neared the child as flames and wind coiled around Reen’s hands, licking up his arms. With one piercing, agonised cry, his home erupted into a hurricane of fire.
Such intense power would frighten anyone, but King Ragan looked at Reen as if he were a shooting star.
He saw Reen and knew he held the blood of his mother—the power of royalty.
Nothing mattered after that, and his wife’s love for his children had no ground for the child, with flames coiling around his fingertips.
He took Ji-Sun and Reen back to the Kingdom of Flesh, forced his first wife into captivity, and slaughtered their children so the children Ji-Sun would carry for him wouldn’t be contested for the crown.
However, he did not care for any children with her, for the child who lacked emotions after witnessing the slaughter of his family was what he desired most.
Reen Kyong, July 14th
I wake to the first signs of rain drizzling across the ship’s deck—a constant hollow noise.
When I rise in a pool of sweat, the haze of a nightmare clings to my sheets. Red hair falls forward, and when I stand, I push the layers back and settle my focus on the door and the shadow wavering beneath the gap.
Alad stands outside, grimly overlooking the rain. His silver eyes dart to me and away as I lean my elbows against the railing, watching the rain with disdain.
“Another nightmare?” Alad says.
I sigh. “Are they called nightmares when they come every night?”
“Depends on how you feel after you wake from them, Prince Reen.”
“I don’t particularly feel anything,” I admit. “It’s been a long time since grief overtook me.”
“You must have felt something when Queen Ji-Sun died.”
“I did, but not for logical reasons,” I say. “I felt incompetent. As if I were that fucking child, unable to save the ones I care for again. I spent most of my life fighting to keep them safe, and an unawakened brat out of everything becomes my undoing.”
“You can’t help but admire her dedication.”
“Your reasoning perplexes me for wanting her alive. What is she to you?”
“Nothing,” Alad answers. “I met her once…briefly. However, she cannot tell you the same story about meeting me. She helped someone no one cared for. I found it strange to see it from an ice elemny. She wasn’t as cold as the others.
We could shape her to benefit us if we were to keep the last breathing ice elemny alive. ”
I grunt my response. “I don’t care, Alad. If I find her sobbing about her fucking story of how King Ragan slaughtered her family and friends, it will make little difference to how I see her. She’s the enemy—nothing more and nothing less.”
“You are more than the mutt King Ragan trained you to be, Prince Reen.”
“Stop forcing me to feel something I won’t, Alad. You’re twenty-four years too late. I won’t stop yearning for a hunt like Walkyer can’t stop loving random girls in the street, and Emmerton can’t stop wanting to fuck with Walkyer’s feelings.”
“As you say,” Alad says with a hint of a smile.
I twitch a smirk and say, “If I perchance can’t kill this girl, it would be the day I’d rather kill myself, for I would consider myself too weak to protect my family.”
“You lean toward the extremes.”
“You would, too, if you saw your mother die in your arms,” I speak with no emotion, but the acid drifts down my throat and burns through a heart that lacks sincerity.
Footsteps come up from the docks and onto the second floor of the ship. Astin’s drenched, with silver hair clinging to his pasty skin. Dark circles plague the area beneath his eyes, and his blue, numb lips press together before he says, “We’re here. I’ve got us here in record time, sir.”
I eye the cliffs coming into focus, and a cruel smile spreads across my face. “Let the hunt begin.”