One week had passed since the gate closed at Nokcheon.
The world hadn't ended.
No rifts opened.
No monsters crawled through the sky.
The news reported a "gas explosion" in the landfill. A few blurry phone videos had caught glimpses of lights and figures, but nothing clear enough to go viral. People moved on.
Earth was good at forgetting what it didn't understand.
But Yi Ji-Hyuk didn't forget.
He stood on the roof of a half-built apartment complex. The wind carried a scent of steel and cement. Below, workers shouted, cranes turned, and drills echoed through the scaffolding.
Normal life.
But Ji-Hyuk wasn't here to observe progress.
He was listening.
The veil had changed.
Not broken — not even wounded anymore — but… shifted.
Like someone had pulled it taut across a different frame.
And it wasn't Berafe pressing on it anymore.
It was something else.
Maeryn confirmed it first.
"The energy isn't Berafean," she said, floating just above the floor of Yeonho's shop. Her form flickered occasionally — the result of her detachment from any fixed realm. "It doesn't resonate with void or rift frequencies. It's something older."
"Older than Berafe?" Yeonho asked, startled.
She nodded. "Possibly external to all three planes."
Ji-Hyuk leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "Three?"
"Earth. Berafe. And the Echo Fold," Maeryn said.
Ji-Hyuk's brow furrowed.
The Fold was theory — a shadow realm said to exist between thoughts and time, a layer where discarded ideas and half-formed magic drifted like ghosts.
But theory didn't pulse against the veil like this.
Only real things did.
That night, Ji-Hyuk returned to the streets.
He didn't sleep. He didn't eat much. But he watched — alleys, rooftops, abandoned buildings.
He followed whispers only he could hear. Places where magic buzzed faintly, just at the edge of thought. A sixth sense built in war.
And finally, in a deserted subway tunnel long since closed by the government, he found it.
A mirror.
Just standing there.
No frame. No dust.
Just a perfect sheet of glass in the middle of the tracks.
It wasn't a portal.
It was a window.
He stepped closer. His own reflection moved… slowly. Half a second behind. And not exactly right.
His double didn't breathe.
Didn't blink.
And then — it smiled.
Ji-Hyuk's jaw tightened.
He raised a hand.
The reflection didn't.
Instead, it whispered.
No sound came through, but Ji-Hyuk read the lips.
"We see you."
The mirror shattered before he even touched it — not like breaking glass, but like falling water.
A ripple.
A blink.
Gone.
Ji-Hyuk stood still, pulse steady.
Not Berafe. Not illusion.
Something was watching back.
He returned to Yeonho that same night.
"They're not using rifts," he said. "They don't need them."
Yeonho frowned. "You think they're already here?"
Ji-Hyuk nodded. "Not fully. But they've begun pressing against our thoughts. That reflection? It was trying to imprint. Learn. Copy."
Maeryn floated beside the window, gazing up at the stars.
"Then we must assume Earth isn't the battlefield anymore," she murmured. "It's the prize."
Ji-Hyuk said nothing.
But inside, something stirred.
He hadn't bled across Berafe, killed gods and monsters alike, just to lose now — to something he couldn't name.
So he'd do what he always did.
Adapt. Prepare. Survive.
And when the new enemy finally stepped through?
He'd be the one waiting on the other side — blade drawn.
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