Chapter 1: The Anatomy of Emotions
1.1 "The Crayon Box"
The kitchen smelled of burnt toast and regret.
Jeong sat cross-legged on the linoleum floor, his knees dimpling the sticky residue of a honey jar his mother had shattered that morning. She'd done it deliberately—"To teach you consequences," she'd said, after he'd confessed to doodling on the living room wall. The amber shards still glinted in the corners, treacherous as broken promises.
His mother placed the crayon box in front of him. Six sticks, sharpened to surgical precision, each labeled in her looping cursive:
- Joy (Gold)
- Sadness (Blue)
- Anger (Crimson)
- Fear (Charcoal)
- Surprise (Emerald)
- Disgust (Slate)
"Draw yourself," she said, her voice crisp as starched linen. "But make it "Proper."
Jeong hesitated. Proper meant symmetry. Proper meant muted colors, his father's stony silence, his mother's perfume that reeked of lemons and disapproval. But the blue crayon called to him, its wax as rich as the summer sky before a storm. He pressed it hard against the paper, sketching his eyes as twin hurricanes, his mouth a quivering river. For "Joy", he added a single gold star clinging to his cheek—the kind he'd seen trapped in puddles after rain, drowning in the reflection of streetlights.
His mother's shadow fell over the page. "Too much blue," she said. Her fingernail—painted the color of dried blood—scraped the paper, flaking away the storm. "No one will love you if you're this… messy."
"But the star—"
"Stars don't belong on faces." She plucked the gold crayon from his grip and snapped it in half. The sound echoed like a bone breaking. "Try again. And smile this time."
When she left, Jeong licked the broken crayon. It tasted like nothing.
1.2 "The Museum of Broken Things"
Jeong's childhood home was a museum of broken things.
The cracked vase his father glued back together after their last Christmas as a family. The grandfather clock that stopped ticking the night Jeong turned ten, its hands frozen at 11:59. The porcelain doll in the hallway, its face a vacant smile, its eyes chipped from the time Jeong had thrown it against the wall. "Just like you," his mother had hissed as she swept up the pieces. "Useless when you're not perfect."
He kept the crayon portrait hidden under his mattress, its edges frayed from nights spent tracing the ghost of his storm-cloud eyes. Sometimes, he'd press his cheek to the paper, imagining the star's warmth. But the gold had dulled to a muddy yellow, and the river of his mouth bled into the margins, as if even the ink knew it didn't belong.
1.3 "The Fishing Trip"
Flashback: Age 12 –
The first time Jeong noticed the cold, he was knee-deep in a river, his father's shadow looming behind him.
"Hold the rod steady," his father barked, adjusting Jeong's grip with calloused hands. "You're letting it slip."
The trout writhed at the end of the line, its scales glinting like wet coins. Jeong's fingers trembled. The fish was beautiful—a flash of silver, desperate and alive—and he didn't want to kill it.
"Reel it in," his father said. "Now."
Jeong turned the handle. The trout thrashed, gills flaring. Something sharp and sour climbed his throat.
"Stop crying," his father snapped.
"I'm not—"
"You're weak." His father snatched the rod, yanking the fish from the water. It hit the rocks with a wet smack. "This is how the world works. You either gut it, or it guts you."
Jeong stared at the fish. Its mouth gaped, soundless. He reached to touch it, but his fingers brushed ice. Frost spread across its scales, crystallizing its final shudder.
His father laughed—a hollow, rasping sound. "Look at that. Even your pity's cold."
By dusk, Jeong couldn't feel the campfire's heat.
1.4 "The Party"
Nine years later, Jeong stood in the corner of a party that thrummed like a fever dream, his face aching.
The house belonged to a boy named Marcus, whose parents were vacationing in Bali. Beer cans littered the pool, bobbing like carcasses. A girl in a sequined dress—Shin, he remembered, from chemistry class—grinded against a boy whose hands roamed her hips like trespassers. The air reeked of sweat, weed, and the metallic tang of desperation.
Jeong had spent hours that evening practicing expressions in his bedroom mirror:
- Joy: Lips upturned, crinkled eyes. Think of puppies. Think of birthday cake.
- Surprise: Brows arched, mouth a polite "O". Think of fireworks. Think of secrets.
His reflection had obeyed, smooth and pliant as clay. But now, under the strobe lights, his muscles rebelled. His smile slipped sideways. His eyebrows twitched, a marionette with tangled strings.
Shin stumbled toward him, her pupils dilated, her breath sweet with stolen vodka. "Why do you keep doing that?" she slurred, poking his cheek.
"Doing what?"
"Your smile. It's like…" She mimed a zipper across her mouth, then ripped it open. "Broken. Stop it, you're creeping everyone out."
The room tilted. Jeong fled down a hallway lined with framed photos of Marcus's family—all grinning, all golden, all "Proper"—and locked himself in the bathroom.
1.5 "The Mirror"
The mirror above the sink was smudged with fingerprints and lies.
Jeong gripped the edges of the counter, his knuckles blanching. His reflection stared back: a boy with a face like wax, softened at the edges. He peeled back his lips, baring teeth. "Gold star, gold star, where's the—"
A crack split his reflection.
Not in the glass.
In "Him."
