Chapter 92

Cutting through his spiraling thoughts, a gentle mot of golden brilliance drifted toward him.

Fluttering like radiant wings, the golden fire settled upon the Timepiece Component, igniting into brilliant auroral flame.

There was no luxury to parse the notifications line by line.

The moment the authority settled into his core, mana erupted along the steel, expanding it into a monumental weapon.

The armament materialized in the silhouette of a colossal clock hand. Forged of obsidian steel that adjusted its pitch with the winding of a central gear, it surged forward like an executioner’s lance.

His hesitation evaporated. The moment he understood that temporal rewinding had scaled to this level, his path was clear.

Boom!

Concussive shockwaves detonated each time Hae-gun’s water barriers deflected Si-hoon’s telekinetic barrages. Across the hall, the snared Association hunter howled like a rabid hound while Yoo Tae-geun’s battleaxe cleaved down upon Moonhyuk’s bracing spear.

Tuning out the deafening cacophony, Eui-rim kicked off the tiles and lunged forward.

Directly toward the central Sigil, which glared down at him while weeping tears of dark blood.

“Aaaargh!”

The obsidian needle of the clock hand drove forward, skewering its singular mark. Screeech! The point pierced the pupil of the Sigil, forcefully cranking its temporal axis in reverse. In unison, frothing blood erupted from the lips of the tethered hunters.

“Ugh…”

A staggering recoil slammed through Eui-rim’s flesh, as though he were wrestling the fundamental laws of nature. Like a solitary mortal defying a tsunami with bare hands, an overwhelming gravity seized him, rattling his bones.

Agony twisted through his viscera, and warm crimson trickled from both nostrils. Wiping his upper lip with the back of his hand, Eui-rim ground his teeth together.

Stop! No! Stop it!

Frenzied shrieks battered his eardrums, but they could not reach him. Whenever the shadow-bound puppets lunged toward his back, Hae-gun’s water torrents swirled in an impenetrable vortex, intercepting every strike.

Eui-rim focused every shred of his will on anchoring the clock hand. To force the final Sigil into complete regression, he had to wring out the very dregs of his mana.

“Hyung-ah, it’s so dark here. I want to get out…”

Just then, a painfully familiar voice pierced straight through his skull.

Kang Eui-jun—who had screamed for their parents in terror that summer long ago—began sobbing into his ear when silence answered his pleas. “Hyung-ah, are you there? Can’t you open the door? I… hic… I want to come out… please…”

Do not answer. It is a hallucination. Just like the phantom of noona. If you succumb now, everything is lost.

Eui-jun is dead, Kang Eui-rim. You failed to pull him through the door.

“Hyung-ah, it’s so… scary here… Mom and Dad aren’t answering, I can’t find noona… waaah…”

Because you pulled the door shut with your own two hands.

“…Eui-jun-ah.”

Though his rational mind screamed at him to stay silent, Eui-rim whispered the child’s name. Hearing his little brother weep in terror made it humanly impossible to swallow the response.

At the whisper, a sob thick with relief echoed back.

Knock, knock, knock.

The phantom thumping against the apartment door and the ragged gasps of a suffocating child closed in around his ears.

“Hyung-ah, let me out, please open the door quickly, I miss you, it’s so terrifying here…”

Just like that sweltering summer long ago when, separated by a thin steel door, he had pressed his palms over his ears and pretended not to hear Eui-jun’s screams.

Abandoned in the pitch-black hallway, Eui-jun had wailed, crying out his brother’s name until the shadows took him.

Crawling toward him on shattered knees, ‘Eui-jun’ wept uncontrollably. Moments earlier, an Association hunter had lain in that spot. Yet before Eui-rim could blink, a grotesque shadow-entity wearing the form of his dead younger brother reached a trembling hand toward him.

“…No.” Eui-rim choked on a ragged breath.

Only after the syllable left his throat did he realize he had stopped breathing altogether.

The realization that he had momentarily succumbed to the hallucination hit him with sickening, acute clarity.

“Hyung-ah, it hurts so much, it burns… waaah…”

Blame me instead, just as you did when you wore noona’s face.

If you had cursed me for surviving alone, screaming that I should have died in that hallway, I would have accepted it without protest.

When Eui-rim squeezed his eyes shut, desperate weeping crowded against his cheek. Voices begging for salvation, pleading to be pulled from the dark, crying that they were terrified, overlapped in an endless chorus.

