Chapter Text
The baby wouldn’t stop crying.
Her small voice, impossibly loud for something so tiny, pierced the stale air of the dark apartment like a siren. In-ho had long since stopped trying to soothe her. The bottle of whiskey in his hand was nearly empty. The couch beneath him sagged under his weight, damp with sweat and regret. His other hand pressed against his side—the dull, sick throb of his remaining kidney reminding him that time was running out. That this body, like everything else, was failing.
She wailed again, inconsolable.
He didn’t blame her.
In the corner of the room, a crib lined with old blankets trembled with each of her kicks. The child—222’s child—left to him like some cruel joke. Like a wound that can’t be healed.
Like the scratch that won’t leave.
Like, Gi-hun.
The name carved itself across his chest each time it surfaced.
He had seen it with his own eyes. Gi-hun stood in the center of the final arena, realizing it was done, facing an invisible audience while sheltering the baby with his body. As one final goodbye.
His body falling before In-ho could stop it all and reach the platform. The weight of hope falling with him.
Gi-hun was gone. And In-ho was left holding what remained.
He tipped the bottle back. Nothing. Just air and bitterness. He threw it across the room. it clattered against the wall, narrowly missing the crib. The child crying louder now.
“I can’t do this,” he muttered to no one.
The shadows in the room were wrong, longer than they should be. Curling. Reaching.
In-ho leaned back, head against the stained wall, and closed his eyes. Just for a moment. Just to stop shaking. Just to…
The cries twisted into something else.
A low, distant howl.
The kind of sound you felt in your chest before you heard it in your ears.
His eyes opened, but the room was gone.
He stood on a long, winding path of cracked stone, flanked by walls of jagged rock and flame. Above him, the sky churned crimson and black. Lightning slithered through clouds like serpents. Wind screamed down the valley, carrying the scent of burning flesh.
He turned. Behind him, no crib, no apartment, no child.
Just darkness.
A sudden voice, dry as paper: “And so the journey begins.”
He didn’t know who had spoken. Or if it had come from within.
The air here was heavier. Full of judgment.
He took one step forward, and the stone beneath his foot crumbled, revealing faces trapped beneath—eyes wide, mouths open in silent scream. The ground was made of souls.
It looks like Hell.
No, this was Hell. Did he die?
It didn’t matter if it was a dream or a hallucination or his own private purgatory. Real. It was real in the way grief is real. In the way loss settles into your bones and never leaves.
He walked.
The path narrowed, winding downward. At each turn, new sounds clawed at him—wailing, shrieking, whispers in languages long dead. And everywhere, the same unbearable heat, as if the entire world were drawing its last breath.
He passed a gate. Above it, scrawled in blood-red letters: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
In-ho froze but kept walking. He stepped through the gate.
And there she was.
Standing just beyond the threshold, dressed in white, her long black hair pulled back in the same braid she always wore. Her eyes met his, soft and unreadable.
“Umma…” he choked.
Ha-eun. His mother.
She looked unchanged, frail but radiant, like a flame too stubborn to be extinguished. She didn’t speak. Just opened her arms.
He ran to her, collapsing into her embrace.
She smelled like salt and sweet persimmons, the scent of home. The scent of before.
“I thought you…” he began, but she pressed a hand to his cheek, silencing him.
“I am not here to scold,” she said quietly. “Only to guide you.”
“But why are you here?” His voice broke. “You… you don’t belong in here."
Her expression faltered, a tremor in the stillness. “I stayed too long. I let him hurt you. I thought endurance was strength. But silence… is its own kind of sin.”
The heat rose around them. He understood what she meant, she had been witness to the constant abuse In-ho endured while remaining silent. He never blamed her. He never could.
In-ho swallowed hard. “So what now?”
She looked ahead, down the spiraling path.
“We descend.”
He hesitated, glancing at her face—at the sadness etched there like cracks in porcelain.
“To where?”
“To your path for answers,” she said. “The weight that calls you. The one you carry.”
Together, they walked forward into shadow, into fire, into what comes after grief.
[End of Chapter 1]