The relic didn't speak.
It called.
In pulses, like a heart buried beneath rock.
A beat only Ji-Hyuk could feel.
Even from halfway across the sea.
They found it buried under the Ashen Plateau — a ruin sealed before the fall of Berafe's last citadel.
No records.
No maps.
But Ji-Hyuk knew it existed.
Because this is where he was chosen.
Before the Fold came.
Before the wars.
Before the hiding.
The entrance was a single stone ring sunk into the earth — untouched by time, protected by death.
As Ji-Hyuk stepped across the threshold, the air changed.
He felt watched.
Not by a creature.
But by a moment.
A single second of history, frozen in place, still humming with intent.
Maeryn hovered at the edge, hesitant.
"I've seen this place before," she whispered. "In dreams."
Ji-Hyuk nodded.
"So have I."
The deeper they went, the more the walls wept memory.
Names scratched into stone in a language that predated language.
Sigils older than the Fold.
Older than Ji-Hyuk.
Yet somehow tied to him.
In the central chamber sat a dais.
Upon it: a mirror.
Not one made to reflect.
But one made to record.
And as he approached, the surface shifted—
And showed him the moment.
He saw himself, much younger.
Wounded.
Bleeding.
Kneeling in the middle of this very room.
A blade at his throat.
Not a Fold soldier.
But a Berafean priest.
The voice echoed through time:
"This one is fractured. Torn. But he will survive."
"Mark him."
"He will either save us…"
"Or become what devours us."
Ji-Hyuk's chest tightened.
He didn't remember this.
Not like this.
But the memory was real.
Etched not in his mind, but his soul.
Yuna, standing beside him, reached out to touch the mirror.
Her hand passed through.
And suddenly—
They were inside it.
The memory became reality.
They stood in the past.
Unseen.
But fully present.
Ji-Hyuk watched his younger self scream in defiance.
Fighting against the glyphs being burned into his skin.
And behind the ritualists—
Stood a shadow.
It wasn't the Fold.
It was the invitation.
A sliver of awareness from another plane.
Watching him.
Choosing him.
Not out of prophecy.
But curiosity.
Maeryn stepped close. "They didn't curse you," she whispered. "They offered you."
"To what?"
"To the thing that became the Fold."
The memory fractured.
Light shattered.
And Ji-Hyuk fell backward into himself.
Back in the present.
Breath gone.
Hands shaking.
And in the mirror's center…
A final glyph glowed.
His original mark.
Buried beneath every scar, every rune, every Fold trace.
He touched it.
And remembered the truth:
He wasn't their enemy.
He was their first message to this world.
Yuna looked up at him.
"What does it mean?"
Ji-Hyuk stared at his hand — the same one that had wielded death and mercy.
"It means I was never meant to hide," he said. "I was meant to echo."
Maeryn's voice was soft.
"Then what now?"
He looked at the sky.
And felt the Fold watching.
Listening.
Waiting.
"Now I answer."
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