Once the thread began to unravel, the steps that had led here resurfaced one by one. Joo Cheon-oh looked different from what he’d expected, and through that dissonance, Moyong Seo realized what he’d been missing.

The realization that the world he had returned to did not perfectly align with his memories of the past had thrown Moyong Seo into a chaotic stupor. Still reeling, he had been dragged outside by none other than Joo Cheon-oh himself. Following the boy mechanically, Moyong Seo had reached a chilling conclusion: Whether you’ve changed or not, you still have to die. …Wait a minute.

Moyong Seo’s lips hardened into a tight line.

Methodically retracing his thoughts and actions, he realized there wasn’t just one or two glaring anomalies in his behavior; the entire sequence was bizarre. He knew perfectly well that his psyche was fractured, but that didn’t mean he blindly surrendered to rage and attacked recklessly. It certainly didn’t mean he completely discarded all logical thought simply because he was burning with a desire for revenge.

On the contrary, Moyong Seo was someone who desperately clung to his final shred of rationality even while tearing through his enemies like a madman.

The only thing separating a beast from a human is the capacity to reason. Humanity survived and conquered its hostile environment solely through this one trait. Therefore, you must never stop thinking until the bitter end.

Keep your head completely cool in any situation, kid. Even if your eyes roll back in your head from rage, it needs to be a calculated madness. Do you understand?

Those were the exact words spoken by the people Moyong Seo had respected most in his past life.

Yet, from the moment he laid eyes on Joo Cheon-oh, absolutely no trace of that cherished rationality had governed his actions.

There was no logic, no intellect.

He simply felt a blind, all-consuming urge to kill him.

Driven by that primal impulse, he had immediately thrust his sword. Only after crossing the point of no return did he scramble to slap weak justifications onto his actions—I don’t know what you’ll become, I have to eliminate future threats—spewing nonsense where the risks far outweighed the benefits.

It made absolutely no sense. 

Why did I act like that? he wondered frantically.

He should have coaxed the boy, buttered him up, and extracted information. He should have verified if the claim of having no ties to the Demonic Cult was true. If it was, he should have discovered who taught the boy martial arts and why he was in Tongguan. He should have utilized his sole, innate talent for manipulation to approach him carefully.

Where had this completely unfounded, irrational certainty come from—this absolute conviction that killing Joo Cheon-oh would somehow compensate for everything he had lost?

No matter how hard he agonized over it, no plausible answer emerged.

There was nothing more suffocating than being unable to understand one’s own mind.

Gritting his teeth, Moyong Seo violently shook his head. The discrepancy between his memories and the current reality was already driving him insane; having his own trusted psyche betray him in such a manner only ignited his frustration further.

Then, his eyes fell upon his sword, lying abandoned on the ground as if he had simply dropped it. Beside the blade, characters were etched into the thick layer of white flour coating the alley floor. Written with a fingertip, the words were impeccably neat and easy to read.

[Many things have changed, but not everything is different.]

The moment he read the message, the final, terrifying moments before he lost consciousness flashed vividly in his mind.

That faint, almost euphoric smile on Joo Cheon-oh’s face.

The devastating punch that bypassed all defenses before he could even register the movement.

The sheer, crushing pressure he felt before the strike even connected, and the absolute, heart-stopping certainty of his own impending death.

Moyong Seo had been utterly paralyzed, waiting for the boy’s hand to obliterate his ribcage.

He hadn’t even had the mental capacity to regret his own arrogance. It didn’t matter if his opponent looked like an unarmed, wet-behind-the-ears kid; this was the Sovereign of the Underworld, Joo Cheon-oh. Had Moyong Seo been in his right mind, he never would have let his guard down. Yet, even in that final fraction of a second, he had been entirely consumed by the obsessive ‘duty’ to kill him.

But before the fist could connect… something had pressed against Moyong Seo’s chest, shoving him backward.

Swept up by a gentle yet completely irresistible force, he was effortlessly launched down the alley.

In his terrifyingly narrowed field of vision—which had been focused solely on Joo Cheon-oh—the last things he registered were a fluttering white sleeve and a translucent veil. Then, the concussive impact shattered his consciousness, leading him to this moment.

Ah… I honestly have no idea anymore.

Why was the Sovereign of the Underworld, Joo Cheon-oh—who supposedly grew up entirely within the Demonic Cult from early childhood—standing in an orthodox city? If he wasn’t affiliated with the Cult, how the hell was he already that monstrously strong? Why did I lose my mind so easily, and how did I even know he was there?

Did the owner of that white sleeve—the person who saved my life—leave this message? Exactly how much do they know about me? Who… who the hell are they?

He had finally recovered his memories of the encounter, yet the questions only multiplied. The unfathomable unknowns were piling up into an insurmountable mountain.

For the first time since his regression, one of the two massive pillars supporting Moyong Seo’s entire existence—the arrogant confidence that he ‘knew everything that was going to happen’—had completely collapsed. (The other being his obsessive need to ‘protect his people.’)

A profound terror, rooted in this sudden loss of control, began to spread through his chest like spilled ink.

The knowledge of the future, once his greatest weapon, now transformed into a crushing weight bearing down on his shoulders.

As he sat completely dazed, staring blankly at the words etched into the flour, a pair of pristine white shoes abruptly halted near his feet. The ragged sound of heavy, desperate panting registered a moment later.

Jerking his head up, Moyong Seo found a man looking entirely uncharacteristically disheveled. Staring blankly at the figure, Seo murmured, “…Older brother…”

“…Seo.”

