The water.
Cold.
Thick.
Hungry.
It slid between Seong-jun's ribs, curled around his spine, licked the underside of his thoughts.
Every heartbeat turned into a countdown.
Every breath tasted like someone else's final one.
His memories peeled away in strips.
First the small ones:
—his mother's kimchi stew
—the way his sister's hair stuck up after nightmares
—the first cigarette behind the orphanage
Then the big ones:
—the fire that took everything
—the crows that learned to scream with human voices
—the moment he climbed into the cradle and let the black sun eat him alive to buy Aria minutes
Each memory torn loose left a hole, and the dark filled it instantly.
He was becoming a silhouette.
A man-shaped absence.
Peaceful, almost.
Then something inside the flood moved against the current.
A single black feather.
Still burning.
It cut upward through the darkness like a scalpel forged from regret.
SFX: SHHHHHHRK!
The dark shrieked—
a sound with teeth and grief and centuries of swallowed prayers.
The flood reversed.
His mouth snapped open.
He vomited night.
It splattered across the stone in thick, living ropes, writhing, clawing to crawl back inside him.
The feather spun once through the air and buried itself between his ribs like a thrown knife.
Pain detonated.
White.
Pure.
Merciful.
Sight returned—
not to his eyes,
but to the wound.
The place unfolded around him.
Not a room.
The pause between screams.
Walls of compressed shadow rose into arches that bled silence.
The floor was a single black mirror reflecting nothing except what a soul looked like after forgetting its name.
At the far end waited a throne made of unwound VHS tapes, melted rosaries, and the bones of lullabies sung to children who would never see morning.
On it rested the one that had spoken.
It wore the idea of a man the way a silhouette wears the outline of something real.
Where its face should be was a hole—
and inside the hole churned every star that had ever burned itself out screaming.
The darkness that had tried to devour him now knelt at its feet like a punished animal.
Seong-jun rose.
Black blood dripped from his lips.
The feather in his chest beat once—slow, deliberate, furious.
One step.
The mirror-floor cracked beneath his heel.
Another.
More cracks.
The throne leaned forward.
"You're supposed to be scattered," murmured a voice layered with every priest who ever lied about heaven. "You fed yourself to the cradle. Became the night so she could walk away clean. And yet you remain. Still bleeding. Still refusing to finish dying."
Seong-jun wiped his mouth.
Night smeared across his knuckles.
"I've been told I'm stubborn."
The face-hole widened, revealing teeth made of static and broken halos.
"You can't save her. She already saved the world.
Look."
A gesture.
The mirror-floor rippled.
Images spread across its surface like bruises.
A city frozen mid-morning.
A child offering a dandelion forever.
A girl with white wings hovering above it all, gaze gentle and empty as winter.
Aria.
Her scars glowed like newborn constellations.
Her lips moved.
I'm sorry.
And thank you.
The image froze.
Seong-jun stared until the reflection bled.
The throne's smile sharpened with every dead god's mouth.
"She became what she was always meant to be.
Mercy without choice.
Love without pain.
The perfect ending."
Seong-jun's fingers curled.
The feather's heartbeat quickened.
"No."
Another step.
Cracks spread outward like wings.
"That's not an ending.
That's a cage."
The throne rose.
Darkness rose with it, forming wings vast enough to erase distance itself.
"You assume you can leave," whispered a voice made of nails hammered through childhood.
Seong-jun's smile answered—
small, tired, unafraid.
"I've left worse cages."
His hand wrapped around the burning feather.
Pulled.
SFX: SHRRRRRRIP!
The wound tore open wide enough to swallow galaxies.
Out poured every crow he had ever failed to save.
They filled the cathedral like a storm made of guilt and sharp promises.
Each carried a piece of the devouring dark inside their wings, caged and screaming.
They screamed with his mother's voice.
His sister's voice.
His own.
They screamed with Aria's name.
The throne recoiled one step.
Seong-jun advanced through his own murder.
Every footstep shattered the mirror-floor into black feathers.
He reached the throne and did not stop.
His hand plunged into the hole where a face pretended to be.
Found the dark-organ that functioned as a throat.
His voice entered the place where light had gone to die.
"Listen carefully.
I died so she could choose—
not so you could steal the choice."
The darkness writhed.
He tightened his grip.
"I'm tearing this place apart until I find the door she locked herself behind.
And when I do—"
He leaned in, ruined mouth brushing static.
"I'm dragging her back.
Even if I have to burn every star you swallowed."
The thing laughed—
every church in the world burning at once.
Then it opened.
Wider.
Wider.
Showed him the way.
Beyond the hole waited the frozen morning.
The porcelain city.
The girl with white wings who mistook mercy for a cage.
Seong-jun stepped through.
The cathedral of dead light tore loose behind him, trailing like a cloak sewn from every grave he'd ever dug.
His final words echoed back into the collapsing dark:
"Wait for me, Aria.
I'm coming to be selfish one more time."
The place where light goes to die screamed as its only prisoner walked out carrying its chains.
And somewhere, in a morning too perfect to be real—
a single black feather drifted from a sky that had forgotten how to change.
It landed on a porcelain child's outstretched hand.
A crack formed.
Just enough for one tear to fall.