Jisoo's eyes glowed faintly in the recording, as if some invisible current had ignited beneath her skin. It wasn't just her consciousness that had returned it was someone else's will. Someone far older. Far colder.
Lucien zoomed in on the screen again, fingers trembling for the first time in years.
"That's not possession," he murmured. "That's… convergence."
Hana stared at him. "What does that mean?"
Lucien stood up slowly. "It means the timeline is collapsing. Past lives aren't meant to coexist with the present. But something has accelerated the merging process."
"She's becoming both," Hana whispered. "Herself and whoever she was in the past."
Lucien nodded grimly. "And if they complete the ritual inside her… she won't come back."
The coordinates Lucien had pulled from the camera metadata led them south, to the outskirts of Jeonju. An abandoned medical research facility stood at the edge of a long-forgotten forest overgrown, silent, and shrouded in fog even at midday.
No guards.
No visible security.
That alone made Lucien nervous.
He scanned the perimeter with a handheld sensor. "There's a temporal frequency here subharmonic."
"Meaning?" Hana asked, checking her handgun as they crept through the perimeter gate.
"Meaning time itself is slower here. This place is wrapped in a compression field. It distorts how memory flows."
They reached the main doors. Rusted, half-hinged, yet ajar.
Inside, old surgical tables lay scattered beneath hanging fluorescent lights, flickering like ghosts trying to wake up.
But the real chamber lay beneath.
A spiraling staircase, concealed behind a supply closet, led them underground. Each step they took buzzed faintly with static, as if the air resisted their passage.
The deeper they went, the louder the hum.
And then they saw it.
A vast underground vault, part research lab, part temple, lined with archaic machines pulsing in rhythm with Jisoo's breath. She floated in the center, still encased in that transparent sphere. Tubes of liquid memory fed into her spine.
Hana gasped. "It's like they're feeding her her own past."
Lucien narrowed his eyes. "No. Not just hers."
He gestured toward a second chamber. Inside were rows of glass cases, each holding ancient scrolls, inked in a dead language. Lucien scanned them quickly.
"This one's from the Joseon era… and this predates even Silla."
He looked at Hana. "They're rebuilding your lineage."
Before Hana could answer, a voice echoed through the chamber.
"You came sooner than expected."
From the shadows stepped a man, middle-aged, sharp-eyed, dressed in ceremonial black.
Hana's breath caught. "Who are you?"
The man bowed slightly. "My name is Shin Dae-hyun. Keeper of the Veil."
Lucien stepped forward, gun aimed. "You're the one extracting her memories."
"I'm the one trying to preserve them," Shin replied coolly. "You of all people should understand, Lucien. Without convergence, the gate won't open. The ritual must complete."
Hana shook her head. "You're using her as a vessel."
"She is a vessel," Shin said. "As are you."
Suddenly, the floor beneath Hana glowed faintly. The mark on her collarbone burned in response.
Lucien shouted, "Hana, get out of...!!!!"
Too late.
A wave of energy rippled across the chamber, lifting her off her feet and slamming her into the air suspended, just like Jisoo.
But instead of freezing, Hana's body began to pulse with its own energy, resisting the current.
Lucien fired, shattering one of the machines. Sparks flew.
The wave collapsed.
Hana dropped to the ground, coughing hard, the mark on her skin still burning.
Shin was gone.
Only the echo of his words remained: "You're next."
Back at the Seoul safe house, Hana sat wrapped in a thermal blanket, silent. Her skin still glowed faintly beneath the fabric.
Lucien watched her closely. "Are you feeling anything strange? Visions? Whispers?"
She looked at him. "No. Just… fragments. Like someone else's dreams."
Lucien leaned forward. "Can you describe them?"
She nodded slowly. "A garden with lanterns. A woman in a red hanbok, writing a letter. A dagger with three stones embedded in the hilt. A child crying beside a black gate."
Lucien froze. "That gate… it's real. The Tomb of Echoes."
"I thought that was a myth," Hana said.
He shook his head. "It was sealed after the fall of the Last Oracle. No one's ever reopened it."
"Until now?"
Lucien nodded. "Jisoo's memories must've contained the location."
"But I saw it," Hana whispered. "Before we even found Jisoo. I dreamed of it… months ago."
Lucien stared at her, stunned. "Then it's not just the past bleeding into you. It's prophecy."
He stood abruptly and walked to the wall, pulling down an ancient map inked in red.
"This," he said, tapping a specific ridge near Gyeongju, "is where the last Oracle was entombed."
"And now?"
"Now we dig."
Unknown Facility The Next Morning
Jisoo stood upright inside the sphere.
Her eyes had returned to normal. Her body, no longer floating, now rested on a circle etched into the floor.
But her voice, when she spoke, was not hers.
"She is waking."
Behind her, Shin Dae-hyun entered, hands clasped behind his back.
"How much does she remember?" he asked the priestess at his side.
"Enough to locate the Oracle Gate," the priestess replied.
"And the girl?"
"She resists. But her mark has fully awakened."
Shin nodded slowly.
"Then it's time."
He stepped forward, hand outstretched.
A golden key emerged from the folds of his robe ancient, scarred, glowing with unseen fire.
"The Oracle must speak," he said. "And if she will not… We'll make her scream."
Seoul – That Night
Lucien and Hana stood at the edge of the excavation site deep in the forgotten mountains, surrounded by nothing but stone and sky.
In his hand, Lucien held a pendant he hadn't worn in over a decade.
It vibrated softly.
"This is it," he said.
Hana stepped forward, heart racing.
At her approach, the pendant grew hot, then shattered in Lucien's hand.
The earth trembled.
And before them, the mountain split open, revealing a stairway carved in obsidian, leading deep into the darkness below.
They didn't speak.
They just descended together.
One step closer to the truth.
One step closer to the grave of who they used to be.
Elsewhere, far away, an ancient voice whispered through flame:
"The cycle is breaking. The heart has remembered. Now, we begin again."