Moyong Dan, the Seven Star Sword, dropped to his knees before the younger half-brother he had desperately been searching for. His face bone-white with terror, Dan reached out with trembling hands to inspect the boy’s condition.

He frantically checked for injuries, his usually calm and collected face twisting into a ferocious snarl, his canine teeth bared in raw fury.

He gently wiped the flour and dirt from his little brother’s cheek.

“Who on earth did this…?” Dan demanded, his voice shaking. “Can you stand? Are you injured anywhere? Can you speak? Come here… Come to me. Let us return to safety first.”

Moyong Seo stared blankly at his brother, who was holding his arms wide open in a desperate plea for an embrace. The voice of Moyong Dan—a man who was always the picture of polite, aristocratic refinement—was trembling pathetically.

This is the only person who treated me like a brother while the rest of the clan ostracized me for my ‘impure’ blood, Seo thought. Unlike my pathetic self, he always made the right decisions. Had he lived, he undoubtedly would have shone brilliantly. He is the person I swore I would absolutely not lose in this life.

…Many things have changed, but not everything is different. Is that what it said?

Clutching his brother’s robes, Moyong Seo pulled himself closer. Meeting those unwavering, honest eyes from mere inches away, he solidified a deeply impulsive decision.

For a very long time—long before the roof of the Moyong estate was engulfed in demonic flames—Moyong Seo had relied entirely on his older brother. Even if Seo had rewound time and returned to the starting line, the fundamental truth remained unchanged: Moyong Dan was infinitely wiser than him.

If it’s him, he’ll be able to find the answers, Seo reasoned. He won’t dismiss my words as the ravings of a lunatic; he’ll actually listen to me. I’ve realized my own limits today. I will no longer be arrogant.

If the timeline has already deviated this far from the past I knew, adding one more massive variable shouldn’t matter.

“I have something I need to tell you,” Moyong Seo said, his voice terrifyingly grave. “It will be a long, unbelievable story, but I need you to listen to every word.”

The predetermined trajectory of the world was violently wrenched off its tracks once more, spiraling in a direction Cho Yoon—who had fled the scene early to avoid this exact complication—could never have possibly imagined.

***

The raucous cawing of crows suffocated the desolate sky.

The stench of charred wood and acrid smoke hung heavy in the air, relentlessly swept away by a biting north wind. Loose strands of hair tickled his cheek, and the ruined silk of his robes whipped violently around his arms.

Crumbled walls, snapped support beams, roofs that had collapsed into mass graves, and an absolute, barren wasteland. Amidst the ruins, Cheon-oh slowly opened his eyes. The sunset bleeding across the horizon was the exact color of fresh blood.

This was Cheon-oh’s purgatory—the barren wasteland he had endlessly revisited in his nightmares thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of times, yet could never truly escape. He didn’t need to turn around to know exactly what was waiting behind him. Beneath his palms, he could feel that unforgettable, horrific texture. Hard, bumpy, and freezing cold—a texture impossible to associate with human skin.

Cheon-oh braced himself to swallow the nausea that would inevitably surge up his throat. He had repeated this cycle so many times that he was practically numb to the horror, yet he could never understand why he was forced to endure the exact same sequence every single time.

But this time, it was different.

Twitch.

Something pulsed within his closed hands.

The sensation of soft feathers and a pulsing, warm body heat belatedly registered against his palms.

Encountering an unexpected variable in this nightmare for the very first time, Cheon-oh lowered his head to look at his hands.

Trapped tightly within his grip was a single crow.

Despite Cheon-oh having relatively large hands, the crow was so massive he couldn’t fully enclose it. The bird stared directly back at him, a thin nictitating membrane occasionally sliding over its pitch-black eyes. It flapped its wings frantically, kicking out with its sharp talons in a desperate bid for freedom.

Cheon-oh had absolutely no idea why he was holding this creature. He didn’t know what it represented, nor did he understand why his hands were gripping it with such terrifying, desperate intensity.

As he simply stared into the crow’s eyes, an inexplicable thought suddenly surfaced.

Devoid of any logical foundation or prior context, this rogue, independent thought rapidly began to swell, violently invading and completely occupying his previously dormant mind.

Craving. Jealousy. Deprivation. 

Any of those words fit the sensation, yet none were sufficient to capture its sheer, all-consuming magnitude.

Only a single, absolute certainty forcefully shoved Cheon-oh forward.

If I just have this, I can have it all too.

He knew exactly what he had to do to fulfill the vile desire boiling in the deepest abyss of his heart.

Raising the crow to his face, Cheon-oh sank his teeth into the living creature without a shred of hesitation. Completely ignoring its ear-piercing shrieks and the frantic, agonizing scratching of its talons against his wrists, he violently tore into its flesh, chewed, and swallowed.

He registered no taste.

He was pushed so far to the edge of the precipice that he possessed no luxury to savor the meal.

When his mind finally cleared, the crow that had been in his hands was completely gone, not even a single bone fragment remaining.

His palms and the lower half of his face were a horrific mess of drying blood.

A profound, unprecedented sense of absolute stability washed over him.

He let out a deeply satisfied sigh, followed immediately by a low, expectant chuckle.

When I wake up, something will be different, he thought with absolute certainty. I too… will be granted a chance.

Cheon-oh snapped his eyes open and bolted upright.

The familiar layout of his room registered a beat later. The comforting sounds of mountain birds and insects drifted in from outside, accompanied by the gentle babbling of the nearby stream.

Looking down, he saw that both of his hands were completely clean, and significantly smaller than they had been just moments ago. No… these were his actual, physical hands.

…I had a truly bizarre dream.