The data stretched across three monitors.
Each screen displayed a different archive—government-redacted phenomena reports, civilian eyewitness accounts, and Seojin Capital Solutions' internal anomaly logs.
Yoo Minjae sat quietly in the lab, arms folded, eyes steady. The pale light from the monitors carved sharp angles across his face, casting faint shadows beneath his eyes. The hum of ventilation filled the silence, rhythmic and even—like a mechanical heartbeat.
It was almost serene. Almost.
If not for the storm of thoughts spiraling beneath that calm exterior.
"So this is the path," he murmured. "Or a fork of it."
The reports were inconsistent. Disconnected. Descriptions clashed like fragmented dreams—telekinesis, invisible forces, light distortions, unexplainable survivals. Each incident had been quickly dismissed by official channels, buried beneath rational explanations and bureaucratic red tape.
But Minjae wasn't searching for clean data.
He'd learned in his past life as Valmyros, dragon of the high spires and last bearer of the Elder Tongue, that truth seldom announced itself. Real patterns hid in irregularities—in the places where silence lingered too long.
He leaned closer, scanning the timestamps.
Three reports stood out.
The first: a child in Daegu who bent a spoon without touching it, then fainted seconds later.
The second: a hiker in Gangwon who survived a landslide unharmed, witnesses swearing that a pulse of invisible force threw the debris aside.
The third: an old man in Busan who, moments before a truck collision, was found several meters away from his car—still asleep in the driver's seat.
Each case had been quietly dismissed.
Each carried the scent of something impossible trying to make itself known.
Minjae's gaze drifted to the corner of the room—the locked cabinet that held his most guarded collection.
Inside, beneath layers of false documentation, were rune sheets recreated from memory.
Fine lines. Ink laced with powdered mineral.
Patterns that pulsed faintly under specific wavelengths of light.
Remnants of the ancient symbols humans once used when they accidentally brushed against the boundaries of creation.
He had drawn them not for nostalgia, but necessity.
Still, something had always been missing.
They had form, yes. But no spark. No pulse.
A heart with no beat.
He sighed, rubbing his temple lightly.
"I can remember everything except the rhythm," he murmured.
His own voice sounded strange in the stillness.
He'd spoken less lately—only enough for meetings and polite small talk. Words felt heavier now that he had to disguise every truth behind them.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
A sound drifted up from his memory: the gentle rhythm of **Ha Seori's** heels clicking down the office corridor, that small pause before she stepped into his cubicle with coffee in hand.
The faint citrus scent she carried.
The way her eyes searched his face—careful, deliberate.
He hadn't seen her today.
But her absence registered like a whisper.
Then Yura, bright as ever, throwing him a teasing grin that morning.
"Senior Analyst Yoo," she'd said, "does that promotion come with a private helicopter, or just more paperwork?"
He'd replied with a deadpan, "Just fewer hours of sleep."
She'd laughed, and he'd caught himself almost smiling.
And Yuri—calm, precise Yuri—had stopped by during the quarterly sync. She hadn't said much, only pointed out an inconsistency in his dataset. But her tone had been softer than usual. Concern disguised as professional critique.
"They're watching me," he thought.
"Even when I retreat, they follow."
He didn't dislike it.
If anything, it grounded him. Reminded him that, in this fragile human shell, connection still existed.
He refocused on the screens, pulling up a comparative analysis.
One tab displayed electromagnetic readings from the Daegu incident; another showed spectrographic scans of his rune samples.
No direct match.
But the waveform cadence—the rhythm—wasn't entirely foreign.
He frowned. Zoomed in. Overlaid two data streams.
A subtle resonance.
Barely perceptible, like two instruments playing dissonant notes but finding harmony on the fifth beat.
"Phase shift," he murmured.
Something was aligning—something not quite scientific, not quite mystical.
He felt that old pulse stir within him again. The whisper of the Elder Tongue, coiling beneath his ribs.
Minjae stood, his chair rolling silently back.
He crossed to the cabinet and unlocked it.
The rune sheets greeted him like sleeping serpents. Lines of intention drawn with trembling precision.
He chose one that was incomplete—intentionally so. The outer ring had faded, just as it had during his last failed activation.
