Hami was innocent in the way that only children can be. No weight of the world to carry on their shoulders, no blood wrung from their hands. But still, the dead body of Hami is laid at his feet, fur stained with blood and soot, and the spirit that’s left of him wavers cool under Bass’ burning hands.
“Will you take care of him?” Hami asks, eyes sheltered by fat tears. “I’ll have Mama. But Yaelic’s never been alone before.”
“Yes,” Basuin answers. “I swear it.” There’s a weakness in his voice. Something so quiet beneath Yaelic’s grief.
Then, Basuin’s hands begin to slip through Hami’s image, just as Yaelic’s had, and he yanks them away like he’s caught fire. A shake in his bones, fingers growing cold to touch.
“Will Am-sa walk me?” Hami wipes his eyes with his fists. “To the Winter River?” His spirit fades more every second.
He feigns a grasp on Hami’s narrow shoulders, fingers trembling just above the boy’s waning form. If he still has a heart, he swears there’s a weight tied to it trying to drown him. He’s sinking, like his palms sink into the silhouette of Hami’s arms if he isn’t careful.
“She isn’t here right now,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
Hami, so young and so strong yet, shakes his head. “I’m glad. Am-sa would’ve been hurt.”
His chest aches. Ren is hurt. Her blood, and Hami’s too, is on Basuin’s hands.
“Would you…” Hami struggles. “Would you walk me, then? To find Mama?” Despite knowing him as an enemy, Hami asks his last request with a shy innocence that any child would. Because what child wants to die alone? No human being, no spirit, wants to die alone.
But Basuin hangs his head. This hurts worse than if someone ran him through with his own sword. Worse than when the wolf-man shoved its claws inside of him and carved out a home as if he was a pig made for stuffing. To be eaten. If Basuin of Ankor ever cried, he would cry now.
He wets his dry lips and meets Hami’s eyes. The boy is fading into the background, lost to the burned remains of Gyeosi surrounding them.
“I can’t, Hami.” He squeezes the boy’s nonexistent shoulders. “I have to stay with Yaelic.” All lies. He doesn’t know where it is; doesn’t know how to be a god. Lying to a dead boy, how cruel. “But your mama will find you, I promise.”
At the sound of Yaelic’s name, Hami smiles, his cheeks all round and full and pressing his eyes into thin, tearful things.
“Then I’m happy,” Hami says. “I’m happy—I get to see Mama, and Yaelic won’t be alone. Thank you, Wolf God.” He bows his head, wheat-brown hair covering his eyes. “Tell him goodbye for me, please.”
Basuin falls, sitting back on his heels and staring at the forest floor. His hands are outstretched before him, weak and empty. His god mark sits in his palm, black.
“I will,” he says, but Hami has long been gone.
Yaelic falls atop his brother’s body and screams into bloodied fur. But dead bones barely muffle his cries. He sobs upon Hami’s body and Basuin lays a hand on his shoulder to pull Yaelic into an embrace.
He hopes they found each other, Hami and their mother.
Basuin reaches up to his neck, dirty fingers clutching his mother’s godstone. He’d do anything to hear her voice. Just one more time would be enough. To hear her call Basuin her son again.
I’ll miss you, my Basuin, she said when he stood before her in the uniform the legion provided him.
I’ll be back as Officer Basuin, he told her, proud and also not so proud. His mother simply smiled at him, in that kind and consuming way she always did, patting his hand.
And yet, you’ll always be my son, she said.
If he had never marched off to war, would someone like Ren have walked him to the Winter River, to see his mother again?
Ren sneaks up on him, her gentle hand falling to his shoulder. The quiet of it makes him jump, neck snapping to look up at her. Those eyes of hers, dark and knowing, could haunt him. It isn’t hollow, that kind of sadness. It’s so full and pure and it lives in him as much as it lives in her.
She leans her weight onto him, using his shoulder to hold herself up. Her head falls, as though she can no longer hold it up herself. Bass shoots to his feet, wrapping an arm around her, and she slumps into the shelter of him. She’s sweating, the sickly coat of it making her blunt bangs stick to her forehead.
“I came too late,” she says, eyes closed and head fallen to his shoulder.
“So did I,” he murmurs. If only he could kiss her head, wipe the sweat from her brow, and banish her sorrows away. But he cannot, so he holds Ren in the aftermath of destruction, staring into the forest.
You see it now, the wolf-man says—not a question.
Basuin does. He sees it now.
