First Ring – Faith Sanctum, the night that finally learned how to exist
Night—real night—had finally arrived.
The garden held its breath.
Children slept in tangled piles beneath blankets woven from living light.
Sun-Oppa curled around them like a tiny, warm star, breathing in soft solar pulses.
Ryeo-Won lay on Si-Hyun's chest, one small hand resting directly over the place where the black star inside him beat its slow, stubborn rhythm.
Si-Hyun hadn't moved in hours.
He sat with his back against the oldest dawn-tree, wings draped over the sleeping children like a dark sky trying its best to be a roof instead of a warning.
A little distance away, Lee Seo-Joon sat with his knees pulled up, fingers brushing the red flower tucked behind his ear.
He stared at it as if blinking might erase it.
He hadn't spoken since the children fell asleep.
Now, he finally did.
"I killed three billion people."
His voice was rough.
Dry from screaming.
Worn from crying.
SFX: (…wind stops)
"Year 412," he said. "The Sixth Ring was failing.
I did the math.
Thirty percent of the population… or collapse of the artificial sun."
He inhaled sharply.
"I opened the lower decks.
To vacuum."
The next words scraped out like rusted blades.
"I watched them freeze.
Mouths still open in prayer."
He gave a short, wet laugh.
"I called it mercy.
I told myself they'd thank me."
His split smile twisted.
"They did.
They named it Salvation Day.
They light fireworks made of melted bones."
A shudder.
"I kept one child's shoe."
He lifted trembling fingers as if still holding it.
"Small.
Red.
A flower drawn in crayon on the side."
His voice thinned to a thread.
"I kept it in my throne room for two hundred and eighty-seven years.
Every morning, I looked at it to remind myself that monsters are necessary."
He looked at the flower behind his ear—Ryeo-Won's flower.
"Then I came here," he whispered, "and saw thirty-seven children fold the same flower out of garbage and call it hope."
His breath broke.
"I don't know how to live with that."
Si-Hyun was silent for a long time.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low so as not to wake the sleeping weight on his chest.
"I killed a man when I was nine."
Seo-Joon slowly turned.
Si-Hyun stared straight ahead.
"I waited until he slept.
Cut his throat with a rusted scalpel.
Watched him drown in his own blood because he stole my last water."
A pause.
"I was proud of it."
The dawn-tree leaves trembled in the gentle artificial wind.
"I told myself it was survival.
But I still see his eyes every time I close mine."
Si-Hyun finally turned toward Seo-Joon.
"Difference between us," he said, "is only scale."
Seo-Joon's breath hitched.
Si-Hyun met his gaze without flinching.
"I don't forgive you."
Seo-Joon's shoulders dropped—accepting, not surprised.
"I don't know how," Si-Hyun said. "Maybe I never will."
His wings shifted, faintly glowing where dawn touched night.
"But I decided something today."
He placed a hand gently over Ryeo-Won's sleeping fingers.
"The Devourer wants us to think we're monsters.
It feeds on every time we decide the world can only keep turning if someone like us becomes worse."
Si-Hyun leaned forward.
"So we're not feeding it."
Seo-Joon stared.
"You're going to stay here," Si-Hyun said.
"You're going to fold flowers until your fingers bleed."
A soft (SHFF) as his wings tightened around the children.
"You're going to sit with the kids when they wake screaming.
You're going to learn their names.
Every one."
He nodded toward the flower behind Seo-Joon's ear.
"And every time you think you deserve to die for what you did, you are going to look at that flower and remember that she gave it to you anyway."
His voice sharpened—not cruel, but final.
"That is your punishment.
That is your redemption."
A beat.
"Live with it.
Day after day.
Until the weight either crushes you
or teaches you how to carry it
without crushing anyone else."
"There is no other way."
Seo-Joon broke.
Not loudly this time.
SFX: (…hhn—hhaa…)
Quiet, shuddering weeping—
the kind people make when they finally understand the size of the debt no apology can repay.
He bowed until his forehead touched the grass.
The flower behind his ear trembled but did not fall.
Si-Hyun watched him for a long time.
Then, with the care of someone who didn't trust softness yet,
he extended one half-dawn wing—
—and rested it gently across Seo-Joon's shaking back.
Not forgiveness.
Not absolution.
Just presence.
Enough.
Above them, Leah's artificial moon rose full and gentle—
a soft, silver lantern in a world that had forgotten how to have nights.
Below them, red flowers opened in the dark for the first time in seven hundred years—
SFX: (PFFWMP—PFFWMP)
glowing like small, stubborn hearts refusing to go out.
And deep within the hollow sun,
the Devourer dreamed of wings that refused to devour—
—and woke screaming.
SFX: (RRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—!)