When Fire Dreams of Rain
Chapter 20 – When Fire Dreams of Rain
“Cha Eun‑ha. Guild Master of Red Dragon. You stand accused of unauthorised incursion into sealed zones, collusion with outlawed organisations, interference with Association oversight, destruction of sanctified property, and repeated lethal violence outside permitted engagements. Even fabricating deaths. Oh dear, the list is getting embarrassingly long...shall I continue?”
Her voice was pleasant. It was just that gentle, tone that made everything sound inevitable.
No reply.
“You ignored three formal warnings from the Church and two from the Association, yet you continued regardless.” Her gaze never left Eun-ha. “I’m afraid there’s nothing left to discuss.”
My knees were in the snow. My wrists hurt under invisible bruises where chains had been, then hadn’t.
Eun‑ha was beside me, slightly ahead.
Her hair was ashen. Her coat burned through. She was bruised, bleeding, and clearly worn down from whatever we had survived.
The woman lifted her staff shaped sword a little.
“By the authority vested in me, I pronounce you guilty on all counts,” she said, “Your mana will be sealed, your body bound, your titles revoked, and your possessions confiscated. You will never see the sun again.”
That was it.
“—I, Saintess of the Holy Church, acting under the will of Heaven, sentence you to lifelong confinement.”
Eun‑ha’s laugh came out low and ugly.
“Really,” she finally opened her mouth. “You came all the way here, just for that?” She jerked her chin at me. “To hand me a warrant? Or is something else you want…has the Church run out of real problems? I know you are bored, but even–
“It is irrelevant,” the woman interjected. “What awaits you is a punishment for life. Nothing else matters.” She turned her head slightly.
Eun-ha was about to summon her flames.
“Come Forth.” The Saintess moved her staff.
Light came out from the staff and ran across the snow in a thin ring. When it cleared, there were boots in the white where there hadn’t been anything before.
She summoned them.
Armour. Cloaks. The kind of holy emblem every Church dog loved to polish. Most of them were women.
Heresy Inquisitor Squad. If this world had something like that.
They moved.
“Heresy Inquisition Unit,” the Saintess said. “Seize Cha Eun‑ha. Secondary objective: secure the subject. Lethal force only if absolutely
necessary.”
Subject.
About two‑thirds of the Inquisitors angled off toward Eun‑ha, chains glowing with little holy sigils hanging loose in their hands. The rest came in my direction.
Eun‑ha didn’t care about the ones walking at her.
She saw the ones walking at me.
Her jaw clenched. Her fingers curled until I saw the knuckles whiten.
The nearest Inquisitor reached for my wrists. Her grip was firm, professional, used to restraining dangerous things without hating them.
“Han Si‑woo,” she said quietly. “We will not harm you. Please don’t—”
“Don’t touch him.”
It came out of Eun‑ha like she was coughing blood.
The woman’s hand paused an inch from my skin.
“Cha Eun-ha,” the Saintess sighed. “This is not—”
“I said don’t touch him.”
I’d heard Eun‑ha angry.
I’d heard her flat.
I’d heard her cold, even while she was stabbing me.
This wasn’t any of those.
Her voice scraped at my ears, too high and too raw, like she finally snapped.
The Inquisitors around her shifted just enough to brace.
One of them reached for her right wrist.
That was the trigger.
“Get your hands off him!”
She exploded.
Fire rushed up around her arms without a casting pattern, without form, just pure energy hunting for somewhere to go.
The Saintess’ light swallowed it before it could catch armour, but the heat slammed out in all directions.
Snow under my knees hissed.
The Inquisitor at my side flinched from reflex more than necessity.
“Hold her!”
They moved.
Three of them grabbed for Eun‑ha at once. One on each arm, one trying to sweep her legs.
It was like watching people try to wrestle a live wire.
She twisted, kicked, drove her heel into someone’s knee. Metal hit metal with a solid crack and a muffled curse.
“Restraints!” another barked.
Chains snapped forward.
The moment holy sigils touched her skin, she went completely mad.
“You disgusting Church whores,” she spat. “You think you can just walk in and lay your hands on him? Did you polish your armour special for today? Was that the fantasy? Holy little dolls, all lined up to paw at what isn’t yours?”
“Shut her up.”
A gauntleted hand went over her mouth.
She bit. Hard.
The Inquisitor yanked back with a hiss, blood welling between the plates of her glove.
Flame coiled again, shorter this time, sputtering against the Saintess’ barrier like a trapped animal slamming itself into glass.
“You’re only exhausting yourself,” the Saintess said. “Cha Eun‑ha, stop. You’ve already lost. Accept it with some dignity.”
“Dignity?” Eun‑ha choked. “Keep it. But not him.”
Her eyes were locked on me, wild.
The woman in front of me finally closed her fingers around my wrists, more cautiously now.
Cold metal kissed my skin as she snapped manacles on. Sigils flared, biting my mana. My ribs screamed when they pulled my hands behind my back.
Eun‑ha saw those hands on me.
That was when she broke even more.
“DON’T TOUCH HIM!”
The sound made the Inquisitors nearest her flinch, even through their training.
She lurched forward with everything she had. Chains rattled. Two women lost their balance and had to catch themselves. The third went down on one knee, breath knocked out of her.
Eun‑ha dragged them a full step in my direction.
“If you leave so much as a bruise on him, I will tear your arms off,” she hissed. “I will make you choke on your own fingers. Do you hear me? You lay a mark on him, and I will—”
“H–How’s she’s still flaring mana through the seals?” someone grunted. “Tighten them!”
