The dawn came, but it didn't feel like morning.
Seoul's skyline usually blazed awake with light—office towers flaring to life, traffic veins clogged with commuters, neon signs flickering off as daylight took over. Today, the city rose under a pall, as though the night had only dimmed rather than lifted. The sky had color, but it was thin, sickly. The streets stirred, but the rhythm was offbeat, a syncopation that grated on the ear.
Lin opened his eyes to this broken morning, though he wished he hadn't. His body ached in places he didn't know could ache, like every bone had been torn out and shoved back at the wrong angles. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead. He blinked, and for a moment, the ceiling above him was not the cracked plaster of the safehouse but the yawning, marrow-lit cavern of the scar.
He gasped, shoving himself halfway upright, before a steady hand pressed him back down.
