The screams stopped as suddenly as they had begun.
In their place came the low, wet sound of something massive dragging itself across fractured concrete.
SFX: SHLLLKK… SHRRRKK…
Si-Hyun stood alone inside the ribcage cathedral of the dead Saint.
The black crystal was gone—devoured, dissolved, claimed.
Only its weight remained:
a cold star pressed against his heart, beating out of sync with his own.
One beat mortal.
One beat older than mortality.
He took a slow breath.
The air tasted different now.
Sweeter.
Charged.
Like the moment before lightning touches the earth.
His scarf moved again.
This time, unmistakably.
The frayed hem lifted—
SFX: fwwmp—
curled, and traced the line of drying blood along his lip.
Tender.
Almost apologetic.
Then it wrapped around his neck a second time.
Tighter.
Possessive.
Si-Hyun stared at it.
"…You too?" he asked quietly.
His voice echoed strangely inside the corpse cavity—
as if the Hollow Saint itself was listening.
The scarf answered by tightening until his breath hitched—
SFX: KNNN—
then loosening just enough to keep him alive.
A warning.
Or a promise.
He stepped out of the ribcage.
The red dusk outside had darkened, bruised to a deep violet smear over Sector-12.
Above, the poison clouds swirled in slow, deliberate circles—
forming the faint outline of a colossal eye.
Thirty kilometers wide.
Only those whose Stigmas were bleeding could see it.
Si-Hyun saw it.
He also saw the silence.
Sector-12 was never silent.
Gunfire, screams, the wet rip of monsters eating corpses—
those sounds were its lullabies.
Tonight there was nothing but his own heartbeat
and the second, older heartbeat living inside it.
Then the silence cracked.
"Found the little rat."
Three figures dropped from the broken rooftops.
Iron Teeth enforcers—black-market scavenger killers.
Red bandanas soaked in monster blood.
Stigmas glowing faint crimson:
a wolf's head, a spider, a cracked skull.
The leader—a woman missing her left ear—grinned with teeth filed to points.
"That was our Saint, scavenger. Tendons were already sold.
You just stole three months' worth of product."
She flicked her wrist.
SFX: SHNNN—CLAKK.
A chain whip with a rotating bone saw spilled open like a hungry tongue.
The others spread out, blocking the only exits not clogged by corpse.
Si-Hyun looked at them the way a tired man looks at rain.
The woman noticed his eyes—
one amber bleeding light,
one pitch black swallowing it.
Her grin faltered.
"…You're the kid from the bleeding wave just now."
She stepped back.
The chain whip slowed.
Si-Hyun tilted his head.
"You people," he said softly, tasting each word, "used to take my food rations when I was nine. Do you remember?"
The woman's remaining ear twitched.
Si-Hyun took one step forward.
His scarf rippled outward like spilled ink given life.
SFX: FWWSSSHH—
The temperature dropped ten degrees.
The second enforcer—the one with the spider Stigma—opened his mouth to speak.
He didn't finish.
The scarf moved faster than sight.
SFX: SHK—SHK—SHK—SHK—SHK—SHK—SHK.
Seven tendrils shot out,
puncturing his shoulders, knees, and throat in perfect silence.
He hung from the air like a broken puppet.
The tendrils didn't retract.
They thickened—sprouting tiny barbs that drank blood as fast as it spilled.
The spider Stigma peeled off his skin like burning paper—
SFX: SSSSSS—
and dissolved into the scarf.
Ten seconds.
That was all it took for a grown man to become a dry husk.
The scarf withdrew, now wet, heavier, half a meter longer.
It settled around Si-Hyun's neck with a soft, satisfied rustle.
SFX: fflutter…
The woman with the missing ear dropped her chain whip.
She ran.
Or tried to.
Si-Hyun raised one hand.
The shadow beneath him exploded outward—
a perfect circle of void ten meters wide.
SFX: VMMMM—WHUMMMMM.
From it rose translucent wings—
twelve of them, folded tight against nothing.
The woman made it three steps before the wings unfolded once.
SFX: DOOM—
Pressure crushed her to the ground.
Bones cracked like dry wood.
SFX: KRRRK—KRRRRK.
She screamed.
Si-Hyun walked over and crouched beside her.
Still thin, underfed, messy-haired, clothes torn.
Only his eyes were different now.
"Do you remember?" he whispered.
She tried to crawl.
The scarf looped around her ankle and dragged her back.
"I asked you a question."
She spat blood.
"N-no… I don't remember shit, you freak—"
The scarf tightened.
Her ankle turned to powder.
SFX: CRRK—
Si-Hyun rose to his feet.
"That's fine," he said.
"I remember for both of us."
He turned to leave.
Behind him, the scarf hoisted the woman into the air by her shattered leg.
Her scream cut off halfway.
When Si-Hyun reached the corpse's edge, he looked back once.
Three dry husks hung from the Saint's ribs—
wind chimes made of leather and regret.
His scarf curled warmly around his throat.
Si-Hyun touched it with two fingers.
"…Hungry already?" he murmured.
The scarf brushed his cheek.
Affectionate.
Greedy.
Above, the sixth sky-ring flickered—
twice this time.
And somewhere deep inside the hollow sun,
twelve wings stretched
and smiled in their sleep.
Si-Hyun pulled the scarf higher over his mouth,
turned from the corpses,
and began walking toward the heart of Sector-12.
Tonight, the Iron Teeth would learn a new rule.
There was a new king in the underworld.
And he was still very, very hungry.