The whispers did not stop.
They followed him into sleep, and into waking. Sometimes they were soft, like snow brushing against windows. Other times they screamed, loud enough to rattle his skull.
Joon wandered the endless white in search of Hana. Days and nights bled into one another until he no longer trusted the sky. His legs moved without strength, carrying him farther into the storm.
Then — he saw it.
A faint glow in the distance. Flickering, golden, fragile.
Lantern light.
He staggered closer, each step sinking deep into drifts. At first, he thought it was another dream. The shape ahead of him shimmered, blurred, as if painted over the snow. But the closer he came, the more solid it became.
A building.
The hut was gone. The meadow, the forest, all of it erased. Only this remained.
A workshop.
The door stood slightly ajar, breathing shadows.
Joon's heart pounded. His feet carried him forward, though his mind screamed to turn back. He pushed the door open.
Inside, the air was thick with dust and clay. Lanterns burned low, their flames guttering. Shelves groaned beneath rows of figures — faces he half-recognized, frozen mid-expression. Dolls, unfinished and broken. Some turned their heads as he entered, eyes glinting like shards of glass.
And at the center of it all — the man.
The Craftsman.
He sat hunched at his worktable, shoulders trembling. His hands were covered in cracks of dried clay, and blood trickled from a wound at his temple. Slowly, he raised his head.
Joon froze.
The man's face was his own. Older. Hollowed. Worn by grief. But the same eyes, the same mouth, the same line of jaw.
Joon's breath caught. His voice came out raw, broken.
"Who… are you?"
The Craftsman's lips curved, not into a smile, but into something bitter, twisted. His voice rasped like clay scraped against stone.
"Who do you think?"
The dolls stirred on their shelves, creaking, whispering. Their hollow voices filled the air like a storm pressing against the walls.
"You kept us in silence."
"You built us broken."
"You never gave us choice."
Joon clutched his chest, trembling. His vision swam, flickering between snowfields and the dim light of the workshop.
"No," he whispered. "I… I was alive. Hana was alive. We laughed. We kissed. It was real."
The Craftsman's gaze pierced him. "Real?"
He stood, lifting a chisel from the table. Its edge caught the lantern light, cold and sharp.
"You were clay the moment I touched you."