The darkness wasn't just an absence of light; it was a physical weight. For five hundred years, I had counted the vibrations of the earth. The scurrying of worms, the shifting of tectonic plates, and the muffled screams of those buried in the Potter's Field above me.
I was Kang Rim, the First Prince of the Shadow Realm, the "Bane of the Seven Skies." And I was rotting in a stone box because I had trusted the wrong woman.
Thump.
That wasn't the earth shifting.
Thump. Thump.
Spade hitting soil. High-velocity breathing. The frantic heartbeat of a human in a state of pure, unadulterated terror.
"Please... please don't be there," a voice gasped. It was a woman's voice—strained, sharp, and smelling of cheap cigarettes and funeral incense.
Suddenly, a crack of light split my world. The seal—the divine script that had bound my limbs for half a millennium—hissed as it was severed by a crude iron shovel.
I opened my eyes.
The air hit me first. It tasted like smog, car exhaust, and the nectar of a billion living souls. It was intoxicating.
"Oh, god," the woman whispered. She was staring down into the pit she'd dug. She was small, pale, and covered in mud, clutching a shovel like a holy relic. Above her head, a translucent number flickered in the air: [00:14:22].
A Death-Clock. She had fourteen minutes to live.
"You," I rasped. My voice sounded like grinding stones. I reached out, my fingers—claws of solidified shadow—snapping the edge of the stone coffin.
"A-Ah!" she screamed, falling backward. She tried to scramble out of the grave, but she tripped over a tree root. "I'm sorry! The loan sharks said there was gold buried here! I didn't mean to wake up a... a..."
"A god?" I suggested, hauling myself out of the earth. My silk robes were rags, but the power in my veins was beginning to hum, responding to the moonlight. "A demon?"
I stood over her. She was pathetic. A debt-ridden human scavenging in a graveyard at 2:00 AM. But then, I felt it.
A sharp, searing pain in my chest.
I looked down. A golden thread, invisible to the mundane eye, was anchored to my heart, stretching outward until it vanished into her chest.
The Soul-Tie.
"You've got to be kidding me," I growled.
The woman scrambled back, her eyes wide. "Look, mister, I don't have any money. I have three cents and a half-eaten kimbap. Just let me go!"
"I can't let you go," I said, grabbing her by the collar of her dirt-stained jacket. I pulled her close, noticing how her pulse jumped against her throat. "Because if you die in..." I checked her clock. [00:11:05]. "...eleven minutes, I go back into that box forever."
"What? Who's dying? I'm not dying!"
Snap.
The sound of a pistol cocking echoed through the trees. Three men in cheap suits emerged from the treeline, their eyes glinting with predatory greed.
"Han Seol-ah!" the leader shouted. "Stop talking to the hobo and give us the jewelry, or we start taking your fingers!"
I looked at the men, then back at the girl—Seol-ah. My "Soul-Tie." My lifeline.
"Seol-ah," I whispered, a dark smirk tugging at my lips as my shadows began to bleed out across the grass, turning the moonlight red. "Sit behind me. I haven't killed a human in five centuries. I'd like to see if they still break as easily as they used to."
"Wait, you can't—"
I didn't listen. I moved. To her, it was a blur. To me, it was a dance.
The first man didn't even have time to scream before my hand was around his throat. I felt the fragile snap of bone, the rush of his life force trying to escape. I inhaled it.
God, it felt good to be back.
Status Window : Kang Rim
Current Form : Weakened (Exiled)
Soul-Tie : Han Seol-ah (Link: Stable)
Objective : Prevent Soul-Tie's death (Time remaining : 09:42)