"Maybe," he whispered, "I was forcing it."
He set the parchment aside and took a piece of chalk.
On the polished floor, he drew a smaller version—simplified, refined.
Each stroke carried weight, not of muscle, but of memory.
When he was done, he crouched. The air in the room felt different now—thinner, charged.
Will.
That was what humans called it.
But in the language of dragons, it had another name: vahrin—the fire without flame.
Not energy, not spellwork. Just pure persistence.
The primal insistence to exist.
Minjae lowered his hand, resting his palm over the center of the rune.
He pushed—not with strength, but with remembrance.
He recalled the day Valmyros had watched a mortal warrior raise a blade against a leviathan.
He'd thought it foolishness then.
But later, he understood: that stubborn defiance was its own kind of magic.
So he didn't command the rune this time.
He invited it.
A faint warmth bloomed beneath his hand.
The chalk lines shimmered—soft, uncertain.
Then, for a heartbeat, light pulsed through the symbol.
And vanished.
The air settled.
Monitors flickered slightly, then returned to normal.
"That was… something," Minjae murmured.
He reached for his sensors.
Energy fluctuation: minimal.
Residual radiation: measurable, but faint.
Still, the readings confirmed it—the rune had responded.
Not imagination. Not coincidence.
An actual shift.
"So it works," he whispered. "But not consistently. Not yet."
He straightened, staring down at the fading chalk lines.
The glow had died, but a thin curl of warmth lingered near his fingertips.
"Because I'm no longer a dragon? Or because I still think like one?"
He chuckled quietly, a sound more exhale than laughter.
That paradox defined him now—caught between what he was and what he pretended to be.
He cleaned the markings, archived the data, encrypted the files, and deleted the logs from the local server. Just in case.
When he left the lab, the night outside had deepened. Seoul's skyline shimmered through misted glass—ordinary, beautiful, human.
For a long moment, he just watched.
---
By the next morning, the world had already moved on.
The lab's secret remained sealed in silence, and the office thrummed with weekday normalcy.
Minjae arrived early. The break room coffee smelled burnt, as usual.
He poured himself a cup anyway.
Ha Seori passed by, carrying two cups of her own. Without a word, she placed one beside his monitor.
"You were here before sunrise again, weren't you?" she asked, eyes still on her tablet.
"Old habits," he replied.
She smiled faintly. "You're going to make the rest of us look bad."
"I doubt that," he said, glancing at her briefly.
For a heartbeat, their gazes met—hers curious, his unreadable.
Then she moved on, leaving behind a faint trace of warmth.
Moments later, Yura appeared, balancing a mountain of reports in her arms. She dropped a folded note onto his keyboard as she passed.
"Don't die in spreadsheets," it read. "You're in the big leagues now."
He folded it once and slipped it into his notebook without comment.
Then, as if orchestrated, Yuri appeared next—silent, precise. She handed him the quarterly review, marked with a single sticky note.
"Page 12," it said. "You missed a trend. Also… rest more."
Minjae stared at the note longer than he meant to.
Her handwriting was neat. Controlled. A mirror of herself.
He smiled faintly. A human smile. The kind that almost reached the eyes.
"Rest," he murmured. "I'll try."
The day passed as days often did—emails, projections, the low murmur of coworkers trading gossip and caffeine. But beneath that surface hum, Minjae felt a new current stirring.
A quiet, invisible thread connecting him to something just beyond understanding.
He'd seen a rune breathe.
If only once, for only a second.
Proof that what he'd been wasn't gone—it had only changed form.
The lab would remain his sanctuary.
But as he watched the soft interplay of life around him—the laughter near the vending machine, Seori's voice teasing Yura about deadlines, Yuri's calm presence amid chaos—he began to wonder.
Perhaps the key wasn't just in recreating the past.
Perhaps it was in *living* between both worlds—the one of circuits and spreadsheets, and the one that whispered beneath the skin of reality.
He took a slow breath. The taste of coffee lingered, bitter but grounding.
And for the first time in a long while, Minjae didn't feel like he was hiding.
Just… existing.
Quietly. Patiently.
Watching the world change, as he always had.
But now—perhaps—ready to change with it.