The Daereungwon Burial Mounds rose from the Gyeongju earth like the backs of sleeping giants. Under the moonlight, the great grass-covered domes were stripped of their usual emerald hue, appearing instead as mounds of silver-grey ash.
Ji-yeol moved through the shadows of the pine trees, his porcelain leg dragging with a rhythmic, agonizing scrape-thud across the gravel path. The sound felt loud enough to wake the monarchs buried beneath the soil.
He kept his Spirit-Lantern shuttered; out here, in the open, the indigo light would be a beacon for things far worse than crows.
He reached the base of the Great Tomb of Hwangnamdaechong. The air here was different—it didn't just smell like wet earth and pine. It smelled like Formaldehyde and Ancient Silk.
"The knot," Ji-yeol whispered, opening his palm.
The blood-red thread the crow had given him was glowing. It wasn't a steady light; it was a frantic, panicked blink. It was reacting to something inside the mound. Ji-yeol knelt, pressing his human hand against the cold, dew-slicked grass of the tomb.
The smell hit him with the force of a physical blow. It was the scent of a thousand-year-old banquet suddenly interrupted. Spilled wine, roasted meat, and the sharp, bitter tang of a ritual poison. But underneath the historical layers, there was a modern, synthetic stench: Fresh Ink.
Ji-yeol's heart hammered against his ribs—a hollow, metallic sound. He realized then that Naoki hadn't just braided the threads of the living; he was "Stitching" the present into the deep past. He was using the weight of Gyeongju's history to anchor the "Future Portrait."
Suddenly, the ground beneath his porcelain knee softened. Not like mud, but like wet paper.
Ji-yeol tried to pull back, but his unfeeling leg was already sinking. The grass turned into dark, swirling ink, and the surface of the burial mound began to ripple. He looked up and saw that the pine trees were losing their detail, their needles blurring into long, jagged brushstrokes.
The world was losing its "Depth."
He grabbed his suitcase, his knuckles white. If he sank into the mound, he wouldn't be entering a grave; he would be entering a Masterpiece. He would become a permanent part of a scene Naoki had already finished painting.
"Not today," Ji-yeol hissed.
He reached into his satchel, but not for a phial. He pulled out a heavy, iron Scribe's Awl. He didn't use it on the ground. He slammed the point of the tool into his own porcelain thigh.
The cost was immediate. To "Break" the stillness of the porcelain, he had to trade a memory of Movement.
Images of him running as a boy—the feeling of wind in his hair, the burn in his lungs—flickered and died in his mind, replaced by a grey, static void. But the sacrifice worked.
A crack spider-webbed across his porcelain leg, and the sudden "Reality" of the breakage forced the ink-ground to solidify.
He tumbled backward onto the gravel, gasping.
His leg was ruined, a jagged fissure running from knee to ankle, leaking a thick, golden fluid that smelled like sunlit honey.
He was falling apart, but he was still 3D.
From the top of the burial mound, a figure appeared. It was a silhouette composed entirely of red threads, holding a giant needle like a spear. It didn't speak, but Ji-yeol could feel its gaze—a cold, calculating assessment of a curator deciding if a piece was worth keeping or discarding.