Seventeen years ago.
Underground Cathedral of the Twelve Wings, Sector-13 Depths.
The night was supposed to be perfect.
A woman nine months pregnant lay chained to a black altar, her belly glowing with the outline of twelve folded wings.
Around her, thirty-three eclipse priests chanted in the mirror-bleeding tongue of the Devourer.
Her name was Yoon Hae-Won.
Twenty-two years old.
Hadn't seen the sky in seven years.
At her side stood a silver-haired girl, only twelve, holding a ceremonial dagger whose edge hummed like a wasp nest.
Her red eyes were newborn, unblinking, terrified.
They called her Red-Eyed Aria.
Her true name had been erased the day her Stigma awakened—
an open eye carved onto her throat, weeping light whenever the Devourer's name was spoken.
She was the backup vessel.
The body they'd use if Hae-Won or the unborn child failed the ritual.
The high priest raised his hand.
"It is time."
Aria lifted the dagger.
Hae-Won met her gaze with exhausted, gentle eyes.
"It's all right," she whispered. "Cut deep. Make it quick for both of us."
Aria's hand trembled.
She had been taught that hesitation was sin.
That mercy was the only unforgivable crime.
That the child inside the womb wasn't human—
only the skin the Devourer would wear.
She exhaled.
The dagger fell.
CLANG.
It hit stone.
Gasps drowned the chant.
Aria had dropped it.
In the silence, Hae-Won smiled—her teeth already stained red from biting through her own tongue.
"Good girl."
Then Hae-Won tore the chains apart with her bare hands—
chains blessed by Stellar Lords, chains that once held Hollow Saints—
and ran.
She ran carrying the unborn Si-Hyun, leaving a storm of corpses and burning scripture behind her.
Aria stood frozen as bodies fell around her, red eyes wide, watching the woman vanish into the drainage tunnels.
The high priest struck her across the face, cracking bone.
"You were supposed to be perfect."
That night, the cathedral burned.
Aria was dragged out half-dead and delivered to the Sixth Ring as compensation.
But she remembered one thing clearer than any sermon:
the smell of blood, incense, and the first real kindness she'd ever known—
from the woman she was meant to kill.
Present Day – Sixth Ring, Faith Sanctum
The Faith Sanctum floated above all seven rings, a cathedral of white stone and living radiance.
At its heart knelt the First Stellar Lord:
Leah – the Saint of the Last Sun.
Seventeen years old. Blind. Silver hair brushing the floor.
Bare feet pressed against cold marble.
Her Stigma was pure white—
an open hand over her heart, bleeding soft gold.
She prayed without words.
The silence was so absolute the artificial suns dimmed in respect.
Holographic windows shimmered around her, showing every ring and sector.
One window zoomed into Cheolchi Station, where a boy lay unconscious atop a throne of collapsed subway doors—
eight wing-scars bleeding black across his back.
Leah's blind eyes filled with tears.
She reached out, fingers brushing the glass.
A golden fingerprint glowed over Si-Hyun's cheek.
"He's hurting," she whispered.
The Sanctum answered with a wind that had no source.
Leah rose.
Her white robe slid off like falling moonlight, revealing armor forged from solidified prayer.
"Tell the Sixth Lord his games end tonight.
The boy belongs to the Light now."
Surface – Cheolchi Station, Midnight
Si-Hyun awoke to a child's scream.
Not fear.
Pain.
He was moving before his mind caught up.
The scarf leapt off his shoulders like a panicked bird.
He ran.
The children were gathered in a circle on the lowest platform, pale and trembling.
In the center, Ryeo-Won convulsed—
black veins crawling beneath her skin.
Her flower had turned black.
Dripping.
"Ryeo-Won—!"
He touched her cheek.
Ice.
The scarf tried to wrap her—
and recoiled violently, as if burned.
Si-Hyun's blood went cold.
Proximity infection.
His own leaking authority was rewriting the children.
Starting with the one who always stayed closest to him.
Ryeo-Won's eyes snapped open.
Pitch black.
No whites.
She smiled—too wide, too many teeth.
"Oppa," she sang in a voice not hers,
"the sun is so pretty when it screams."
Then she coughed up a mouthful of black feathers.
Si-Hyun screamed.
Not rage—
terror.
He pulled her close, wings trying to burst from his back, desperate to absorb the corruption.
But they wouldn't come.
The eighth wing had torn something vital.
He was empty.
KRRRRAAAASH!
Light exploded through the ceiling—
golden, warm, real.
A girl descended on wings made of prayer.
Leah.
She landed between Si-Hyun and the darkness eating Ryeo-Won from the inside.
Her blind eyes found him with perfect precision.
"Don't look."
She placed her glowing hand on Ryeo-Won's forehead.
The black veins shriveled, retreating like shadows at sunrise.
The feathers dissolved to ash.
Ryeo-Won collapsed, breathing again.
Leah didn't lift her hand.
She cried silently as she worked.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I'm so sorry I'm late."
Si-Hyun stared, shaking.
The scarf coiled between them, hissing like something cornered.
Leah finally turned her blind eyes toward him.
"You're not the Devourer.
You're the wound it left behind.
And wounds can be healed."
She reached out.
Golden warmth poured through him.
His missing arm, his shattered wings, the scars—
for one heartbeat, the pain stopped.
For one heartbeat… he felt warm.
Then the scarf snapped.
It wrapped around Leah's wrist, yanking her hand away.
Black cloth met golden light.
Neither yielded.
Leah didn't resist—only sighed.
"I won't force you.
But if you stay down here, every child will bloom black flowers.
Come with me.
Let me teach you how to close the wound instead of widening it."
Si-Hyun's voice cracked.
"If I leave… they'll be defenseless."
Leah gave a small, ancient smile.
"I am the First Stellar Lord.
No one touches what I protect."
She knelt, Ryeo-Won in her arms, and pressed her forehead to his.
"**I was born to wait for you, Si-Hyun.
Seventeen years in the dark… waiting for the failed vessel to choose something other than revenge.
Choose.
Stay and watch them become what you fear.
Or come with me—
and learn how to carry the darkness
without letting it carry you.**"
Behind her, six perfect golden wings unfurled.
Before her, eight broken wings of night trembled.
The scarf tightened around Si-Hyun's throat—
terrified.
For the first time in his life, Si-Hyun cried.
Silent, furious tears that steamed when they touched the scarf.
He looked at the children.
At Ryeo-Won's sleeping face.
At the falling black petals.
Then he stood.
The wings folded away.
He placed his shaking hand in Leah's.
The scarf screamed, a raw, unfiltered sound of abandonment.
Si-Hyun looked back at it—
and spoke with pity.
"I'm sorry."
Leah pulled him upward—
into the light.
As they ascended through the poison clouds,
all the black petals in Cheolchi Station slowly turned red again.
And high above, in the Faith Sanctum,
the Saint of the Last Sun held the Devourer's failed vessel against her heart—
and whispered the first gentle words he had ever heard
from someone still alive.