The return to Seoul should have felt like relief. After the marrow, after the covenant, after the impossible weight of the abyss, simply breathing the city air should have been enough. But it wasn't.
For Lin, the first night was a haze of exhaustion and dread. He lay in Min-joon's apartment, wrapped in blankets that still carried the faint scent of detergent and Seoul's dust. His body was weak, trembling at intervals like a machine rebooting. Every time he shut his eyes, the scar bled into his mind—the throne of marrow, the black water, the eye. He tried to fight it, to remind himself he was back, but the boundaries felt porous, thin.
