The frozen morning had no wind, yet something moved.
A single black feather drifted down through the porcelain sky and landed on the cheek of a child forever offering a dandelion.
Crack.
The sound was small—but it was enough.
Far above the silent city, the white-winged saint hovered, eyes closed, arms spread like a crucifixion made of mercy. Aria's lips trembled with the weight of a billion frozen heartbeats.
Then she felt it.
A fracture in the perfect stillness.
Her eyes snapped open—white fire bleeding gold at the edges.
Someone was walking through her ending.
Seong-jun stepped out of the torn dark and into the frozen dawn.
He did not look the same.
His body was wrapped in living shadow that moved like smoke given bone.
A broken porcelain mask covered the upper half of his face, cracked and weeping black blood.
White hair whipped behind him like funeral banners.
A long, straight sword of pure darkness rested across his back, its edge drinking the light that had forgotten how to die.
Every footstep left a print of burning crows that screamed once and crumbled into ash.
He looked up at her. Their eyes met across the width of a dead world.
Aria's wings faltered. Her mouth shaped a word that had no sound.
"Seong-jun," she murmured.
He smiled. It was not gentle.
Then the sky split open again. Something else stepped through.
Tall.
Beautiful in the way a venomous snake is beautiful.
Skin like polished obsidian.
Hair a living serpent crown that hissed and tasted the air.
Eyes molten gold with vertical pupils.
He wore robes of woven lies, each thread a promise someone once believed.
The Lord of Serpents.
Master of the Third Cradle.
The one who taught humanity how to want.
He smiled with too many teeth.
"Thief," he greeted, voice smooth as poisoned honey. "You crawled out of the place where light goes to die. I'm almost impressed."
Seong-jun's hand rested on the hilt of his shadow sword.
The Lord of Serpents spread his arms.
"Look at her," he crooned. "Your little saint. She froze the world so no one would ever hurt again. She became the cage because she loved them too much to let them bleed. And you want to break that cage. How cruel."
Seong-jun's grip tightened.
The Lord of Serpents laughed.
"Let me show you something."
He snapped his fingers. The frozen city rippled.
People unfroze in patches—only to scream.
A mother watching her child dissolve into ash.
A boy reaching for a sister who was already bones.
An old man clutching a photograph of a family that never existed.
Every face Seong-jun had ever failed to save.
They turned to him. Their mouths opened.
"Oppa…" they cried.
"Teacher…" they pleaded.
"Why didn't you save us?" they begged.
The voices layered, multiplied, became a chorus of accusation.
Seong-jun's mask cracked further. Black blood ran down his cheek like tears.
The Lord of Serpents stepped closer.
"You can't save them," he hissed. "You never could. You're just a crow that learned how to wear a man's skin. Go home. Let her finish what she started."
Seong-jun's shoulders shook.
The Lord of Serpents turned away, bored.
Behind him, the air tore open like wet paper.
Wrathhounds poured through. Massive. Skinless. Muscles dripping molten hate.
Their eyes were furnaces. They smelled him—guilt, regret, human.
They charged.
Seong-jun did not move.
The first hound leapt, jaws wide enough to swallow regret whole.
He looked at it and thought, quiet and clear:
I can't save everyone. But she's still alive out there. I won't let anything—anything—harm her again.
The hound's teeth were an inch from his throat.
Something inside him snapped open like a black sun.
SFX: KRRRRRRRACK—BOOM!
Shadow exploded from his body in a wave of screaming wings.
The wrathhound disintegrated mid-air, torn into ribbons of meat and hate.
Every hound behind it followed.
The street became a slaughterhouse painted in darkness.
Seong-jun stood in the center. His mask shattered completely.
Crimson eyes burned in a face made of night and sharp bone.
White hair floated as though underwater.
The shadow sword in his hand was now longer than he was tall, edge weeping black fire.
He had awakened the pact.
The ancient thing that lived in his guilt had finally been given a name: Thief in Heaven.
The Lord of Serpents turned slowly.
For the first time, something like fear flickered in those golden eyes.
Seong-jun smiled. It was all teeth.
"My turn." he announced.
He moved—not walked. Vanished. Reappeared behind the Lord of Serpents and swung.
The shadow sword screamed as it carved a canyon through reality itself.
The Lord of Serpents twisted, robes of lies shredding, barely parrying with a blade made of broken promises.
Sparks of pure deception showered.
They fought across the frozen city like gods having a nightmare.
Every clash shattered porcelain people into dust.
Every step cracked the sky a little more.
The Lord of Serpents struck, fast and vicious.
His fist connected with Seong-jun's face. The impact detonated.
Porcelain mask fragments exploded outward. Seong-jun's head snapped back. Crimson eyes blazed brighter.
He laughed.
Blood—black and starlit—poured from his split lip.
"Is that all?" he barked.
The Lord of Serpents hissed, serpents in his hair striking.
Seong-jun caught one by the throat and crushed it into smoke.
Then he was on him. Sword singing. Shadow wings unfurling until they blotted out the frozen sun.
The Lord of Serpents bled light for the first time in ten thousand years.
Above them, Aria watched. Tears—real, burning tears—cut tracks down her perfect face.
Seong-jun looked up mid-battle. Met her eyes across the apocalypse.
Mouthed two words: Come back.
Then he turned and drove his sword through the Lord of Serpents' chest, pinning him to the sky like an insect.
The frozen world screamed as its first crack became a canyon.
And somewhere in the distance, a porcelain child dropped his dandelion.
It hit the ground.
And kept falling.