“On it—”
A fourth chain looped around her wrists. Sigils bit deeper. I watched red lines bloom under the metal where her skin split.
She didn’t stop.
Or they just couldn’t.
Blood slicked her fingers. She scraped them over the ground anyway, trying to find purchase, trying to claw her way toward me with four armoured bodies hanging off her like lead.
“Si‑woo! Look at me!” she shouted. “Do not let them! We’ve survived worse than this, and we’ll survive this too—together!”
I didn’t.
I just couldn’t.
Partly because anything I said would be used as ammunition by somebody.
Partly because I was still busy not suffocating every time someone shifted my chest.
Mostly because watching her like this did something unpleasant to my throat.
“I thought the one called Red Dragon was supposed to be elegant and composed,” one of the Inquisitors muttered. “She is pathetic.”
“You call this pathetic?” Eun‑ha laughed, high and hysterical. “Pathetic is you thinking a few chains and a choir girl are taking him from
me.”
Her body strained against the restraints so hard I could see muscle trembling through her shredded sleeves.
You don’t get that kind of strength from training or fighting monsters.
You get it from obsession.
“Move the asset,” the Saintess said.
The “asset” in question was still me.
The Inquisitors on my arms pulled.
Snow slipped under my boots.
Eun‑ha saw the distance open.
Her lungs must have already been on fire. She screamed again anyway.
“SI‑WOO!”
I’ve had ‘my’ name shouted in a lot of ways.
Moaned. Begged. Cursed.
This was the first time it sounded like someone was vomiting up their own heart.
She threw her whole weight forward.
Four armoured women went with her.
They barely managed to keep her knees from fully locking as she surged. One anchor on her legs, one on each side, one at her back. Holy chains wrapped around her like unlucky jewellery.
None of it mattered.
At that moment, the only thing in her world was the space between her hand and my coat.
Her fingers stretched.
I saw dirt under her nails. Blood. The faint white half‑moons her own grip had carved into her palm.
The Inquisitor at her back swore and drove a knee into her spine.
Her breath hitched.
Her arm dropped a fraction.
She clawed it back up.
“Just… give him… back…” she gasped. “He’s mine.”
“Your resilience and persistence are admirable,” one of them said through clenched teeth. “But it’s also irrelevant.”
“Reseal her ankle sigils. If she gets her footing we’re all going for a ride.”
“Do not break her bones,” the Saintess added. “She must remain intact.”
“Then get over here and help, Your Holiness,” the one on Eun‑ha’s legs snapped. “We’re already—”
She cut herself off.
Everyone went still for a heartbeat.
It’s instinct. When something stronger than you moves, your body notices before your brain.
The Inquisitor at my back had stepped in, closer than the others.
I didn’t see her face. Just the angle of her shoulder, the way her grip shifted on the short baton at her hip.
A quick, clean strike to the back of the head.
“Don’t,” Eun‑ha said.
No one listened.
The baton lifted.
Eun‑ha’s eyes locked on it.
Something in them snapped again.
She jerked her head up so fast one of the women holding her hair cursed. Snow and blood smeared across her cheek and brow.
“He has a head injury already, you stupid Church trash,” she rasped. “You hit him again and I’ll make sure you never swing that arm in your life—”
“She’s delirious,” someone muttered.
“I’M NOT DELIRIOUS, I’M WATCHING YOU TRY TO HURT HIM!”
Her voice scraped itself raw.
She thrashed so hard the person on her legs actually slid a little. Chains bit deep enough now that I could see her wrists swelling around them. Her mana burned against the seals, wild and directionless, enough to make the sigils pulse.
“Saintess, her veins—”
“Hold her,” the Saintess said.
They did.
Knew they might be tearing something, and did it anyway.
Eun‑ha’s face was pressed almost flat to the snow now, one cheek grinding into slush. Her mouth was less than a finger’s width from the ground.
She still tried to lift it.
Tried to look at me.
“Si‑woo,” she sobbed. “Turn your head. Look at me. Don’t let the last thing you see be them.”
I look at the ground.
Our eyes met sideways.
One of hers was bloodshot. Red veined, tears gathering at the corner.
The other…
The little vessels around that eye gave up.
Red welled where it shouldn’t.
At first I thought it was just burst capillaries. Blood in the white. A common enough sight.
Then a drop thickened at the outer corner, too dark, too slow.
It broke loose.
Ran down, cutting a line through the smear of dirt on her face.
She didn’t even flinch.
Probably didn’t feel it.
Her whole world was focused on the arc of that baton behind my head.
“DON’T HIT HIM!” she shrieked.
It sounded like it tore something inside.
“If you split his skull open I swear, I SWEAR I will crawl out of whatever hell you stuff me in, I’ll your rip hearts apart piece by piece, I’ll burn your church to the ground, I’ll—”
Tears burned behind her eyes.
“Enough,” the Saintess said sharply.
The baton didn’t slow.
Try to dodge, they’d dogpile. Try to cast shields again, the seals might fry what was left of my circuits. Try to negotiate, well that didn’t seem like an option.
Eun‑ha fought like an animal about to see its mate shot in front of it.
Her fingers dug furrows in the snow. Nails broke. Blood smeared. She tried to slam her head into the ground and bite someone’s ankle. Chains yanked her back.
“Move him!” one Inquisitor shouted.
“I’m trying!”
“Do it now—”
The strike came down.
The last thing I saw before it connected was that one bleeding eye.
One side streaming clear tears, the other leaking scarlet, both locked on me with a desperation that made my stomach twist.
She looked like she was dying.
Still reaching for a hand she couldn’t touch.
