The cave swallowed sound like a mouth swallowing the sea. Torches guttered along the walls, their flames shivering with every breath of cold air.
Silence pressed down on the exhausted bodies of every member.
Then — a sweet, alluring, yet sharp voice filled with command cut through it.
"Gather close. We do not have the luxury of time. The enemy breathes down our necks, and the cult stands on the edge of extinction."
The veiled woman's voice held calm rage, tightly leashed by logic.
Everyone flinched at the blunt truth of their situation.
An old man, his hands and clothes soaked with dried blood, mustered the courage to speak.
"…" His throat clicked. "Now that the Cult Master is dead… we can't survive if the Holy Army finds us again."
Her lips trembled under the veil. A crushed, broken sound threatened to escape — but only a single tear fell onto the cheek of the child in her arms.
Warmth pressed against his cheek. Inside his small chest, his adult consciousness tightened.
'She's trying so hard to stand… even when the world is tearing apart.'
Even as an adult soul trapped in a helpless infant body, he could feel the way her hands shook while holding him. Out of an unbearable mix of grief and responsibility.
Then the trembling stopped. She had no time to mourn. No time to breathe. She swallowed her pain, straightened her back, and declared:
"From this moment, I am the Cult Master."
She tightened her hold on the tiny life in her hands, and he felt as if she were trying to shield him from a unknown threat.
'She's carrying the weight of an entire dying cult… and still saves her strength to shield me.'
"In this emergency, we cannot perform the full ceremony… still—"
Her voice steadied, filled with rising determination.
"I swear every decision I make will be for the cult's future."
She lifted a page — ancient, fragile, so old a single strong wind might tear it apart.
"The former Cult Master has fallen. His blood isn't even dry, yet the world is already hunting us.
But even if we lost our leader… hope has never died. We succeeded in the mission."
Her voice carried a quiet light, even in this grave darkness.
"Think of the future he showed us. He found it — the forbidden rituals."
She held the page high so every member could see it.
"We found the first page from the diary of the Cult Founder."
At that sentence, despair surrounding everyone evaporated.
Members tried to keep silent, but small sounds escaped — gasps, choked relief, the trembling beginning of hope.
She crushed it instantly with her next words.
"The ritual is too dangerous and life-threatening. None of you can use it."
She knew.
No one here would survive.
Seo-jin's tiny body stopped moving as reality settled over him.
'Cult? Rituals? Founder's diary?'
He forced himself to calm down, listening carefully to every word. Fate's cruel game hadn't even started, and his caution was already at its peak.
Assuming she was his mother… that was his highest possibility.
The veiled woman continued reading the page. Even the first condition was brutal.
"According to this… the body must be completely starved for twenty-four hours before the ritual begins."
Her voice halted as she reached a line she hadn't expected.
She read from the start.
"November 18.
The cost of war is irreversible. I fought THEM.
The crimson moon shone brighter than ever that day.
Half of the cult was destroyed.
I realized my current strength is not enough to keep the cult alive — not even enough to keep myself alive."
"December 2.
I ordered the entire cult to remain completely hidden with no movement.
Only a few members I trust were allowed to travel in secrecy.
The old members of the cult are stupid — unable to let go of their outdated thinking."
"December 5.
Even I travelled the world hiding my identity.
Hiding myself was easy… but in the search for answers, I must never stop."
"January 1, 1374.
New Year.
While sleeping in bed with Madam Theressa, something struck me in a dream.
My mind raced, enlightenment burning through me, my loud scream woke her — and even the neighbors.
I immediately ran… to destroy myself."
"August 24.
I tried too many types of rituals, anything I could get my hands on.
I hunted rare beasts for ingredients, and finally — I reached the answer.
i knew the world's methods are too rigid, chained to tradition.
I created a new potion for a new path.
Refinement was a success."
She stopped reading. Confusion flickered through the crowd — for this was something world‑breaking.
The common term for path was "Facetways."
In this world, every Facetways had only one potion each to attain the power.
To join a cult, members drank the same potion — the potion of their Facetway.
In the Holy Kingdom, whether mage or swordsman, everyone drank the Holy Power potion.
Every Facetway had only a single potion.
Advancing was even harder, Advancing meant finding rarer ingredients and surviving the next transformation.
These stages were called Refractions — from Refraction 9 upward, those who survived, inched closer to divinity.
No being could drink a potion from two different Facetways.
After a few moments of silence, she continued reading.
"September 7.
I completed the potion.
After drinking it, the pain was unbearable.
There was nothing… yet everything was there.
I gritted my teeth to survive.
It was a pain I never want to experience again… though I must, to advance along this Facetway."
"September 9.
I let some members drink it, but they all died instantly — except three. The remaining three lost control and became monsters that even demons would be disgusted by."
"September 23.
I discovered the cause.
They were already grown into their original Facetways and they couldn't endure the potion of a different Facetway. So then I let new members drink it — those who hadn't consumed the cult's original potion yet.
Same result.
All died except one… who also turned into a monster."
"September 28.
I realized one mistake.
I remembered the state of my body when I drank the potion.
I was starving for more than a day at that time."
"November 13.
A cult member stole the formula.
