The Dark King was dead.
Jae-hui knew this because she'd put her sword through its chest herself.
She also knew she was dying.
The massive chamber no longer existed. Broken stone lay open to the sky where the ceiling had been, and bodies were scattered across the rubble.
She had stopped counting the dead a long time ago.
Jae-hui dragged herself across the shattered ground, one hand pressed against her side where the bleeding would not stop. Her sword lay somewhere behind her, where she had dropped it, but it did not matter now.
She made it to a pillar, half-collapsed but still standing, and leaned back against it.
Her breath came in short, shallow pulls.
Across the massive chamber, the Dark King's corpse lay in a twisted heap, though it had never really been a king. Even in death it was enormous, its hand alone the size of a cart, fingers curled and still.
Jae-hui stared at it for a long moment.
Then she laughed. It hurt, but she could not help it.
"Got you, you bastard," she muttered, grinning through the pain. "We actually got you."
Her vision blurred, and she blinked it clear just as heavy footsteps echoed across the rubble.
A soldier in battered armor stumbled into view, his shield gone and his helmet cracked clean down the middle. Blood streaked down one arm. He saw her and his eyes went wide.
"Lady Hyeon!" He rushed over, nearly tripping on debris.
Jae-hui looked up at him, trying to remember his name.
"You alright... Gareth?" she asked.
"It's Garrick, my lady," he said quietly, without any annoyance in his voice.
"Right. Garrick."
She coughed, the taste of copper filling her mouth.
Garrick knelt beside her, looking at the blood pooling beneath her hand.
His expression shifted.
"Should I..." He hesitated. "Sir Warren asked me to check on survivors. I can get him, or..."
"No," Jae-hui said. "It's fine."
Garrick stared at her.
"My lady..."
"We won, didn't we?" she said, looking past him at the Dark King's corpse.
Garrick followed her gaze.
His jaw tightened.
"...Yeah," he said finally. "We did."
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Cold wind swept through the shattered chamber. Somewhere far off, voices carried as survivors called out and found each other.
Jae-hui let her head rest back against the pillar.
Her free hand moved to her pocket.
She pulled out a small silver pocket watch, tarnished and dented. The chain was broken and the glass face was cracked.
She opened it.
The inside was empty. There was no picture and no inscription. Just the hands, frozen at some hour.
She stared at it for a long time.
Garrick glanced at it but said nothing.
"Just gonna rest for a bit," Jae-hui said quietly.
She closed the watch and let it rest in her palm.
Her eyelids were so heavy.
She let them close.
The wind kept blowing.
And Jae-hui rested.
◇◇◇
Jae-hui opened her eyes and gasped.
The light was too bright, sharp enough to make her squint as her vision struggled to adjust. She jerked upright, her hand immediately flying to her side where the wound should have been.
There was nothing there.
No blood or torn flesh, only the feel of soft, intact fabric beneath her fingers.
Her heart began to pound.
Voices reached her then, someone speaking in a normal tone instead of shouting or screaming.
She blinked hard, trying to focus.
Shapes slowly came into view. Rows of people were sitting and watching something at the front of the room.
At the front, a woman stood with her back turned, moving her hand against a flat surface while a steady scratching sound filled the air. She was speaking, but the words did not make sense to Jae-hui, as if they failed to connect in her mind.
Jae-hui looked around more carefully.
The space was enclosed, with four walls and large windows letting in too much light. Rows of desks filled the room, and people sat in them, all dressed in similar clothing. They were young, unarmed, and completely uninjured.
Her breathing started to quicken.
None of this made sense. She should have been dead, and she clearly remembered dying, yet this didn't feel real, and for a moment she wondered if this was what dying looked like.
She looked down again.
Her hand was still pressed against her side, resting against clean fabric. When she pulled it away and examined it, something immediately felt wrong.
Her fingers felt unfamiliar, softer than she remembered, with no scars or calluses anywhere.
These were not her hands.
Her heartbeat slammed harder as she checked her other hand, only to find the same thing.
Everything about them felt wrong.
She pushed her chair back and stood up before she even realized what she was doing. The legs scraped loudly against the floor, cutting through the quiet room.
Everyone turned to look at her.
Jae-hui barely noticed them, her attention fixed entirely on her hands as she tried to understand what was happening.
"Jae-hui?"
The voice was close.
