Elena looked at him with a strange gaze — a mix of longing and peace, as if she had finally found serenity amidst the chaos.
In a faint, dying voice, she whispered,
"Are… you okay?"
Kim froze.
Those simple words pierced his heart deeper than any blade.
Even as she was dying… the first thing she said was to ask about him?
Something cracked inside him — for the first time, Kim cried…
Not for his family, nor for his past losses, but for something he couldn't yet understand.
His tears fell like a late confession — that somewhere inside, he was still alive.
He stepped closer, voice trembling.
"Are you okay?"
She smiled faintly, like a wave lifting the sea's surface before it calms again, and said,
"Yes…"
He looked at her minor wounds, then pulled out the Book of Sin from the shadows.
He raised his hand to activate a healing skill — but suddenly stopped.
Time froze around him; only his heartbeat remained.
Each thump was a hammer blow on the chains of his torment.
Lowering his head, he whispered hoarsely, dripping with hatred:
"I don't deserve you… I don't deserve to hold something pure inside me."
Each heartbeat reminded him that he was still alive — though he'd wished a thousand times not to be.
"How naïve you were, my heart…
You sought warmth from cold souls, and trusted faces that hid daggers."
Slowly, he raised his hand to his chest and drove his fingers into his own flesh.
Blood mixed with tears, agony with silence — as if the whole world shrank into his pain.
He pulled his heart from between his ribs… a throbbing piece of flesh, twisting between life and death.
He gazed at it for a moment, then whispered with a broken smile,
"You don't belong to me… you were born in a body that knows only cold and betrayal."
Then he tore it apart with his fingers — slowly — until the remnants of his humanity scattered between his hands.
Blood soaked the ground, as if the earth itself wept with him.
Elena screamed in trembling horror,
"You'll die like this! You're destroying yourself!"
He slowly raised his head toward her, his eyes devoid of light, and said with a bloodstained smile,
"Die?"
He laughed, softly — madly.
"I don't die… I simply free myself from my chains."
He pointed at his hollow chest and spoke in a voice that sounded as if it came from an open grave:
"Immortality isn't a gift… it's a curse that keeps you alive to witness the fall of everything you love."
Then he closed his eyes for a moment and spoke coldly — a chill freezing the air itself:
"Now… I have no heart, no pain… nothing left that can break me."
He raised his gaze to the sky burning red with blood and whispered as the wind carried his final words,
"The worst part of immortality… is that you have nothing left to lose,
yet somehow… you feel you've lost everything."
He fell silent for a moment, then turned toward the true King of Darkness, who watched with a devilish grin.
Kim stepped forward — as if reborn from the womb of hell — a frozen smile forming on his face.
"Now, ruler of darkness…"
His voice changed — deeper, heavier — echoing like something from beyond worlds.
"Do you want to see who I really am?"
The air around him trembled, the ground cracked beneath his feet,
and a black radiance erupted from his hollow chest — as if hell itself decided to smile.
He spoke slowly, lethally:
"I'll show you… what it means when darkness chooses to walk on two legs."
He paused for a second, then whispered with a terrifying smile:
"Let's begin…"