Cheolchi Station stank of iron and fear.
The old subway cathedral had been hollowed out decades ago, its pillars wrapped in chains of human jawbones that clacked softly whenever the Hollow hounds breathed.
SFX: CLAK… CLAK… CLAK…
Each click echoed like teeth grinding in an enormous throat.
Red lanterns—actual human lower jaws with Stigma crystals jammed where tongues once rested—hung from the ceiling by rusted meat hooks. They glowed the color of fresh blood.
Tonight, every lantern was lit.
Every jaw glowed.
Every mouth watched.
Four hundred Grinders packed the platforms and rails like a living minefield.
Seven Molars stood atop the rusted train cars arranged into Iron Maw's throne dais.
At the highest point—on a seat welded from subway doors and spattered with decades of dried gore—sat Jang Man-Dok.
He was chewing something that still screamed.
SFX: SKRRRK—SKHLK—AAIIIEEEE—
Then silence, as teeth met bone.
Below him, the three dry husks from the Hollow Saint square had been dragged in and hung by their ankles. Their red bandanas fluttered like surrender flags in a place where surrender never meant mercy.
The entire station froze the moment the main gate opened on its own.
SFX: GROOOAAANNN… KRKKK…
Metal screamed as if unwilling to reveal what stood behind it.
Si-Hyun stepped inside.
No weapons.
No mask.
Only the black scarf wrapped high around his face… and a slow drip of something darker than blood falling from its hem.
Every step left a smoking footprint.
SFX: HSSSSS… HSSS…
Even the concrete tried to recoil.
The nearest Grinders raised their rifles—
then saw his eyes
(one molten amber, one absolute void)
and the rifles sagged again.
Some men urinated without noticing.
Iron Maw spat out whatever he had been chewing.
SFX: PWAT.
SMECK— twitch.
It was a child's tongue.
"Look at that," Iron Maw rumbled, his voice metallic from the iron grafts in his jaw. "The little rat grew teeth."
The Open Jaw Stigma shimmered around his head like a colossal bear-trap made of ghosts and hunger.
Si-Hyun stopped ten meters from the dais.
The scarf's ends lifted and tasted the air, serpentine.
Iron Maw leaned forward.
"You killed three of mine. That's three hundred teeth.
Start with your own."
He snapped his fingers.
SFX: TCHK—!
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The seven Molars dropped from the train cars.
Their Hollow beasts materialized beside them—
a wolf sculpted from twisted subway rails,
a spider made of copper wire,
a serpent woven from human spines.
Every Stigma burned crimson.
Si-Hyun didn't move.
The scarf did.
It detonated outward.
SFX: FWOOOOOOOOOM—!!!
Forty meters of black cloth fractured into hundreds of ribbons—
each tipped not with fabric but with hungry, clicking mouths.
The ribbons moved like lightning learning to kill.
—MOLAR ONE—
He swung an axe the size of a child.
He saw nothing but shadow.
SFX: SHLVK!
CRUNCH.
The scarf swallowed his head whole.
His body took three steps forward before it admitted death.
—MOLAR TWO—
He screamed for his beast.
The rail-wolf lunged.
The scarf poured into its metal jaws like smoke with purpose.
SFX: GULP—GWORRRGH—
The wolf convulsed.
Then stood.
Its eyes glowed amber and black.
Now it belonged to the scarf.
—THE STATION EXPLODED INTO WAR—
Gunfire erupted late and died early.
SFX: BRAKKA! BRAKKA! BRAKKA!—
SHLK—SHLK—THMP—
Bullets disappeared into moving shadow.
The ribbons punched through vests, ribs, skulls.
Red lanterns shattered one by one… extinguished like dying morals.
Each time a ribbon drank a Stigma, the scarf thickened—veins bulging under the cloth like something growing inside.
Thirty seconds.
That was all it took for six Molars to become mist.
The final Molar—barely twenty—collapsed into the spreading flood of blood.
His Hollow companion was a small, eyeless girl carved from bone dust; she clung to him trembling.
He sobbed, head bowed.
Si-Hyun walked past without looking.
The scarf paused above the kneeling boy—then descended gently.
A single ribbon patted his head.
SFX: tap… tap.
SSSSSS—
His Stigma peeled away like fog in sunrise, disappearing painlessly into the cloth.
He slumped over, alive.
Empty.
Iron Maw still sat on his throne.
The Open Jaw Stigma was now fully manifested:
an iron trap large enough to bite a tank in half, dripping saliva made of molten rust.
"You're the failed one," Iron Maw said.
"The cult's broken doll. I bought your corpse futures seventeen years ago.
Looks like I get to collect early."
He rose.
SFX: THUUM—THUUUUM—
The station shook.
Si-Hyun spoke at last.
"You took something from me when I was nine."
His voice was soft, polite, lethal.
"I came to return the favor."
Iron Maw grinned iron teeth at him.
"Then come take it, doll."
He lunged.
The Open Jaw slammed downward—
SFX: KRAAAAAAAAAAANG—!!!
A sound like a collapsing universe.
The scarf struck first.
It erupted upward and rammed itself between the closing teeth, multiplying, thickening, forcing the trap open from within.
Iron Maw's eyes widened.
Si-Hyun ascended the throne steps one by one, expression unreadable.
Iron Maw roared, trying to dismiss the Stigma—
—but the scarf was faster.
It shot down his throat.
SFX: SHLUP—GLOORRK—SLLLRRGHH—
Vanishing past iron jaw, ribcage, stomach.
It began to drink.
Iron Maw shrieked like a train derailing.
SFX: SKRRRREEEEEEEEE—!!!!!
His monstrous frame collapsed inward, muscles imploding, skin clinging to bone.
The Open Jaw Stigma flickered, corroded, then exploded into black dust.
SFX: TSSSSSHH—patter… patter…
Ash like dead teeth rained down.
When the scarf withdrew, it dragged out a glowing red canine Stigma core the size of a human fist.
Iron Maw's husk toppled and shattered like pottery left in the sun too long.
Silence reclaimed Cheolchi Station.
Four hundred Grinders stared at the boy now standing atop the subway-door throne.
The scarf draped itself across his shoulders, now twice as long—its edges writhing with dozens of tiny mouths licking their new lips.
Si-Hyun surveyed the darkened cathedral.
Every lantern had gone out.
Every beast had knelt or fled.
He spoke again—
and his voice carried effortlessly, as though the entire station had become his lungs.
"From today," he said, "Sector-12 has one rule."
He raised the iron tooth—
SFX: CRRRRUNCH—!!!
—and crushed it in his bare hand.
Black blood ran between his fingers like ink freed from a prison.
"My rule."
Behind him, the scarf unfurled like a giant banner of living night.
Twelve faint wing-shadows glimmered across its surface—visible only to those swift enough to catch fear in motion.
Then the cloth nuzzled his cheek, tender as a mother, hungry as a monster.
In the devoured darkness, hundreds of knees struck the ground at once.
No one looked up.
Far above, the sixth sky-ring flickered again—
longer this time, like a scream choking on itself.
And in the hollow sun, something unfurled its wings
until the vacuum itself bled.