A/N:

I just want to say we've got to the end, my dear readers.

I'm so sorry for what you're gonna read today. Initially, this wasn't how I had planned to finish it but writing it just felt right. I may be open to continuing the story in the future in another book (which was the idea anyway). Let me know in the comments after reading if you would like an epilogue to give it more closure and solve some pending questions. Just remember that not all things at what it seems and this is a fantasy story with magic. Anything can happen.

Prepare the tissues. 

TW: major character's death

Sliding Gate, Night Palace, Sproutland.

It’s just past midnight, two days after Jongin regains control of Sproutland’s Night Palace when the first spectrum comes at the door. There are some guards at the front, foolishly expecting retaliation from Waterland’s army. Still, there are barely ten people out there that would have died in retaliation quickly, but even quicker than what they haven’t expected.

“Pssst,” Jaemin, now white-haired instead of blue, throws a rock toward a guard a couple of meters ahead.

“What?”

“What’s that hissing?”

The boy tilts his head, covering one ear with his hand to try to hear better.

“I don’t hear anything,” he murmurs, trying now with his other ear. “I think it’s coming fr—”

Jaemin squints his eyes, trying to see his friend in the dark.

“Jeno?” Jaemin takes a step ahead, ushering Jisung beside him to follow him too. “Dude?”

A shadow covers his sight for a second, and then a scream. Jisung is not beside him anymore, neither are the rest of the guards. He tries to run back to the door to let the other guards know they’re being attacked, but the spectrum reaches him first, tearing him apart in half.

•••

The Black Hole, Frozen Palace, Winterland’s Border.

After the third round of spectrums starts, Yoo Jimin is not herself anymore. Her eyes are completely black to the point of absorbing the light around her, and from below her neck black veins come out and trace part of Jimin’s face. She still mutters words from time to time, words that Minjeong knows are still her Jimin, but it’s a glimpse, it’s barely there.

She knows she has the promise to uphold, but that was before she cared for the Princess of the Darkness.

“Reports?” Minjeong asks her clone, still looking at Jimin’s face.

“It’s a blood bath around Ginger Gully. We’ve taken the Night Palace and the high classes have surrendered already.”

It takes her a minute too long to appreciate Jimin’s features, the shape of her lips, the ark of her eyebrows, and her long eyelashes. Her eyes are empty now, her soul slowly disappearing into the darkness, to the dark gods, to evil, turning into a spectrum herself.

“What about River Pond?”

“Overrun, Your Majesty.” Jaehyun, The General of the Army says, tilting his head in respect. “The spectrums did most work, and then our army finished the job. We are right on time to make it there, but we’ll need a bigger army to take Blue Hall Palace up north if we want Waterland to be ours.”

She seems to be thinking, still looking at Jimin. The black veins haven’t receded, still coming out. There’s barely any skin left to see, more a spectrum than a person.

“Jimin,” she calls. The girl tilts her head to her right side, still on her knees, a signal that she’s listening. “Stop.”

“What? Winter, you can’t—” The clone starts, but she’s silenced by Winter’s hand.

“I can and I will do it.” She lowers her hand. “Jimin, I said stop.”

“No!” she yells in a deep voice, the voice of a demon. “You promised!”

“I know what I said, but now I want you to stop, Jimin.”

Jimin’s eyes clear out a little, not completely, just to reveal the suffering behind them.

“Minjeong, please, I can’t—”

“I know you can’t live like this, and I know what I promised, but this is not up for discussion either. Stop, Jimin.”

The clone marches off, sending a vase flying against the wall before disappearing through the stairs.

Jimin tries to stop, but the darkness consumes her again, her eyes rolling behind. She knows she’s far too gone to do it alone, and she also knows it’s dangerous for her to touch her, but she doesn’t care anymore. She’s been lonely for too long now.

She puts her hand on Jimin’s shoulder, and the black veins crept at her arms too, quickly getting at her face. She throws her head back, letting her body adjust to the power and watching Jimin’s eyes clear out of it, quickly conscious of her situation.

“Your Majesty?” General Jaehyun asks, taking a step back in panic. “Are you okay?”

“I am, General. Can you hold the besiege a little longer?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Go on, give me some time and I’ll make it there.”

The General disappears through the hall, leaving Jimin and Minjeong surrounded by dead bodies.

Jimin stands up, closing her hand in a fist, making the black veins recede but not completely. The influx of darkness stops, and Minjeong falls forward. Jimin catches her in her arms, and they both end up kneeling together, drained, their vision covered in black spots and their bodies in black veins. The only thing that returns to normal is their eyes.

“Why did you do this?” Jimin murmurs, using her knuckles to massage her forehead, a strong headache making her feel sick. “This was your opportunity to win this war without even starting it.”

“Because there’s no piece of land in this world and no power worth more than you, Jimin.”

It’s a confession, plain and simple as if they are anywhere near being simple. They are two complex, tormented souls destined to love each other, even if it’s twisted, if it is black magic, black magic can’t make one love another, it can only cause obsession and pain, but she knows what she feels for her. She knows she loves her, and Minjeong loves her too. She always had.

She remembers now seeing a sad little girl in the past, accompanied by a big man with long, blonde hair cut irregularly and wearing a red crown.

“I love you too, Minjeong,” She kisses her like it’s her last. Perhaps it is, and she doesn’t want to regret it later if it is. She wonders how did she go from hiding from her mother to fighting a war on the front lines as the royal she is and linked to someone for life. She can’t forgive her mother even if she gave her the only person she has loved in a long time. It would have been better if she had any choice at all, but at least Minjeong gave her a choice and didn’t try to force her from the beginning.

