Chapter 1: The Laugh of the Void
The Silent Birth
The sky over the remote village in Gangwon Province didn't just rain; it wept. Thunder shook the foundations of the decaying hanok house where Min-seo screamed in agony.
Outside, the village elders whispered. The air felt static, ionized by a dread they couldn't name. Inside, the local doctor pulled the infant into the dim lamplight. The child was slick with blood, pale as moonlight, and unnervingly still.
"Why isn't he crying?" the doctor muttered, his pulse quickening. He delivered a sharp slap to the infant's back-a standard medical catalyst for life.
There was no wail. No gasp for air.
Jeongwoo simply opened his eyes. They weren't the cloudy, unfocused eyes of a newborn. They were obsidian mirrors, heavy with the exhaustion and cynicism of a soul that had lived a hundred lifetimes. He looked at the doctor not as a savior, but as a specimen.
Then, the silence broke. Not with a cry, but with a low, rhythmic vibration in his chest. A chuckle. A dry, rasping sound that belonged in a graveyard, not a nursery. The doctor recoiled, his instruments clattering to the floor. The "Void" had been born.
The Year of the Watcher
Twelve months passed, but the village of Jinsan felt like it was under a siege of silence. Jeongwoo didn't crawl; he sat. He didn't play with wooden blocks; he watched.
He would sit on the porch for hours, his gaze fixed on the villagers passing by. To them, it felt like being dissected. They didn't see a toddler; they saw a predator measuring the weight of their sins. The whispers turned into a fever: "The child is a vessel," "The mother birthed a shadow."
The Gathering Storm
The tension snapped on a humid evening. Thirty villagers, fueled by superstition and a primal, collective fear, surrounded Min-seo's home. They carried torches that flickered like angry orange teeth against the dark.
"The witch and her demon!" the village head shouted, his voice cracking. "Cleanse the land!"
Min-seo stood at the threshold, clutching Jeongwoo to her chest. But the child pushed her arms away. He wanted to be set down.
The First Massacre: The Synaptic Collapse
Jeongwoo stood on his own two feet, a tiny figure against a wall of thirty grown men and women. He didn't move. He didn't cast a spell. He simply released it.
The Genetic Memory.
He projected a killing intent so dense it physically warped the air. In an instant, he overrode the "Fight or Flight" response of every brain in a twenty-meter radius. He dialed their amygdalas to a breaking point, forcing their subconscious to hallucinate their deepest terrors onto the people standing next to them.
The carnage was silent for the first five seconds. Then, the screaming started.
The First Strike: A man looked at his lifelong friend and saw a flayed, towering beast. With a roar of pure terror, he drove a rusted sickle into the "monster's" throat.
The Frenzy: The smell of blood acted as a catalyst. Logic vanished. To the villagers, the person to their left was a demon; the person to their right was a corpse rising from the grave.
The Detail: A woman, convinced she was protecting her daughter, tore at the eyes of her own husband. They became a mass of tangled limbs and tearing flesh, a human thresher machine powered by a child's presence.
Jeongwoo stood in the center of the whirlpool of gore. Blood splattered across his cheek, but he didn't blink. His lips curled into that same, ancient smile. He was "processing" the data of their deaths, enjoying the symphony of their mental collapse.
The Mother's Embrace
Ten minutes later, the clearing was a graveyard of twisted shapes. The only sound was the rain washing the crimson stains into the dirt.
Min-seo stepped through the doorway, her legs trembling. She looked at the carnage, then at her son. She saw the blood on his small hands and the terrifying, god-like intelligence in his eyes.
She didn't scream. She didn't run. With a hollow expression of total surrender, she knelt and pulled him into a tight embrace. She didn't hold him because she loved him as a mother loves a child; she held him because she realized she was now the guardian of a calamity.
The "Normal" world died that night.