Three days passed beneath the red dusk.
Cheolchi Station had become something no one in Sector-12 had a word for.
The jawbone lanterns were gone—
replaced by soft white clinic bulbs hanging from salvaged wires.
*bzzzz—flick… hum…*
Real electric light.
Pale. Clean. Almost holy.
The chains of teeth were melted down and reshaped into cooking pots.
Children now sprinted across the platforms laughing—
*HAHAHA—thump-thump-thump!*
—sounds the station had not heard in centuries.
Former Grinders stood guard with rifles slung low, eyes down whenever Si-Hyun passed.
Fear wasn't gone.
It had simply changed shape.
He hadn't slept.
Si-Hyun sat on the crumbling top of the broken escalator, legs dangling over a thirty-meter drop, staring up at the poison clouds stalled beneath the ringlight.
The scarf sprawled across his lap like a tamed predator, occasionally licking dried blood from beneath his fingernails.
*slrp… slrp…*
Below, the little girl with the flower—Ryeo-Won—was teaching other children how to fold red bandanas into blossoms.
Every time one finished, they brought it to the throne of subway doors.
The pile was already knee-high.
Si-Hyun watched without blinking.
The black star inside his chest pulsed slower now.
Heavier.
Listening.
Then—
He felt it.
Not heard.
Felt.
A pressure behind his left shoulder blade.
A stretching sensation, like bones remembering a shape older than the boy wearing them.
The scarf's head lifted.
It stared at his back—raw hunger flickering in its folds.
Si-Hyun reached over his shoulder.
His fingers came away wet.
Black blood.
Too dark to be human.
Soaked through his shirt in the perfect outline of a folded wing.
Then the pain arrived.
A delayed thunderclap inside his nerves.
He didn't scream.
He simply slipped forward—
*fwup—EMPTY AIR*
—falling off the escalator.
Thirty meters down.
The scarf detonated outward—
*WHOOOSH!!*
—wrapping him in a black cocoon, slowing the fall just enough.
He slammed into the platform on his side instead of his skull.
*THUD—crack!*
Children screamed.
The impact punched the breath from his lungs.
He lay amid scattered paper flowers, staring up at the ceiling as something inside his ribcage began to tear itself open.
The scarf pressed hard against the wound—
*shhk—shhk—hold—hold—!!*
—but it couldn't.
Black feathers
(no—shards of congealed night)
pierced through the skin between his shoulder blades.
One.
Then two.
Then six.
They unfolded with slow, wet, deliberate force—
*CRRK… CRRK… fwsssshh…*
—each longer than his arm, dripping starlight that burned holes through the concrete.
The children retreated.
Even the ex-Grinders abandoned their rifles and bolted.
Only Ryeo-Won stayed.
She stepped forward until she stood over him, flower still behind her ear, and studied the wings with the calm curiosity only seven-year-olds possess.
"They're pretty," she said.
Si-Hyun coughed black blood.
*krrh—hkk…*
The wings flexed—
one involuntary movement—
and the shockwave toppled every paper flower in the station.
*WHOOMPH!!*
The scarf writhed in a panic, trying to fold the wings back in, trying to stuff the night into a human shape.
It failed.
The wings kept growing.
Ten meters.
Fifteen.
The tips scraped the ceiling—
leaving scars of absolute darkness that refused to reflect light.
Si-Hyun's vision tunneled.
Through the blur he heard the voice again—
his mother's voice,
older,
brittle,
tired in the way galaxies die.
"First of twelve," it whispered.
"Only eleven more, my little failure."
He forced himself to his knees.
The wings dragged behind him like cloaks made of missing time.
Ryeo-Won hadn't moved.
He reached out, trembling, and brushed the flower tucked behind her ear.
It didn't burn.
Didn't wither.
The wings folded forward—slow, careful—until they formed a cage of black night around the girl.
Protective.
Claiming.
Ryeo-Won patted a feather.
It was warm.
Si-Hyun closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the wings were gone.
Only scars remained:
two long lines of black crystal etched down his back.
The scarf slid around his neck, trembling so hard it almost buzzed.
It was afraid.
For the first time since waking,
the scarf was afraid.
Si-Hyun stood.
His legs held.
He looked across the silent station.
Every child.
Every ex-Grinder.
Every half-tamed Hollow hound.
All watching him.
His voice came out low, steady, and carrying the weight of something that had tasted forbidden sky.
"Listen carefully."
"The wings will come again.
When the twelfth pair unfolds…
the sun dies for good."
"I have three years.
Maybe less."
"Until then, Sector-12 is mine."
"Touch these children…
and you'll learn what real darkness feels like."
He paused.
Then quieter:
"I am not your savior.
I am the thing the world locked in a box
and lost the key to.
Remember that."
He turned toward the throne.
The scarf clung to him like a terrified child.
Behind him, Ryeo-Won picked up a fallen paper flower and placed it gently on the lowest step.
Then she looked upward—toward the place no real sunlight had reached in seven hundred years—and whispered:
"Oppa has wings now.
That means he can fly us out of here someday."
Far above, the sixth sky-ring's artificial sun dimmed another 0.3%.
In the Ring Command monitoring room, red warnings filled every screen:
// STIGMA AUTHORITY SPIKE — SECTOR-12
// WING-TYPE RESONANCE CONFIRMED
// FIRST WING REGISTERED
// PROJECTED TIME UNTIL FINAL AWAKENING: 1078 DAYS
// RECOMMENDED ACTION: IMMEDIATE TERMINATION
An officer reached for the launch button that would fire a plasma lance into the lower sectors.
His hand stopped an inch away.
On the screen, a little girl was tucking a paper flower behind the ear of a boy with wings of living night.
His finger trembled…
then dropped away.
Launch aborted.
Somewhere inside the hollow sun,
the Devourer opened its eye a little wider—
and smiled
with twelve wings
and no mouth.