CHAPTER 6: The Price of Peace
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The sun had just begun to set, casting a warm amber hue over the rooftops as Ji-ho and Ye-jun walked back from the market. Their bags were full—fresh vegetables, a few healing herbs, and sweet rice cakes Seo-oh always smiled about. They talked quietly, their laughter light, the weight of their past horrors momentarily forgotten.
As they neared the alley leading to the clinic, Ji-ho felt it first.
A wrongness.
The air was too still. No herbal scent drifted through the air. The windchimes that Seo-oh hung outside were silent, despite the soft breeze.
Then they saw it.
The front door of the clinic was shattered, hanging loosely off its hinges. The windows were blown in. Smoke curled out from inside, thin and dark.
"Seo-oh…?" Ji-ho dropped the bags and ran.
"NO!" Ye-jun screamed, following close behind.
Inside… was hell.
The once warm, quiet clinic was a warzone. Blood smeared across the floor and walls. Cabinets torn from their hinges. Furniture overturned. Her beloved houseplants crushed, the soil soaked in red. The smell of fire, blood, and death hung in the air like poison.
"No… no, no, please—" Ji-ho stumbled into the living room.
In the center of the destruction lay a small video chip, blinking with a soft red light. Above it, scrawled in crude, angry handwriting on the wall:
> CHECK THIS. GIVE US THE PENDANT OR YOU BOTH DIE NEXT.
His fingers shook as he picked it up. He slid it into the cracked wall monitor.
The screen buzzed.
Static.
Then—Seo-oh.
Bound to a chair. Blood dripping from her mouth. Clothes torn. Her face swollen from beatings, but her eyes—still defiant.
Ten men surrounded her.
Laughing.
Mocking.
Demanding the pendant.
She didn't answer.
They broke her fingers.
Still nothing.
They slammed her head back, shattered her ribs, carved into her skin—each act of torture more inhuman than the last.
Yet she never screamed their names. Never gave up the pendant. Never gave up them.
Even when her limbs were broken, her body crushed beyond repair, even as she begged for her life—not once did she betray them.
Her final whisper, through broken lips:
> "…Ji-ho… protect Ye-jun…"
Then the screen went black.
Ji-ho dropped to his knees.
The pendant around his neck pulsed—dim and cold.
There were no tears.
No words.
Only silence.
Only the sound of something inside him snapping.
And from that silence rose a storm.
A fury not even the devils could imagine.
To be continued
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