Chapter 1: Prologue

　　Five years since it had all turned to ruin. Or was it closer to six now? The ground had been scooped out in a wide, circular crater, as if a massive explosion had ripped through it, and the gouge looked to be at least twice the size of a World Cup stadium. All that land, a site that had once housed a sprawling laboratory buried deep underground, had vanished in a single instant.

　　Cha Hangyeom stood dead center in the wreckage, surveying the earth around him. Not one building had survived intact, so there was nothing to see but scattered rubble and bare ground.

　　Claw marks scored the terrain everywhere, as if some enormous beast had raked through it. Among the deep, sprawling gashes lay footprints twisted into shapes no human or ordinary animal could have left. The ground around the trenches was scorched black, the cuts in the earth like lashes from a whip.

　　Hangyeom was the only one who knew that a single monster had done all of this.

　　He was also the only one who’d witnessed its end.

　　He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky.

　　How tall was hyung, back then?

　　He’d had to crane his neck to look up, and his own height hadn’t changed much since, so the creature must have stood sixteen, maybe twenty feet tall.

　　The black monster, once called evil incarnate, had blurred in his memory over the years. He could recall its rough outline, but the finer details had slipped away.

　　Still, there was one thing he’d never forget.

　　Just like the sleet drifting down from the sky right now, that monster had dissolved into black ash and scattered on the wind. There’d been a moment when he’d flung both hands toward the sky, desperate to catch the falling ash before it disappeared.

　　In the end, I only managed to gather a handful of what had piled up on this spot.

　　Hangyeom stretched his hand high at an angle, the same way he had on the day he’d tried to catch that ash. The tiny snowflakes that landed on his palm melted instantly against his body heat and were gone.

　　He drew a transparent apple from the pocket of his black coat—one that fit perfectly in his grip. An exquisitely crafted thing made of ice, it looked at first glance like a piece of blown glass.

　　“I think I’ll make you something that suits you.”

　　“Well? Do you like it?”

　　Yeah. I like it.

　　Because it suits me.

　　An empty apple. Hollow at its core.

　　Like a ghost.

　　The ghost apple that man had made for him was a strange thing. Clearly carved from transparent ice, and yet it never melted. It didn’t even feel cold cradled against his bare skin.

　　That was exactly why he loved it.

　　It looked like a flawless apple, but inside it was worse than rotten—utterly hollow, empty to the point of desolation. As though the man had crafted a mirror of Hangyeom himself.

　　A soft laugh escaped him, there on the spot where the monster had fallen, and Hangyeom let the ghost apple slip from his hand.

　　A sharp crack—and it split, then shattered into pieces.

　　Only then did the ice, once solid as glass, begin to melt. From between the dissolving shards, a black current bled into the air and vanished.

　　Watching the fragments melt away, Hangyeom pulled his coat tighter as a sudden chill knifed through him. His body went cold all at once, as if a razor-edged wind had swept straight through him.

　　A small cough escaped him.

　　Two or three more followed in quick succession—and then the coughing spiraled out of control, tearing out of him without mercy.

　　“Cough! Cough—ugh! Cough!”

　　It felt as if his organs were twisting inside him. His heart slammed against his ribs like it might burst, and his lungs compressed until he could barely draw breath.

　　He dropped to the ground, retching up harsh, ragged coughs. Out of habit, he clapped a hand over his mouth, but the coughing wouldn’t stop. Each fit sent a wave of agony through him, as if his insides were about to come up whole.

　　“Mmph—ack! Cough—hng!”

　　Then the blood came. Bright at first, but darkening with every cough until the hand pressed to his mouth couldn’t begin to hold it back.

　　It hurts…

　　There wasn’t a single part of him that didn’t ache. Some of his muscles felt torn clean through. Every cough gathered all the pain in his body into one point and detonated it.

　　Finally his lungs gave out entirely—he couldn’t breathe at all. His vision spun, his skull throbbed like it might split open. The sensation of his insides melting down all over again was unbearable.

　　He couldn’t stay upright any longer, and he crumpled to the ground.

　　Through the blur, he could make out the ice shards not yet fully melted. Whatever presence the apple had held seemed to have already dissipated completely.

　　He stared blankly at the melting ice—and then something wavered in the distance. He thought he heard a sound, but his ears were ringing too loudly to catch it.

　　The figure closed the distance fast and shouted again.

　　“Cha Hangyeom!”

　　Only then did he recognize the man racing toward him.

　　The shadow reached him and hauled his collapsed body up into strong arms. Even jolted by the movement, Hangyeom no longer had the strength left to so much as groan.

　　He couldn’t even make out what the man holding him was screaming.

　　The fading sound cut off all at once.

　　The shimmer before his eyes gave way to nothing but darkness. Whether he was floating, or plummeting toward the ground, or still cradled in the man’s arms—he couldn’t feel any of it.

　　Somewhere, a warning tone sounded.

　　BEEEEP—

　　A long, thin note, like the cry of a bird.

　　And there, surrounded on every side by that sound, Hangyeom finally drew his last breath.