She turned toward it and saw a girl standing beside her, looking concerned. She looked young, maybe around sixteen, and Jae-hui did not recognize her at all.
"Are you okay?" the girl asked quietly.
At the front of the room, the woman stopped and turned around.
"Miss Hyeon, is there a problem?"
The name caught Jae-hui off guard.
Miss Hyeon.
That was her name, Hyeon Jae-hui.
The realization hit her, and she looked around the room again, taking in the desks, the students sitting in them, and the teacher at the front writing on the board.
It was a classroom.
"I need…" she started, but the words did not come.
The girl beside her stood up. "She's not feeling well," she said. "Can I take her to the nurse?"
The teacher hesitated, then nodded.
The girl gently touched Jae-hui's arm, and she flinched at the contact.
"Come on," the girl said softly. "Let's go."
Jae-hui allowed herself to be led toward the door, her legs moving without issue even as her thoughts remained scattered while she tried to understand where she was. The hallway outside was quieter than the classroom, but not by much, with voices carrying from nearby rooms and students passing by.
The girl stayed close to her side, guiding her without forcing it. "Are you sure you're okay?" she asked, glancing at Jae-hui. "You've been acting a little strange."
Jae-hui didn't answer right away. She kept looking around, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
"I'm fine," she said eventually, though it didn't sound convincing even to her.
The girl frowned slightly. "You don't look fine. Did you not sleep or something?"
Jae-hui slowed her steps.
Something about the girl's voice caught her attention this time, though she didn't know why.
She stopped walking.
The girl took another step before noticing and turned back to her. "Jae-hui?"
Jae-hui looked at her properly this time, studying her face.
"…Who are you?" she asked.
The girl blinked. "What?"
"Who are you?" Jae-hui repeated, more certain now.
For a second, the girl just stared at her, as if waiting for a punchline that didn't come.
"What are you talking about? It's me. Min-ji."
The name hit harder than she expected.
Min-ji.
A faint memory surfaced. A classroom filled with idle conversation. Someone beside her, talking about nothing in particular.
Jae-hui's eyes narrowed slightly as she stepped closer.
"…Min-ji?" she repeated.
The girl looked half-annoyed now. "Yes, Min-ji. Lim Min-ji. Are you messing with me right now?"
Jae-hui reached out before she could stop herself and grabbed her face.
Min-ji froze. "What are you doing?"
Jae-hui turned her head slightly, then poked her cheek once, then again, as if testing something. Her fingers pressed lightly, then pinched.
"…You're real," she murmured.
"The hell?" Min-ji pulled back, swatting her hand away. "Of course I'm real. What is wrong with you today?"
Jae-hui stared at her, trying to match the face in front of her to the vague, distant memory in her mind.
"Lim Min-ji…" she said quietly.
Min-ji crossed her arms, looking at her with a mix of concern and irritation. "Okay, now you're really scaring me. Did you hit your head or something?"
Jae-hui didn't answer.
Min-ji sighed and grabbed her wrist. "Come on."
The hallway stretched ahead of them, longer than she expected, and she found herself reading everything she passed without meaning to. Signs, notices, a bulletin board covered in printed announcements, all of it in Korean.
Korean.
Everything was in Korean.
She slowed without meaning to, staring at a school logo on one of the notices. She knew that logo.
The name beneath it read Yeonhui High School.
This was Seoul.
That couldn't be right.
She was still turning that over when her eyes caught the television mounted on the wall near the corner ahead. It was playing a news broadcast with the volume turned low, and most of the students passing beneath it were not looking at it at all.
Jae-hui looked at it.
A city street. Barriers set up across the road with uniformed figures standing in a line behind them. The camera was positioned at a distance, shooting over the heads of onlookers, and for a moment it just looked like any other emergency scene she might have seen before.
Then the camera adjusted, and she saw what was behind the barriers.
Something hung in the air above the intersection, a faint oval distortion where the air rippled slightly like heat rising off the road. The space inside looked a little off, but it stayed still while traffic moved and people walked around it as if it were just another blocked-off area.
Jae-hui stopped walking.
The pull on her wrist made Min-ji stop with her, and she turned back immediately. "What now?"
"What is that," Jae-hui said, still staring at the screen.
Min-ji followed her gaze. "What do you mean?"
"That." Jae-hui pointed at it. "In the air."
Min-ji glanced at the screen, then back at her. "It's a gate."
Jae-hui turned to face her slowly.
"What's a gate?"