Seoul, 2024.
The rain fell in relentless, grey sheets over the Gwanghwamun Plaza, turning the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin into a weeping shadow of its bronze self.
Kim Taehyung stood before it, his stylish trench coat soaked through, the water plastering his dark hair to his forehead. He wasn't seeking shelter. He was waiting.
In his hand, he clutched a small, leather-bound journal, its pages yellowed and brittle. It was the only thing his grandmother had left him before she passed away that morning.
He had expected tears. Grief.
Instead, she had looked at him with an urgency that burned brighter than the fever consuming her.
"Taehyung-ah," she had whispered, her voice a dry rasp. "You must go back. The clock is wrong. It has always been wrong."
He'd thought it was the delirium talking. But then she'd pressed the journal into his hands. "Your great-grandfather didn't abandon us. He was taken. By the clock. By the General."
Now, standing in the rain, he opened the journal.
His great-grandfather's handwriting, elegant and frantic, filled the pages. The last entry was dated October 26, 1894.
"The General knows I've seen it. The clock in his study doesn't just tell time, it commands it. I tried to flee to Incheon, to catch a ship back to our home, but his men found me. They are taking me back to Hanseong. To him. To Captain Jeon.
If you are reading this, my descendant, know that my love for our family was true. And know that the curse is real. The Captain is not just a man of this era. He is a man out of time, binding souls to his own to fuel his power. Mine will be the next. The clock will tick, and I will be gone."
Taehyung slammed the journal shut, his heart hammering against his ribs.
A cold that had nothing to do with the rain seeped into his bones.
His great-grandfather, Kim Min-jun, a humble scholar, hadn't simply disappeared into the chaos of the late Joseon dynasty. He had been taken by a man named Captain Jeon. A man with a clock that could steal souls.
A flicker of movement in the reflection of a puddle caught his eye.
He looked up. The plaza was empty, yet he felt a presence. And then he saw it: a pocket watch, lying on the wet stone where there had been nothing a second before.
It was ornate, silver, with a strange, swirling engraving on the case. The hands were frozen at 11:44.
Taehyung reached down and picked it up. The metal was warm, despite the cold rain.
As his fingers closed around it, the second hand gave a violent, impossible jerk and began to spin wildly counter-clockwise.
The world lurched.
The grey sky swirled into a vortex of colours—the neon of city lights bleeding into the deep indigo of a night sky lit only by stars and oil lamps. The sound of car horns was replaced by the clip-clop of horse hooves and the creak of wooden wagon wheels. The asphalt under his feet turned to hard-packed dirt.
When the spinning stopped, Taehyung was kneeling in the mud of a dark, narrow alley.
He stumbled to his feet and peered out.
He was on a street of low, tiled-roof houses. In the distance, he could see the towering stone walls of a great city, and beyond them, the peaks of mountains he knew well, but which now seemed wilder, untamed. He smelled smoke from charcoal fires, the acrid scent of human waste, and the unmistakable, metallic tang of fear in the air.
He was in Hanseong.
And above him, the clouds parted to reveal the moon, a sliver of silver, just as it would have been on that night in 1894.
He had travelled back in time.
And somewhere in this labyrinthine city, Captain Jeon Jungkook was waiting.
End of Prologue
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