Labor began sometime after midnight.
Dopung, the fourth prince, shot into the air, club and all.
"The youngest! The real youngest is being born!"
When the Palace erupted into chaos, it wasn't the palace maids who moved first, but the yaksha gate guards. A late-born child after fifty years—and a daughter, at that. Everyone knew what would happen the moment the news slipped beyond the royal palace.
The Yaksha King did not rise from the throne. Instead, the wineglass at his fingertips shattered first.
"...A daughter?"
Dowa, the eldest, came running and dropped to his knees.
"Yes, Your Majesty. They're both healthy."
The King did not answer for a long time. Then, in that moment, every flame in the Palace turned blue at once—the same color as the night the war between the yaksha and goblins ended five hundred years ago.
A low murmur spread among the ministers. A child born to the Human Queen. The first princess who wasn't pure-blood.
Dowa heard the murmurs behind him and thought,
*We couldn't protect even five of us. How is that little thing supposed to survive?*
At last, the King rose from the throne. He stepped on the shards of the broken wineglass without his expression changing even slightly.
"We need to give her a name."
At those words, the Palace, quiet for five hundred years, began to stir once more.
The King held the newborn in his arms for the first time. The instant his fingertips touched her, the baby stopped crying. As if those arms had always been where she belonged.
"I shall call her So."
Dowa asked carefully, "...Does that mean 'small,' Your Majesty?"
The King shook his head.
"The smallest comes last. What comes last remains the longest."
No one understood what he meant that night.
After the King disappeared into the royal chambers with the baby in his arms, only the brothers remained in the main hall.
Dosu, the second, was the first to break the silence. "A princess with human blood in her... The royal court won't sit quietly by."
"And if they don't?" Dopung, the fourth, said with a shrug.
"Then we'll protect her."
Doam, the third, stood with his arms crossed, staring out the window.
"Do you think protecting her will be easy? From the moment she's born, that child is someone's target."
Only Domok, the fifth, said nothing.
Amid his brothers, he was simply remembering the face of the newborn he'd just seen—the moment she had suddenly stopped crying.
Dowa spoke one last time.
"Starting today, this child is our sister. Nothing more, nothing less."
No one argued.
But all five of them vaguely understood how difficult it would be to keep those words true in the days ahead.