Night That Died in Scarlet
Chapter 19: Night That Died in Scarlet
The serpent’s yawn tore the air apart.
Eun-ha and Yeonhwa had been fighting it for quite a while now, and it hadn’t even budge.
Flame and shadow slammed into its head at the same time, from two opposite sides.
“Get away from him! You can’t even scratch that thing!” Eun‑ha shouted.
“Move your butt!” Yeonhwa snapped back. “You’re blinding my line—"
The blast of cold that came out of the serpent’s open jaws froze their words in the air. Frost exploded across the floor.
Fragments of stone and old concrete rained down.
I lay half‑propped against a broken pillar, breath sawing in and out of bruised lungs, watching them try to kill something they couldn’t.
That thing was just waking up from his sleep, just warming up.
Yeonhwa was to my left, a dark smear against white and grey.
Shadows crawled up her legs, her arms, her back, thicker every time another section of ceiling
threatened to come down.
The dungeon’s weight sat on her shoulders, literally.
Eun‑ha stood on a higher slab deeper in, a ring of fire circling her like a second spine.
Every time the serpent swung its head toward me, her flames snapped out, searing eyes, scales, anything she could reach.
“This is all your fault,” she bit out, hurling another spear of flame at one of the beast’s eyes. “If you hadn’t been playing queen of the sewers up there—”
“My fault?” Yeonhwa spat. “You walked us into your firetraps and broke the ceiling!”
Rock dropped beside her as if agreeing.
She thrust both hands up, and the shadows around her surged, catching the falling slab and holding it an arm’s length above her head. Every muscle in her throat stood out.
The serpent lashed its tail.
The impact made the whole cavern tilt.
A chunk of floor tore free near the far wall and fell, revealing black below. Not monster‑dark. Depth‑dark. A vertical drop.
Above that, near the torn edge, I saw it: a narrow crack in the stone. A darker smudge that wasn’t just shadow.
An exit. Or the false hope of one.
“Up there,” I rasped. My voice sounded thin against the chaos. “Right side. There’s a crack.”
Eun‑ha’s eyes flicked that way, quick.
She saw it.
“If we can reach that, we’re out,” I said.
“Then we reach it,” Eun‑ha replied, already hauling my arm over her shoulder.
The worm slammed its tail into the floor again. The fissure widened. A section of ground between us and the tunnel collapsed outright, dropping into black.
Yeonhwa’s shadows thickened where the rock still held, turning the remaining strip into a makeshift bridge.
She knelt near its centre, hands still pressed to the ice, shoulders shaking with the strain of holding up half the ceiling and the path under our feet at the same time.
“Go!” she shouted. “Before we are buried alive!”
Her voice tore on the last word.
Eun‑ha gritted her teeth and pulled me toward the shadow‑reinforced strip.
The worm reared behind us, dislodging more stone. Its head smashed into the cavern roof, knocking loose a slab over Yeonhwa’s position.
A slash came down in a straight line toward her back.
It would cleave her body in half.
There was no way she could dodge without dropping everything she was holding up.
For a split second, I watched the trajectory like it was happening to someone else.
Then my body moved on its own.
[Casting] a shield over Yeonhwa’s head.
Our souls might have been different, it was still his body. And his heart was beating, that heart still loved her, so much that it forced me.
The falling slab hammered into the half‑formed shield, deflecting enough to miss her spine and slam into the ground beside her, spraying shards of ice.
The barrier shattered a heartbeat later.
Yeonhwa jerked, eyes wide.
Her head turned slowly, as if she was afraid to look.
Our gazes met.
“You—” she started.
Another crack ran through the bridge under her knees.
It kept falling apart.
Every second we stayed here, the odds of all three of us being buried alive went up.
Yeonhwa bit down on whatever she’d been about to say.
Blood ran from the corner of her mouth. I realised only then that it wasn’t just dust in her throat. The strain of holding that much weight with mana that had already been chewed raw was tearing at her from the inside.
She swallowed it and forced more shadows into the bridge, thickening the path.
“Take him and go,” she said. “I’ll hold it till you’re clear. Then I will follow.”
Eun‑ha laughed, short and low.
“Alright,” she said.
Her hands pressed deeper into the ice.
The shadow‑bridge stopped cracking for a moment.
“Move,” she hissed.
There was no time to untangle whether that was bravado or threat.
Eun‑ha adjusted her grip on me, one arm locked tight around my waist, and stepped onto the shadow‑reinforced path.
It flexed under our weight, but held.
The fissure yawned on either side, dark and bottomless. Hot air rose from it, carrying the stink of the worm’s tunnel and something older.
Behind us, the boss slammed into the wall again. The sound rolled over us like thunder.
Halfway across, the bridge lurched.
A section near Yeonhwa’s end splintered. Stone sheared away, leaving her on a shrinking island of ice and shadow, the gap between us widening.
Her fingers clawed harder at the floor.
Shadows surged to patch the missing pieces, but they trembled now, less solid than before.
“You’re losing it,” Eun‑ha said.
“Then run faster,” Yeonhwa shot back.
Her eyes didn’t leave me.
They never did.
Just me, being dragged further away with every step.
We reached the far side a breath later.
