The air shimmered like a heatwave as the rooftop rippled away from them.
Hana clutched Jisoo's arm, stumbling, her breath ragged. The shadow hadn't moved again, but something about its last words moved through her like a poison.
"If you rewrite the past… You will erase the future."
They burst through the stairwell door, fleeing into the silence below, the ghost of those words burned into their skulls.
Jisoo held her hand tighter than before, like he was afraid she'd disappear again.
Back in the safety of Jisoo's penthouse, the glass walls offered Seoul's nighttime skyline in all its glittering intensity. But inside, the atmosphere was raw and breathless.
Hana sat curled on the edge of the sectional sofa, wrapped in one of his hoodies. The fabric smelled like fresh cedar and something older—something she couldn't name but felt like a memory.
Jisoo stood across the room, staring out the window, jaw clenched, phone ignored on the counter.
"You saw it too," Hana said finally, breaking the silence.
He didn't turn.
"Not for the first time."
She straightened. "It's been following you?"
"No." He hesitated. "It's been waiting."
That word didn't sit right.
He turned then, his face a war of conflict and fire. "Do you remember this?"
From his pocket, he pulled out a small jade pendant, cracked down the middle.
The second her eyes landed on it, pain exploded behind her temples.
A flash.
She saw herself in silk robes again, kneeling on scorched earth. Blood on her lip. Fire in the palace around her. The pendant was clutched in her palm as Jisoo, in different clothes, a different name, stood over her, screaming something she couldn't hear.
It was the last thing she gave him before she died.
In that life.
Hana's breath caught.
"I remember," she whispered.
He walked to her slowly, sat down beside her, and placed the pendant in her hand. It was warm too warm for a stone. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.
"That thing… it doesn't want us together," Jisoo said.
"Because we changed something?"
He shook his head. "Because we haven't."
She studied the cracked stone, thumb sliding over the ancient script etched on the back. Characters she shouldn't understand, but did.
운명은 반복된다 Fate repeats.
"Then what are we supposed to do?" she asked, trembling.
Jisoo looked like he'd been waiting a long time to say it.
"Find out who broke the cycle."
The next day, the news reported a "power malfunction" at the auction house. Cameras captured static. All footage from the moment of the blackout had been mysteriously corrupted. Not deleted. Just… gone.
Jisoo didn't go to the office.
Neither did Hana.
They sat together in his living room, surrounded by books, ancient ones, ones he'd been secretly collecting for years. Some from private libraries in Italy, others from closed Korean temples. Every one of them is connected to reincarnation.
And one name kept appearing again and again.
The Jade Emissary.
Hana traced the symbol in one of the books. A curved fan shape, burning with ancient runes. The same mark that had flared on the pendant in her dream.
"This symbol was carved above the shrine where I first saw you," she murmured.
He looked at her. "In which life?"
She blinked. "I… don't know."
"Then it means you've remembered more than you think."
He flipped another page. The ink was dark, faded around the edges, but clear enough.
The Emissary walks in shadow, binding lives that should remain apart. A watcher of fates. A breaker of threads.
Jisoo ran his finger along the page. "They're the thing we saw on the roof."
"And they want to keep us from remembering."
"But why?" she whispered.
He turned the page then froze.
There, in a woodblock illustration, was a portrait.
A woman in royal dress regal, poised, deadly. Her hair adorned with phoenix feathers, her eyes familiar.
Too familiar.
"It's you," he said.
Hana stared, heart pounding.
And beside the woman stood a man, his face barely drawn, shrouded in inked shadows.
But his hands held the pendant.
"I think we were royalty," she whispered. "I think we were betrayed."
Jisoo nodded slowly. "And someone doesn't want us remembering who did it."
That night, as Hana lay awake in the guest room, the pendant resting beside her on the pillow, she felt it again.
A warmth.
A pull.
And then
She was somewhere else.
The courtyard was bathed in moonlight.
She stood in silk again, barefoot on polished stone.
Her heart thundered.
Ahead of her, a man in royal robes stepped into the light.
Not Jisoo.
Older.
Crueler.
With a sword dripping red.
Behind him, Jisoo, her Jisoo, lay bleeding on the ground, one arm outstretched toward her, mouth forming her name.
The man spoke in a tongue she didn't know, yet understood.
"Let the past die… or the future will never live."
He raised the blade....
And she screamed....
Hana bolted upright in bed, gasping, drenched in sweat.
The pendant lay across her chest, glowing faintly.
She wasn't alone.
Across the room, near the corner, a shape stood.
Watching.
It didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
Just whispered, in the voice she'd heard once before.
"Choose him… and the world burns."