The city pulsed like a sick heartbeat beneath Seo-jin's feet.
It was past midnight.
The Lower City's skeleton groaned under the wind, rattling metal sheets and broken glass.
Seo-jin tightened the strap of his satchel, his footsteps echoing in the dead alleys.
He didn't tell Ha-eun.
He didn't tell Ko.
Tonight was his choice.
His mistake to make.
His risk to carry.
Back at the base, after the encounter with the masked stranger, Seo-jin had sat awake, staring at the cracked ceiling.
The words haunted him.
"Small. Weak. Comfortable."
Was that what he wanted?
To stay safe?
To survive like a rat under rubble?
No.
If he wanted to change anything — his life, Ha-eun's future, his own destiny — he needed power.
Real power.
And power wasn't going to come knocking at Lotus's door.
He had to hunt it himself.
Now, moving through the maze of the Lower City, Seo-jin could feel eyes on him.
Predators.
Desperates.
The broken and the mad.
But tonight, he wasn't looking for a fight.
He was looking for something... worse.
A fragment.
An unstable one.
One strong enough to kill him if he wasn't careful.
One strong enough to force him to grow.
The deeper he went, the stranger the world became.
Buildings leaned over the streets unnaturally, twisted as if warped by invisible hands.
Puddles of liquid reflected skies that didn't exist.
Whispers slithered through the cracks in the walls.
Signs of fragment corruption.
Seo-jin swallowed hard.
This was the place.
**
He found the old market square around 2 a.m.
Once, it might've been beautiful — a place of commerce, laughter, noise.
Now it was a graveyard.
Burned stalls.
Smashed crates.
A silence so deep it hurt.
In the center of the square, a faint blue glow pulsed.
Seo-jin approached carefully.
At the heart of the ruins, suspended above a shattered fountain, floated a fragment.
It was beautiful.
It was monstrous.
It pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat — no, against it.
As if reality itself rebelled against its presence.
**
Seo-jin's breath hitched.
He stepped closer.
His fragment stirred inside him, sensing the raw energy leaking from the wild shard.
This wasn't like the disciplined, stable powers of Lotus members.
This was chaos.
Unclaimed.
Hungry.
Seo-jin gritted his teeth.
His heart screamed at him to turn back.
Instead, he stepped forward.
— "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
The voice cracked through the square like a whip.
Seo-jin spun around, fists raised instinctively.
A figure stepped out of the shadows.
Young. Maybe seventeen.
Tattered coat. A jagged scar across his jaw.
Eyes like molten gold — glowing faintly in the dark.
A fragment user.
Another one.
And judging by the way the air bent around him, a strong one.
**
— "You shouldn't be here," the boy said, voice low.
Seo-jin didn't lower his hands.
— "Neither should you," he shot back.
The boy smirked.
— "Difference is, I can survive this."
Seo-jin clenched his jaw.
— "I'm not leaving."
The boy laughed — a short, humorless sound.
— "You have no idea what you're dealing with, Lotus boy."
Seo-jin stepped sideways, trying to get a better angle, trying to keep both the boy and the fragment in sight.
— "Then enlighten me."
The boy shrugged.
— "Touch that thing wrong, and it'll tear you apart from the inside out."
Seo-jin's fists tightened.
He knew the risks.
He accepted them.
The boy sighed, almost pitying.
— "You're seriously planning to bond with it?"
Seo-jin nodded once.
The boy whistled low.
— "You've got bigger balls than brains, man."
He tilted his head, studying Seo-jin like a curious animal.
— "Fine. You want to die, that's your business."
He turned to leave — then paused.
— "But if you manage to survive... maybe you're worth talking to."
With that, he melted into the shadows.
Gone.
**
Seo-jin turned back to the fragment.
It pulsed brighter now.
Almost... eager.
He drew in a slow, shaky breath.
His skin prickled.
His stomach twisted.
His mind screamed.
Don't.
Run.
Hide.
He ignored it.
He reached out.
Fingers trembling.
Sweat freezing against his skin.
The moment Seo-jin touched the wild fragment—
The world shattered.
Agony exploded inside him, so pure it felt holy.
His body convulsed violently.
His lungs seized.
His heart stuttered.
Reality twisted around him — colors bled together, the ground melted into the sky.
He tried to scream but no sound came out.
The only thing he could feel was the tearing, ripping sensation of the fragment invading him.
It wasn't a clean fusion.
It was war.
**
[Vision: Childhood]
Suddenly, he was six years old again.
Barefoot. Shivering.
Standing in a filthy alley, clutching a piece of moldy bread to his chest.
A man kicked him aside like garbage.
The bread fell into a puddle of sludge.
He cried out, reaching for it.
Another foot crushed it into the mud.
The men laughed.
"Lotus? Kids like you aren't even worth fragments."
The laughter echoed endlessly in his skull.
**
[Vision: The Future]
Then — flashes.
Seo-jin standing atop a crumbling tower, gazing down at a city kneeling before him.
His hand glowing with power.
His enemies bowing.
Their fear a sweet perfume in the air.
"Is this what you want?"
A voice, ancient and cold, whispered from everywhere and nowhere.
"Power to crush them all?"
Seo-jin's heart twisted.
Yes.
No.
He didn't know.
**
The fragment inside him pulsed violently.
It wasn't just offering power.
It demanded a price.
Control? Freedom? Humanity?
All negotiable.
Seo-jin fell to his knees in the fractured dreamscape.
Blood poured from his nose. His ears. His eyes.
He wasn't just fighting to survive the fusion anymore.
He was fighting to stay Seo-jin.
To stay himself.
**
"Give in," the voice crooned.
"Be stronger."
Images flickered past — him snapping Ha-eun's neck, laughing as Ko burned, stepping over the corpses of Lotus.
"No." Seo-jin gritted his teeth.
"I won't lose myself."
The fragment howled.
The world twisted harder, squeezing him into a single point of agony.
Seo-jin clenched his fists until his nails sliced into his palms.
Pain anchored him.
Pain reminded him he was alive.
Pain reminded him who he was.
He forced his will into the chaos.
Pushed.
Pushed harder.
Until it broke.
**
The vision shattered like glass.
Reality snapped back into place.
Seo-jin collapsed onto the cold, cracked stone of the square.
Gasping.
Bleeding.
Alive.
The fragment pulsed weakly in his chest — not as an enemy now, but as something… claimed.
Tamed.
Barely.
**
The sky above him swirled strangely, like smoke trapped under glass.
Seo-jin tried to stand.
His legs buckled immediately.
He tried again.
And again.
Finally, he managed to kneel.
A ragged laugh tore from his throat.
He did it.
Against all odds.
Against everything.
He took the first real step toward becoming something greater.
And then—
Pain spiked through his skull.
The world tilted sideways.
Everything spun.
Seo-jin slumped forward.
Darkness swallowed him.
**
Before he fully blacked out, he felt something — someone — grasping his shoulders.
Dragging him.
A low voice muttered:
— "You're not ready yet, boy. But you might just survive."
Seo-jin tried to open his eyes.
Tried to see the face of his rescuer.
But the world slipped away like sand through his fingers.
And he fell into deep, dreamless oblivion.