Eun‑ha stepped off the last strip of shadow and onto more solid ground, right in front of the ragged hole that might have been a way out.
She didn’t stop.
She didn’t turn to offer a hand back.
She shifted her stance, set me more securely against her, and looked over her shoulder.
Not at Yeonhwa’s bleeding hands.
Not at the bridge that was one bad tremor away from breaking.
At the point where it met the rock.
At the narrow ledge her rival was kneeling on.
Our eyes met.
“Don’t,” I said quietly.
She smiled without humour.
“You’re heavy,” she said. “Heavier than you look.”
The worm roared again.
A fresh wave of cracks shot through the cave.
For one absurd second, I thought maybe she’d aim at the boss. Burn a path. Pull Yeonhwa across.
She raised her hand.
The flame that gathered there didn’t point at the beast.
It pointed at the stone just under Yeonhwa’s feet.
“Cha Eun‑ha,” Yeonhwa said.
Her voice was too soft for this place.
“You’re not… thinking of—”
The fire lanced out.
It hit the already‑fractured edge of the ledge like a chisel.
Stone burst outward. The piece Yeonhwa was braced on shattered.
For a heartbeat, she hung there, fingers clawing at nothing, shadows reaching in a frantic tangle for any purchase.
Then gravity did what it always did.
The ground went out from under her.
Her body pitched backward, toward the fissure’s open mouth.
Her hand shot forward on instinct, reaching.
Not for rock.
Not for safety.
For me.
Her fingers didn’t touch skin.
Shadows did.
A thin, desperate line of darkness shot from her palm like a thrown rope, wrapping around my ankle.
“Sii-woooooooo—!” she screamed.
Her scream tore her throat open.
Halfway through my name, it broke. Her throat couldn’t handle the force. Blood burst from her lips mid‑shout, spattering the air, staining the ice edge red.
The rest of the sound shredded itself into raw noise.
Her body dropped.
The shadow line went taut.
For a moment, I felt her weight on it, felt the pull trying to drag me toward the fissure with her.
Behind me, Eun‑ha moved.
She didn’t try to pull me back.
Her fire lashed down along my leg, not touching flesh.
It burned the shadow like it was nothing.
The connection snapped.
Yeonhwa’s eyes widened.
They were the eyes of a girl under a collapsed staircase, watching light retreat down a hallway without her.
Her body fell into the dark.
Her scream tried to follow.
Then even that was gone, swallowed by the endless, echoing fall and the roar of the collapsing cave.
The last thing I saw was her arm still reaching toward us, fingers spread, before the fissure swallowed her and the cave’s own weight roared down like an ocean.
The shadow around my ankle evaporated.
Eun‑ha stared down into the dark where Yeonhwa had vanished.
Her shoulders rose and fell once, twice.
Then she turned her back on the abyss.
“Hahah,” she just laughed under her breath. “Let’s go.”
***
The way out wasn’t nice.
Eun‑ha half‑dragged, half‑pushed me into the torn tunnel, the two of us scraping along its rough walls. The further we got, the less the dungeon stink clung to the air.
My leg protested every movement. My ribs had settled into a steady, ugly rhythm of pain that made it hard to tell how fast my heart was beating.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
The last echo of Yeonhwa’s scream was still bouncing around the inside of my skull.
When we finally stumbled out into open air, it felt wrong.
Too bright.
Snow stretched in every direction. Low, colourless sky. Wind knifing across the ground in shallow gusts that sent powder spiralling.
Eun‑ha didn’t stop until my knees buckled on their own.
She swore under her breath, caught me before I hit the ground, and lowered me against a half‑buried chunk of concrete that might have been part of a gas station once.
Her hands hovered over my chest again, checking.
Bruised, cracked, but alive.
She sat back on her heels, breathing hard.
Her hair stuck to her cheeks. Soot streaked her jaw. The whites of her eyes were shot through with red.
Then she laughed.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t pleasant.
“…We made it. We’re alive. Just us,” she said, smiling too brightly.
Her hand came up to cover her mouth, as if she could stuff the laugh back in.
It didn’t work.
“She’s gone,” she said. “All of it. Buried under that cesspit where she belongs.”
Her gaze dropped to me.
“And you’re here,” she whispered. “With me.”
Before I could open my mouth.
She reached out, fingers brushing my face, trailing carefully over a smear of dried blood at my temple.
One moment, there was only drifting snow and empty white.
Then, someone stood there.
Not close enough to touch.
But close enough that we couldn't out run her.
Her clothes were wrong for this place. Too thin. Too clean. The wind should have torn her hair across her face, but it only lifted the ends and let them fall again.
Her eyes moved from me to Eun‑ha and back.
“You look terrible,” she said.
Eun‑ha went very still.
Her hand moved without thinking, sliding from my cheek to my shoulder, pulling me closer, as if she could hide me with her body.
Somewhere under all her arrogance, she was afraid.
“…You,” she said.
The woman tilted her head slightly.
Her gaze came back to me.
She smiled.
“You really shouldn’t steal things that belong to God, Cha Eun‑ha,” she said.
Eun‑ha’s fingers dug into my shoulder hard enough to bleed.
