The air had stopped moving.
For a single, terrible heartbeat, the ruined hall of the academy seemed frozen in place—cadets pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, their breaths ragged, their eyes wide and shining with disbelief. Blood seeped into cracked tiles, trickling into long-dried grooves of the floor. Every survivor felt the same instinctual dread crawling beneath their skin: something had not only arrived, but been constructed out of their fear.
The ground convulsed, deep enough to rattle teeth. Rubble shifted. A sound began to rise—wet, grinding, almost like hundreds of pages turning all at once, but each one smeared with blood.
Then it began to stand.
The thing that pulled itself up from the fissure wasn't merely a monster—it was a debt made manifest, stitched together with flesh, memories, and ruin. Limbs of cadets fused with debt-wraiths, their pale faces locked mid-scream, bone and stone hammered into a grotesque symmetry. Its chest cavity opened and closed like a ledger book, ribs snapping like a spine binding pages together.
When it breathed, it didn't exhale air—it exhaled numbers. Burning, branded script seared into the walls, tallying invisible ledgers in a language none could fully read.
And then the voice came.
"Unpaid…"
The word scraped through the hall like rusted machinery.
"Unpaid… unpaid…"
It rolled through the survivors' skulls, each repetition heavier, like interest compounding. Cadets staggered, clutching their heads, as if their own hidden sins were being audited aloud.
The stench hit next: scorched copper and charred meat, clinging in the lungs. The metallic tang of blood coated Hae-won's tongue, and for a fleeting moment he thought he was suffocating from the inside.
He forced his gaze up—and froze.
The Titan's body wasn't faceless. It was crowded with fragments. One mouth sang in agony. Another muttered apologies. A third wept. But in the shifting chaos of fused flesh, one sound carried above the rest: a faint humming.
A lullaby.
Hae-won's knuckles whitened around the cursed sword. That song. That tune. Do-hyun.
"Formation!"
Seok's voice cracked like a whip across the stunned crowd. The strategist's face was pale but focused, sweat dripping from his temple as he forced order into chaos.
"Circle perimeter! Shields outward, spears behind! If you break lines, you die—do you understand?!"
The cadets obeyed on instinct, stumbling into position. But their eyes weren't on Seok, or on the formation—they were fixed on the Titan that loomed over them, blotting out the fractured ceiling with its bulk.
Arin stepped forward, ignoring Seok's command. Her lips trembled, her voice a whisper lost beneath the thunder:
"Do-hyun…?"
The Titan tilted, as though it had heard her.
Its many mouths echoed together, warping into a single terrible chant.
"Unpaid. Unpaid. Unpaid."
Then it moved.
One grotesque arm, swollen with the weight of fused cadet bodies, swung downward. The air split like a blade.
The ground shattered under the impact, students screaming as the shockwave threw them back. Desks, stone, and shattered glass rained down, filling the hall with chaos. The line Seok had barked into place fractured immediately, shields scattering as weaker cadets dropped their weapons and fled.
"Hold!" Seok bellowed, his voice shredding. "Formations don't break until I say—!"
His words drowned in the roar.
Hae-won steadied his footing, chest heaving, ears ringing. But beneath the collapsing stone, beneath the ledger's booming voice, he could still hear it—Do-hyun's hum, threading through the monster's chest like a heartbeat muffled in static.
Seo laughed. A bright, reckless sound that rang against the carnage.
"There it is," she said, blood smeared across her cheek as though it were war paint. Her grin widened. "Now that's worth killing."
She surged forward, blade dragging sparks across the tile.
"Seo, wait—!" Arin cried, but her words vanished as the Titan moved again, swinging wide and tearing a wall from its foundation.
Screams filled the air as cadets scattered, some crushed under falling debris, others sent flying by the sheer pressure of its motion. The hall groaned, ready to collapse around them.
And still the Titan chanted, ledger-voice echoing like a tolling bell.
"Unpaid. Unpaid. Unpaid."
Hae-won staggered, grit biting into his palms where he'd braced against the floor. The cursed sword pulsed in his grip, whispering in its deadened, hungry voice:
Feed me.
He clenched his teeth, sweat dripping into his eyes. Do-hyun's hum was there, inside that thing, a faint thread of humanity choking beneath the debt's weight.
He couldn't tell if it was begging to be saved—or begging to be killed.
The Titan shifted again, tearing through the academy hall as if it were paper. Stone, blood, and bone scattered in all directions.
The survivors were insects in its shadow.
And still, beneath it all, Hae-won heard that soft, steady hum.