Perhaps, she could be happy after this.

•••

River Pond, Outskirts of The Badlands, Waterland.

There’s a tumult of people everywhere they go, pushing desperately to run away from the spectrums coming their way. They are in the high part of the city, along a wide bridge that connects the city. Below, there’s the abysm of the water. There are other buildings below but the only way there is by the staircase at the end of the bridge or jumping fifteen meters.

“Joohyun, we need to jump!” Seulgi yells over the noise, grabbing her hand to not lose her in the crowd.

“What?!”

“Jump!” She makes the gesture of deep-diving, signaling the bridge railing ahead of them.

“Are you crazy?! That water is infested with crocodiles. I’m not going to jump there! Why can’t you turn into a shadow and take us there?”

“I’m too weak! If I try that again, I can get lost in the spectrums and there’s no going back from that!”

Seulgi huffs with the effort, pushing people around her to walk to the railing. Joohyun tries to resist but deep down she knows she has three options: dying by the hand of the spectrums, dying crushed by the crowd, or dying by crocodiles. At least with the last one, she has the option to swim as fast as she can and with some luck, she can make it alive to one of the houses or a boat.

“Don’t let go,” Seulgi says, helping her up on the railing. Joohyun looks down briefly, closing her eyes again. “At the count of three.”

Joohyun barely has time to take a deep breath when Seulgi pulls her off the railing toward the water. The fall is seconds, but Joohyun screams like it’s ages. Seulgi wants to tell her to hold her breath but the fall it’s too short and soon they’re at the bottom of the river.

The hit makes them swim apart, lost in the darkness of the river and the currents. Somewhere around giant crocodiles are lurking and who knows what other creatures are. After the wars, the pollution, and the radiation, the animals stopped being harmless—not that a crocodile was ever harmless to them.

Water fills Joohyun’s lungs, she’s drowning again, but this time she has no fight left in her. She’s so close and yet the universe keeps sending deadly challenges in her way as if the gods want her dead. She doesn’t like being a martyr, a damsel in distress that needs saving every time. She’s tired, but also restless. She can’t sleep at night anymore, she sees ghosts of her family with her eyes open, and she hears voices and hallucinations, but the worst thing is that she feels a burning rage inside her that makes her want to scream when laying around doing nothing and makes her want to crawl at her skin, rip it off somehow.

She hasn’t told Seulgi, and she doesn’t think she will. It’s for the better. She knows it’s part of the spell Seungwan put on her and she knows there’s no antidote for it, not one that works without side effects at least, and the only person in the Kingdom capable of helping her is probably dead in one of Winter’s chambers.

There, underwater, she dedicates a moment of silence to Jimin’s memory, the Jimin she knew. After that, on the brink of drowning, she swims with the last of her breath, she goes up, up, towards the single ray of light she can see. She makes it just in time, shaking her head to get rid of the water dripping down her face, but a second too late to realize it’s actually raining and the sky got dark.

“Joohyun? Are you okay?” Seulgi takes the princess’ face with her hands, briefly looking for any sign of hurt, a little too close to be friendly but not close enough to be interpreted as anything else but care for her.

“I am, Seulgi, I am.” She doesn’t tell her it’s a lie. “But I don’t think that will last. I’m seeing a pair of eyes just an arm’s length behind you.”

“Okay, let’s stay calm. Do you see any other crocodiles around?”

“I don’t think—! One just ate a man! Let’s get the out of here, please!”

“What’s that language, princess?” Seulgi murmurs, trying to distract her while she swims for both of them. “You can almost pass as a Death Valley citizen. You even have the mushroom’s accent.”

Her jokes always work wonders.

“Mushroom’s accent?”

“Yeah, that’s the one we call people that speak like they are high on dead mushrooms. Which is in fact most population of Frogs, who are indeed high on that. You’ll get it when you get there.”

Joohyun nods, picturing her life in a foreign land where everything she’s ever heard about is it is dark and dangerous. Maybe it isn’t. Another lie from the repertoire of her parents’ propaganda. Another excuse to go to war with them, to kill people and steal their land.

“Jimin must hate my family.” She thinks aloud out of nowhere, letting Seulgi pull her on a boat with difficulty, just in time for a crocodile to open its mouth where Joohyun’s leg was. She doesn’t seem to mind the crocodile now, and Seulgi worries in silence about her mental state that’s deteriorating with time.

“She doesn’t hate you,” she clarifies, dodging the affirmation. She softly pushes Joohyun to lie with her back on the boat so a jumping crocodile doesn’t eat her head too while Seulgi rows in the direction of The Dyes King store.

“She should,” she murmurs. “I let them do all of those things,”

“You didn’t know,” Seulgi reassures her. “And even if you knew, there was nothing you could have done to stop it. They can’t defend themselves anymore, you have no way of knowing why they chose what they chose. Torturing yourself because of someone’s else decision is not worth it.”

“You sound like a wise person,” Joohyun says, quickly putting her hand on the water to clean her face from the black drops that come out of her hair caused by the dye. Without someone to maintain her hair, the roots of her natural, lighter color have begun to sprout out already.

“I had to learn the hard way,” Seulgi shrugs quickly dropping beside Joohyun when the boat starts threatening to turn itself upside down. “Stay still.”

“What? What did you see?” she hushes back, searching for Seulgi’s hand in the dark.

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