The night crawled on.
A thin sliver of moonlight slipped through the basement window's cracked glass, cutting a pale line across the concrete floor. The rebar in Han Dae Su's grip felt like it was pulsing, like it had a heartbeat. Or maybe it wasn't the rebar. Maybe it was him.
He hadn't eaten since morning. Or was it yesterday? Time was meaningless now.
The phone screen lit up again.
Another notification.
Another image of Park Jin Seok, raising a glass in some rooftop lounge with the city skyline behind him. Surrounded by the others. The same faces. The same smiles. The same monsters who ripped his life apart like it was nothing. No one had stopped them. No one ever would.
Dae Su's hand twitched. His teeth ground together. The pressure in his chest was unbearable now, like something pressing against his ribs, clawing to get out.
And then — that voice again.
"Feel it."
His vision blurred. His ears rang.
A sharp, cold pain shot down his spine, seizing his muscles. He dropped the rebar. It clattered against the floor with a hollow, metallic echo.
He fell to his knees.
The basement spun around him. The air thickened like molasses, choking him. His veins felt like they were burning from the inside out. It wasn't illness. It wasn't weakness.
It was… awakening.
Memories not his own surged up like floodwaters. A battlefield under a crimson sky. Ten armored figures standing over a bloodied corpse. The taste of iron in his mouth. A vow made with his dying breath.
"I'll return. I swear it. Even if it takes a thousand years… I'll destroy every last one of you."
His hand slammed against the floor.
The concrete cracked.
Dae Su froze.
That wasn't possible. Not even close. He looked down, trembling, heart pounding in his ears.
A spiderweb of fractures spread from where his fist had struck the ground. Fine dust floated up, illuminated by the weak moonlight.
"No way…"
His hand was uninjured. No blood. No broken bones. Only a strange warmth — like fire beneath his skin.
The voice came again.
"You are mine now."
It wasn't threatening. It wasn't kind. It was truth.
Dae Su's breath rattled in his throat. His pulse was a drumbeat of fury and fear and something darker. That boiling rage, buried for three long years in the black hole of prison walls and ignored injustice, now fed the thing stirring inside him.
He grabbed the rebar again.
This time it felt weightless.
He swung it toward the cracked wall without thinking.
The blow landed with a sharp, deafening crack. The wall didn't just crack — it shattered. A chunk of concrete the size of his head exploded outward. The rebar bent slightly in his grip.
His shoulders rose and fell, breath heaving.
It felt… good.
Too good.
The ache in his heart, the weight of years crushed under guilt and grief, shifted. Rage pushed it aside.
He laughed. Low. Bitter.
A message alert from his aunt blinked onto his phone. He picked it up.
[Aunt Ji Soo]
"Sorry I couldn't be there. Things in the US are difficult. Stay strong, Dae Su. I'll send money next week."
He stared at the screen for a long, long time.
His hand tightened.
The screen cracked under his grip.
For the first time, Dae Su wasn't afraid of what was happening.
The light bulb above him flickered once more, then burst with a pop.
In the darkness, a figure moved in the corner of his vision. The same armored silhouette. Closer this time. He could almost make out the shape of a cruelly shaped blade at the figure's hip.
"Soon… our blood will boil as one."
Dae Su's heart thundered.
He stood slowly, shoulders squaring, eyes adjusting to the dark.
No more hiding.
No more running.
Whatever was happening to him — whatever this was — he would take it.
And when he did… he would burn this rotten world down.