It was familiarity.
The sky bled red and purple, streaked with scars of dark lightning, and yet... the air didn’t burn my lungs. The ground beneath my boots didn’t feel cursed. The heavymiasma that should’ve brought me to my knees simply... parted around me. Like it recognized me.
I clenched my jaw as I walked behind Jisoo and Taeyang, the towering bones of ancient beasts forming a jagged skyline around us. A chill skated down my spine, but not from fear—more like anticipation. Recognition.
“Taeyang,” I called out quietly.
He turned, his dark eyes wary.
“What?”
“Does it feel... wrong to you?”
His brow furrowed.
“Of course it does. This place was built on blood.” He hesitated, gaze flicking to me. “You shouldn’t be so calm.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, forcing myself not to look away.
“I thought I’d be afraid. I thought I’d feel... sick. But I don’t. I feel...” I hesitated. “Like I’ve been here before. Like I belong.”
He didn’t answer. But I saw the flicker in his eyes, the way his hand rose to his chest again—always there,always reaching for something he wouldn’t name. The same look Rheon wore when he was near me.
We didn’t speak for the rest of the trek. And I couldn’t shake the thought echoing louder than my heartbeat:What am I?
That night, as they prepared camp near the hollowed remains of a scorched temple, I sat apart, perched on the ridge of a curved spine that jutted from the ground like the rib of a buried god. My fingers traced the runes on my blade, but my mind was far from steel.
The stars above pulsed red, but I knew them. Not from the sky over Seoul, but from somewhere buried deep in my soul. As if my blood had mapped them long before I was born.
“Why doesn’t the dark touch me?” I whispered into the silence. “Why does this place feel like home?”
A wind stirred the ash around me, but no voice answered. Only the weight of a thousand ghosts—none of them mine, but all of them familiar.
Jisoo watched me from the edge of the camp. I felt his gaze like static on my skin. Not threatening. Not curious.
Afraid.
Afraid of what I was becoming.
Afraid of what I’d always been.
--------???--------
The demon realm stretched out before us, all crimson skies and jagged obsidian ridges that clawed at the heavens. The path to the old altar—where Rheon’s curse was born—was winding, forgotten, and thick with the kind of silence that didn’t feel natural. It felt like a held breath.
I tightened my grip on the hilt of my blade, sensing it before I saw it. The air shifted—like a tremor crawling beneath my skin.
Taeyang was ahead, his massive frame tense, eyes scanning the horizon.
“We’re getting close,” I murmured.
Jisoo chuckled under his breath.
“You can feel it too, can’t you?”
I glanced at him. There was something unreadable in his gaze. Not mischief. Not smugness. Something colder. Distant.
Then all hell broke loose.