Do not lose yourself. It is a fabrication. Eui-jun never crossed that threshold. Swallowed by the dark, he never came back.

Do not falter before the death throes of a dying Fragment. I must finish this now.

I must end it.

Click.

The sound of gears locking into place rang out in a split second.

The crushing pressure suffocating his frame suddenly dissipated, and the entities bound to the shadows shrieked like piercing tinnitus.

Absolute stillness descended. The phantom of Eui-jun, who had been weeping into his ear, alongside Kim Si-hoon and Yoo Tae-geun, froze in suspended silence under the three-minute rewind window.

Eui-rim shook his head to clear his numb senses. His ears popped as though he had vaulted into the stratosphere, his ocular nerves throbbing with dull pain.

I still have to shatter the Sigil.

The Timepiece Component was consumed to anchor the rewind; I must take a weapon from someone to deliver the finishing blow…

Yet his limbs refused to obey, as though bound in leaden chains. Knowing he had to strike while the temporal lock held, simply remaining upright against the clock hand pushed him to his absolute limit.

Why won’t my body move? There is no time for this.

Did the complete drainage of my mana cause this collapse? Or did consecutive Impact Offsets tear my nerves apart?

It doesn’t matter. I have to pull myself together. This is a duty only I can fulfill. I must drive the final stake into its heart. Only then can we escape this nightmare.

“No, you don’t,” a low voice murmured. “You have me.”

A familiar, steady hand caught him by the elbow.

As if reading his thoughts with perfect clarity, Hae-gun pulled him firmly against his chest, whispering in a low, unwavering tone. “You can use me as your weapon, Eui-rim-ssi.”

“…”

“Now that the domain has been nullified,” Hae-gun said.

In the same breath, monstrous mana ignited. As though the currents of creation were converging upon a single axis, an unfathomable vortex gathered at Hae-gun’s fingertips, sending concussive ripples through the air.

And toward the target paralyzed within the reverse flow of time, a cataclysmic tsunami surged forth.

Like an arrow loosed for the heart of the world.

Kaboooom!

The shadows spanning the hall were atomized in an instant. The root-like tendrils infesting the hospital were obliterated, leaving not even a trace of ash behind.

Just as all mortal constructs bow before primordial law, the corruption dissolved into nothingness.

As the howling shockwave settled, Eui-rim’s vision cleared. The host that had mimicked Eui-jun had reverted to an unconscious human, and the suffocating fog of darkness was scrubbed clean from the dungeon.

“I’m fine now,” Eui-rim managed, his voice muffled.

When he lightly patted Hae-gun’s shoulder, a heavy, silent gaze fell upon him. Forcing his breathing to stabilize, Eui-rim tried to step back. There was no time to linger if he wanted to inspect the flashing notification windows and conclude the raid.

Yet Hae-gun did not loosen his grip. Instead, his large hand cradled the back of Eui-rim’s head, pressing Eui-rim’s face deeper into his chest—so tightly one might wonder if he intended to smother him.

“Seo Hae-gun-ssi,” Eui-rim protested quietly.

When Eui-rim spoke against his collarbone, a low laugh like an exhale brushed his ear. Tightening his hold just enough to shield him from view, Hae-gun whispered too softly for the others to catch: “I’ll let you go when you’re actually alright.”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t want the others to see you crying, would you?” Hae-gun murmured.

…I’m crying?

Lifting his head in a daze, Eui-rim brushed trembling fingers over his cheeks, only to find them slick with moisture. Staring blankly at the wetness on his skin, he slowly curled his hand into a fist.

Ah. That was why.

Was the reason my throat seized so violently because I was choking back sobs?

Each time his eyelashes fluttered, pooled tears fell like heavy rain. As he held his breath, desperately swallowing down the convulsing sobs, Hae-gun’s hand gently stroked his hair.

Blinking through the blur, Eui-rim scrubbed the tears and dried blood from his face. Then, fixing his stare on the translucent notification glowing over Hae-gun’s shoulder, he gritted his teeth.

For if he did not anchor himself to reality, he felt he would surrender to that warmth and remain in Hae-gun’s arms forever.

Until his tears finally ceased, Eui-rim simply read and reread the luminous script hovering before his eyes.

[END of VOLUME 3]