The red-threaded silhouette atop the mound lunged, the giant needle trailing a wake of crimson silk that whistled through the air like a whip.
Ji-yeol didn't have the strength to stand, let alone dodge. His porcelain leg was a dead weight, anchored to the gravel by its own sudden transformation.
Instead of retreating, Ji-yeol leaned into the danger. He dipped his fingers into the golden fluid–his own sacrificed vitality-leaking from the jagged fissure in his thigh.
"You want a masterpiece?" Ji-yeol hissed, his voice trembling with the effort. "Then stay in the frame."
As the silhouette's needle descended to pierce his chest, Ji-yeol slammed his gold-stained palm onto the gravel. He didn't just draw a circle; he performed a Reverse Stitch. He visualized the silhouette not as a creature, but as a series of loose ends. He poured the memory of his own "Stasis"—the cold, immobile years of his amnesia—into the golden ink.
The gold flared. The red threads of the attacker froze mid-air, suddenly losing their fluidity. The silhouette jerked, its form beginning to flatten against the air itself as if pressed against an invisible pane of glass. With a final, violent pull of his will, Ji-yeol "stitched" the creature's red threads to the very stones of the burial path.
The attacker became a static, two-dimensional mural on the empty air, its needle suspended inches from Ji-yeol's throat.
Ji-yeol slumped back, gasping for air that felt thick with the smell of wet parchment. The cost of the stitch hit him like a physical blow. A memory flickered in his mind—the feeling of a warm summer breeze on his face—and then blinked out, leaving a cold, grey void in its place. He was trading his past for a few more seconds of a present he barely understood.
He looked at the flattened entity. It was beautiful in a horrific way, a frozen explosion of red lines. But the silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was expectant.
Ji-yeol reached for his suitcase, his fingers trembling so hard they rattled against the brass locks. He needed to move, but his porcelain leg was starting to hum, vibrating with a frequency that suggested the "Flat" world wasn't done with him yet. The ink on the path began to pool around his boots, rising like a dark tide.
He wasn't just fighting a monster; he was fighting the gravity of a story that wanted him finished.