The Titan's arm swept through the hall again, pulling stone and bone in its wake. The world became a rain of debris, screams, and blood.
Cadets were flung like dolls, shields splintering as if they were paper. Dust choked the air until the survivors were nothing but shadows in a storm.
"Hold the line!" Seok's voice cracked against the noise. His stance didn't falter, eyes narrowing as he shoved a trembling cadet back into position. "If you scatter, you die. If you hesitate, you die. Stand, damn it!"
But no one was listening. The circle was already shattered.
Arin staggered forward, coughing against the dust, her hand reaching out toward the impossible bulk of the Titan. Her lips formed the same name again and again, voice raw, as though sheer stubbornness could cut through the roar.
"Do-hyun! Do-hyun, I know you're there—please!"
The Titan's many mouths opened, and for one nightmarish instant, its chant faltered.
"… unpaid… un…"
The pause was worse than the sound.
It looked down at her.
And in that brief, fragile silence, Hae-won heard the hum again—clearer now, like a heartbeat pressed against his ear. Do-hyun's tune, woven into the flesh of a monster that should not exist.
He froze. His chest felt tight, his throat raw. He couldn't tell if the sound was reaching for Arin, or if it was crying out from being trapped.
The cursed sword burned in his hand. A low, scraping whisper curled in his ear:
Offer me one… and I will break the core.
Hae-won's grip tightened, jaw aching. He had felt its hunger before—but now it was unbearable, gnawing at his arm like teeth under the skin. The blade trembled as though it were ready to leap, ready to carve into the Titan and drink deep.
But the price was clear. One life. One offering.
"Not him." The words rasped out of Hae-won's throat before he realized he had spoken.
Seo appeared beside him, her grin splitting her bloodied face. She looked alive in a way no one else did, her eyes gleaming with the thrill of death breathing down her neck.
"Not him?" she scoffed, flicking crimson from her blade. "What does it matter what name it used to have? Look at it. That's no cadet anymore. That's a receipt waiting to be torn up."
Her laugh cut the dust like glass. "You can mourn after it's dead."
Arin turned on her, voice cracking. "Shut up! Don't you dare—that's Do-hyun! He's still in there, I can feel it!"
"He's gone." Seok's tone was flat, cold. His gaze never left the Titan, calculating every twitch of its grotesque frame. "You cling to names, you die. That's the first rule of survival."
Arin's face twisted, streaked with dust and tears. She shook her head violently, stepping closer to the monster, ignoring the way the ground shuddered beneath its movements.
"No. No, I won't abandon him. I won't."
The Titan's chest groaned, ribs splitting wider. The hum bled into the chant, warped and muffled but still undeniably human.
"… un… paid…"
Hae-won's breath caught.
For one moment, he thought he saw it—a fragment of Do-hyun's face, pressed into the Titan's chest cavity, eyelids trembling as though caught between sleep and endless debt.
The sword's whisper turned vicious, demanding, sinking deeper into his skull.
Offer me one. Anyone. The weak, the useless, the ones already shaking. Feed me, and I will carve him free.
Hae-won's vision swam. The hall blurred, blood and dust dripping into one indistinguishable haze. The cadets' screams rang in his ears, but beneath it all was that hum—gentle, stubborn, almost protective.
His knees shook. He couldn't breathe.
A hand gripped his wrist. Firm. Grounding.
Arin.
Her eyes were red, but steady, blazing with the same impossible determination that had driven her forward through every horror so far.
"Please," she whispered, voice cracking. "Don't let him vanish. Don't let him be just… another debt."
The sword pulsed, angry at her touch, burning against Hae-won's skin.
Seo tilted her head, watching them with a kind of amused pity. "Pathetic. You'll get us all killed over a corpse with a voice."
Seok snapped, his patience breaking. "Enough. Focus! The core is the chest. We cut it down, now." His eyes flicked to Hae-won, sharp as blades. "You. Move."
The Titan's body shifted again, arms tearing through the ceiling, light bleeding into the ruined hall. The world itself seemed to buckle under its weight.
"Unpaid. Unpaid. Unpaid."
And still, faint and fragile, the hum threaded through it.
Hae-won raised the sword.
Every breath burned. Every heartbeat screamed at him.
Do-hyun's hum pressed against his skull. The sword's hunger pressed against his bones.
The Titan's chest opened wider, revealing the stitched fragments within.
The choice pressed down on him with the weight of the world.
Was he about to cut down a monster—or kill his friend twice?