The throne of subway doors was cold against his back.
*CLANG… CLANG…*
The lingering echoes crawled along the concrete ribs of Cheolchi Station.
Si-Hyun sat motionless as the last red lanterns cooled into dead bone.
Hundreds of Grinders still knelt below.
Some trembled.
Some had already begun prying out their own iron teeth with knives—
*KRRK—KRRCH—PLINK…*
—offering them in shaking piles at the base of the steps.
Payment.
Surrender.
Prayer.
Anything that might keep lungs breathing one more hour.
The scarf coiled across Si-Hyun's shoulders like a sleeping panther.
Heavy. Warm.
Every few seconds it exhaled—
*Hrrrhhh…*
—a slow, satisfied sigh that almost sounded human.
He was exhausted.
Not the familiar ache of hunger or half-healed wounds.
This cut deeper—
a hollowness carved behind his eyes, dripping all the way down to the black star beating inside his chest.
He had killed the man who murdered his second parents.
He had kept an eight-year promise.
It tasted like ash.
A small sound broke the silence.
*scrt… scrt…*
The young Molar he spared earlier crawled forward, leaving streaks of diluted blood behind him.
Tears and snot carved pale lines through the grime on his face.
He reached the first step and pressed his forehead to the ground.
"Please…" he whispered. "My sister… she's in the cages. Rust Puppy. They were going to feed her to the hounds tomorrow. She's too small to work the tendon saws. Take her instead of me. Take anything."
The scarf stirred.
Curious.
Predatory.
Si-Hyun stared down at the boy for a long beat—long enough for the station's recycled air to hold its breath.
Then he rose.
The entire crowd flinched.
He walked down the steps, past the piles of self-torn teeth, past the corpses already growing sweet in the heat vents.
The boy tried to follow—
*thud*
—then collapsed.
Si-Hyun didn't look back.
He kept walking toward the deepest platform—the one no lantern had ever reached.
Behind the rusted train cars waited the gate of welded ribcages.
And beyond…
the kennels.
The scarf slid off his shoulders and flowed ahead like a black river.
*SHHHHH-crack… click-clack…*
Locks snapped.
Chains slithered to the ground like dying metal snakes.
A heartbeat later, the gate swung open from the inside.
Children spilled out.
Thirty—maybe forty.
Ages five to fourteen.
All bone-thin, all branded with the Iron Teeth mark seared into their cheeks.
Some missing fingers.
Some missing memories.
Some missing hope.
They froze when they saw him.
The scarf herded them gently—
not touching, just nudging—
guiding them beneath the broken skylight where a beam of artificial sunlight from the sixth ring fell like washed-out rain.
Si-Hyun stared at them with an expression that wasn't life and wasn't death.
A little girl stepped forward.
Seven at most.
She clutched something wrapped in dirty cloth.
Two steps.
Three.
She had to stand on tiptoe to offer it up.
A flower.
Four petals folded from red bandanas, stem shaped from a strip of copper wire.
Crude.
Beautiful.
"For the new king," she said, voice like dry leaves.
Si-Hyun reached out.
His fingers brushed the wire stem—
—and the scarf lunged.
*WHIP-SNAP!!*
Not at the girl.
At the flower.
Black cloth wrapped it and crushed it in an instant.
Red scraps fluttered like dying butterflies.
The girl didn't cry.
She had forgotten how.
Si-Hyun looked at the scarf.
The scarf looked back (somehow).
Jealous.
He grabbed it—both hands—and pulled.
The scarf tightened—
*SKRRRCH-chkk—*
—until his vision blurred.
But slowly…
slowly… it loosened.
Just enough.
Si-Hyun knelt—one knee sinking into blood-dusted concrete—and gathered the torn scraps of the flower.
He pressed them together, heat blooming from his palm—a warmth that wasn't his body's.
When he opened his hand, the flower was whole again.
Smaller. Singed.
But alive.
He tucked it gently behind the girl's ear.
The scarf shivered—
sulky, resentful—
then draped itself back around his neck like a cat refusing to admit loss.
Above them, the artificial light from the sixth ring flickered.
Once.
Longer.
Softer.
Almost like it was watching.
Si-Hyun rose.
His voice was quiet, but the station carried it like a cathedral carries a prayer.
"No more Rust Puppies."
"No more teeth pulled for water."
"From tonight… anyone who raises a hand against a child in Sector-12 answers to me."
He turned and walked back toward the throne.
The children followed at a cautious distance, drawn like moths to a black flame.
When he sat, the little girl with the flower climbed the steps and curled at his feet—already asleep.
One by one the others gathered, until the subway-door throne looked less like judgment and more like a nest.
The scarf draped itself over all of them—
warm
heavy
protective.
Outside Cheolchi Station, dawn never came.
But for the first time in seven centuries, a handful of children slept without nightmares beneath the red dusk.
Far above, in the cold circuitry of the sixth sky-ring, a maintenance log blinked into existence:
// ANOMALY DETECTED — SECTOR-12 SURFACE
// STIGMA BLEED WAVE: CEASED
// UNKNOWN AUTHORITY SIGNATURE REGISTERED
// DESIGNATION: "KING OF THE RUINS"
// THREAT LEVEL: RECLASSIFYING…
The line hung in the dark for three seconds.
Then the artificial sun dimmed by 0.7%—
as if something vast, unseen, had taken a very small bite.