He starved his entire family for a day and made them drink the potion, his whole family turned into monsters. It was… annoying to deal with them.
Only his newborn survived an hour — but still died.
Yet in that hour, the potential I sensed was massive.
It gave me another enlightenment."
"November 15.
Some members volunteered for sacrifice, They let their newborns drink the potion.
I was right — they survived for a few minutes.
Then died.
But in those few minutes, their potential surpassed even me.
Their parents, in despair, drank the potion themselves to die with their blood."
"November 16.
I tried everything I could think of, and then I found the truth.
The reason adults die is because their bodies are already past the point of reconstruction.
Their spirits can't withstand it, even if the sensation feels real…
Even while being fully realistic, I understand now.
I was just special.
Someone whose soul had been torn before.
"November 17. Again, the potion rose within me, clawing at my thoughts, dragging me toward the edge, tearing at the borders of my mind and body. I was losing myself…
I let HER calm me."
She stopped reading.
One single page of the Founder's diary — yet it shattered everything they believed about the world.
A single piece of paper cut through centuries of established knowledge.
And this was only Page 1.
There were more lines written in languages she couldn't understand.
Her voice cracked.
"How can this be…? This might be the real reason behind history being erased — and this page wasn't destroyed despite being inside the Holy Sanctuary…"
"The Holy Empire must have tried to decipher it, but failed. Even with danger pressing, the page survived."
She gulped, eyes trembling as she stared at the dancing scribbles.
Even Seo‑jin paused.
The diary's contents were already enough to terrify him… but the main reason hadn't even come yet.
The page turned slightly, giving his small yet sharp infant eyes a clearer view.
The scribbles that danced in everyone else's eyes were words he could understand.
He read quietly in his mind, desperate to learn something that might help him survive.
"I cannot let this fall into the hands of the Holy Empire, nor the kingdoms that circle like vultures. So I wrote the final key in languages no scholar of this age can decipher.
A code only someone from my world could read."
"To empower the cipher so it never falls into a fool's hands,
I wrote each sentence containing words in every language I know. I leave nothing to chance."
"Hint to survive is…
잃어라 (Korean)… 自分を (Japanese)… но (Russian)…
numquam (Latin)… verlieren (German)…
ton (French)… OWN (English)… 자아 (Korean)."
"Lose yourself —
but never lose your own 'self.'"
"If you do not understand this line,
you were never meant to touch this path.
If you force this ritual — you will die."
"It is not vanity, nor arrogance.
It is fact:
You are simply not me —
the one who created this path."
The page trembled in her hands, filled with words she barely understood.
The baby in her lap squirmed, eyes wide, staring at the strange lines and symbols.
Danger hung in every word, and he could feel the weight of lives lost, the horror hinted at in the diary.
Still, a small spark flickered in him — a natural curiosity, a sense that this piece of paper might help them survive just a little longer.
He silently thanked his past self — the version of him who clung to a single wish and survived through sheer will alone.
I want to be something more.
That desire had pushed him to learn countless things in his previous life.Languages were one of them — a skill he mastered only because he believed they might one day help him become… whatever that "something more" was.
Yet that vague wish of his never left him.
It had always been a convenient tool for his job… but never anything more. Yet now, that same skill was letting him decipher a dying cult's final diary. More useful than he ever thought possible.
'He writes in multiple languages… is it just security, or does it hint at something deeper about the potion?'
'He survived this potion multiple times… but is there a limit? What happens if someone is in a weak condition while consuming it?'
'The diary mentions monsters… how does the body transform? Is it purely physical, or something else?'
'Could environmental conditions — hunger, exhaustion, fear — change the potion's effect?'
'The founder says "never lose your self"… what exactly counts as losing it? How can that be tested?'
"Cult master?" At this moment, old man on the other side asked with a surprise.
Seo-jin snapped awake. He watched her with curious, yet cautious eyes.
'What is she going to say…?'
"Even though there were some lines I couldn't decipher, there was more than enough gain."
The information written on it was that precious.
She turned the page. Behind the short part of the Cult Founder's story, there was a long list—again written in a language he couldn't read.
"These are the ingredients of the potion the Cult Founder invented. Everything written here is hard to find… but not impossible." Her voice carried a knowing tone
Everyone present was tired and injured.
Every single one of them had the same thought, but none had the strength to voice it:
'How can we find these ingredients while wounded… while running from the Holy Empire…?'
"We have completed the task."
A deep, unfamiliar voice echoed—clear, yet distant.
A dark shadow rippled on the ground, rising and twisting into several humanoid shapes.
Seo-jin froze.
'…HUH!?'
Dark liquid dripped from the dissolving silhouettes as the black fog peeled away, revealing the figures beneath.
His second shock struck immediately.
Several people knelt—clad in crimson robes, and at the front was a man completely out of place.
A young, handsome face—like a perfect model face of a shining knight carved straight out of a fantasy novel. He wasn't in full knight armor but wore close-combat gear: dark black and crimson, with obsidian plates trimmed in gold. It looked like an elite uniform—built for speed, built for killing at close range.
The Cult Master's lips curved, satisfied… though urgency flickered beneath the smile.
"Well done. Good job gathering all the ingredients," she said.
"Prepare the potion—as fast as you can."