The descent into the Catacombs of Guryong wasn't marked on any map.
Even the rats had forgotten the way.
But Ji-Hyuk remembered.
Some memories couldn't be erased — not when they were burned into the skin.
He walked the tunnel in silence, his footsteps silent over the slick stone. The walls pulsed faintly, wrapped in suppressive glyphs Yeonho had reinforced over the years. It wasn't to keep people out.
It was to keep something in.
At the bottom of the tunnel, behind seven layers of stone, silver, and warded sigils, a prison sat untouched for almost a decade.
And inside it — in a space that didn't quite obey gravity or light — something dreamed.
And hated.
The door opened with a low groan, ancient sigils spinning lazily in the stale air.
Ji-Hyuk stepped inside.
The temperature dropped. The walls blurred.
And sitting cross-legged on a floating platform of shadow and steel, suspended by a lattice of null-runes, was Calrath, the Dream-King.
His face was ageless. Too smooth. Eyes black, like a midnight ocean, with no bottom.
He smiled before Ji-Hyuk spoke.
"Ah. The butcher returns."
Ji-Hyuk didn't respond.
He approached the edge of the sigil ring.
Calrath's smile widened. "Still too afraid to step closer, Ji-Hyuk? Even after all these years?"
"You earned that fear," Ji-Hyuk said. "Along with your cell."
"I earned eternity," Calrath replied, "and you gave me a tomb. How cruel."
Ji-Hyuk's eyes narrowed. "Something's dreaming through Earth. Not a god. Not a man. A hive of will."
Calrath's smile vanished.
"You felt it," Ji-Hyuk said. "Didn't you?"
The Dream-King's hands twitched — the first real movement since Ji-Hyuk arrived.
"I thought it was you," Calrath murmured. "Returning to finish what Berafe started."
"No. Something older. From outside."
The Dream-King's voice dropped.
"Then we are all already dead."
For a moment, Ji-Hyuk saw something rare: fear in Calrath's expression.
"Tell me what you know," he said.
Calrath didn't speak immediately. Instead, he stared at the spinning runes that held him prisoner, as if measuring his words against the bars.
"Before the wars," he said slowly, "before you came to Berafe, there were stories — things half-remembered in the dreams of the dead. A realm between realms. Where thought becomes form, and form becomes parasite."
He looked up.
"The Fold doesn't invade. It replaces."
Ji-Hyuk's jaw clenched. "I know. I saw it mimic someone I buried."
"That's not mimicry," Calrath whispered. "It's resonance. The Fold scans for strong memory impressions and replays them — not to fool, but to wear down resistance. To convince the host that the lie is preferable."
Ji-Hyuk recalled Isha's smile. How real it had felt. How tempting it would've been to believe.
"And once you accept it," Calrath said, "you dream yourself out of existence."
Ji-Hyuk stepped back from the ring. "Then how do I kill it?"
The Dream-King laughed bitterly. "You don't kill the Fold, Ji-Hyuk. You don't even fight it. You resist it — constantly, violently, with no end."
"I've done that before," Ji-Hyuk said.
Calrath leaned forward, eyes darkening.
"But this time, you'll do it alone. Because no one else will see the enemy until they're already inside it."
The shadows in the chamber grew thicker.
"The Fold isn't coming for your body, warlord. It's coming for your sense of self."
Ji-Hyuk turned to leave.
But Calrath spoke once more, voice lower than ever.
"You'll come back. When you start forgetting who you are. When the dreams feel realer than the pain. And when they offer you the thing you want most…"
Ji-Hyuk paused.
Calrath smiled sadly.
"Her voice."
Outside, Ji-Hyuk stood in the twilight air, the catacombs behind him like a fading nightmare.
The world above was normal.
Too normal.
And that's when he realized:
That was exactly what the Fold wanted.
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