A hairline fissure ran from his left eye to his jaw, glowing faintly, like light beneath a door. He pressed a finger to it. Cold. Hollow.
"No," he whispered.
The crack spread, branching into tributaries, devouring his cheek, his chin, his throat. He clawed at it, but his fingers slipped through his skin, as if digging into porcelain. Beneath lay a void—no blood, no bone, just a silence so profound it hummed.
A knock rattled the door.
"Jeong?" Shin's voice, edged with giggles. "You better not be dying in there."
He pressed his forehead to the mirror. His breath fogged the glass, and for a heartbeat, he saw his seven-year-old self staring back—storm-cloud eyes, blue-crayon tears.
"I'm trying," he whispered to the ghost-boy. "I'm trying to be proper."
The crack swallowed his voice.
1.6 "The Cold"
Jeong's hands had been cold for years.
It started after the fishing trip, the frost in his veins spreading like mold. By fourteen, his touch frosted glass. By sixteen, he wore gloves in July.
Earlier that day, his father had driven him to the pharmacy, silent except for the radio humming a hymn. At the checkout, the cashier - a girl with chipped purple nails and a nametag reading JESS - flinched when Jeong handed her his money.
"Your hands are freezing," she said, dropping the bills like they'd bitten her.
"Sorry." He tried to smile, the way he'd practiced.
She recoiled. "Don't. Just… don't."
In the car, his father lit a cigarette. "You're too old for this, you know."
"For what?"
"Whatever this is." He gestured at Jeong's face with his lit cigarette, ash scattering like dying fireflies. "Your mother's crying again. Says you've become a… what's the word? A VOID."
Jeong stared at his hands. They were cold. He couldn't remember the last time they'd been warm.
1.7 "The Porcelain Mask"
When Jeong stumbled out of the bathroom, the party had dissolved into chaos.
Someone had vomited in the pool. A boy he didn't recognize was urinating on the rose bushes. Shin lay passed out on the couch. Jeong walked home, the night air clinging to him like wet gauze.
He found a payphone on the corner of Maple and 5th, its metal cord coiled like a noose. The receiver felt heavier than a skull.
His mother answered on the first ring. "Hello?"
"Mom," he said.
A pause. "Jeong? Where are you? Your father said—"
"I think something's wrong with me."
Silence. Then, softer: "Come home. We'll… fix it."
But when he hung up, the receiver left a smudge of gray dust on his palm. He rubbed it across his cheek, staining the crack ashy black.
By dawn, his face was a porcelain mask.
By dusk, he forgot how to cry.
1.8 "The Makeup"
His mother met him at the door with a makeup kit.
"Sit," she ordered, steering him to the kitchen chair. The same one where he'd drawn the storm-cloud self-portrait.
She uncapped a foundation bottle labeled "Apricot Glow". "We'll cover it up. No one needs to know."
The brush scratched his mask. She layered concealer over the cracks, blush over the hollows. When she reached for the gold eyeshadow, Jeong flinched.
"Don't. That's for Joy -"
"Hush." She smeared it across his eyelids. "You don't get to choose."
In the mirror, his face was a mannequin's—smooth, gleaming, dead. His mother smiled, satisfied. "There. Perfect."
But the makeup cracked within hours. Gold dust rained from his cheeks, pooling on the floor like fallen stars.
1.9 "The First Night"
That night, Jeong dreamt of the Shattered Vale.
He stood in a wasteland of broken mirrors, each shard reflecting a version of himself:
- A boy with storm-cloud eyes.
- A hollow thing with a porcelain face.
- A creature of cracks and light.
A crow perched on his shoulder, its beak slick with oil.
Crow: "You're not broken."
Jeong: "Then what am I?"
Crow: "Unfinished. A half-carved statue. A song missing its chorus."
Jeong: "How do I fix it?"
The crow pecked at his mask. A chunk fell away, revealing the void beneath.
Crow: "You don't. You unmake it. Let the rot breathe. Let the cracks sing."
Jeong: "What if I vanish?"
Crow: "What if you become?"
The bird plunged its beak into his chest. Jeong woke gasping, his pillow dusted with porcelain fragments.
Chapter 2: The Porcelain Prison
The morning after the party, Jeong woke to the sound of his mother scrubbing honey from the kitchen floor. The scent of bleach clawed at his throat as he traced the fissure in his porcelain mask—a jagged fault line running from his temple to his jaw. It wept silver, slow and syrupy, staining his pillowcase with constellations.
His mother's heels clicked down the hallway, sharp and deliberate. She paused in his doorway, a silhouette framed by the harsh glare of the overhead bulb. Steam curled from the mug of chamomile tea in her hand, its floral sweetness clashing with the chemical sting of her hairspray.
"Let me see," she said, her voice brittle as sugar glass.
He turned toward her. Her breath hitched—a tiny, wounded sound—as she set the mug down. Her hands fluttered toward his face, then recoiled, as if burned. Without a word, she retrieved the makeup kit from his dresser, its contents rattling like bones in a coffin.
"We'll cover it," she said, unscrewing a foundation bottle labeled "Apricot Glow". "No one needs to know."
The brush scraped his mask, layering peach concealer over the cracks, blush over the hollows. When she reached for the gold eyeshadow, Jeong recoiled.
"Don't," he said, his voice muffled behind the mask. "That's for Joy —"
"Hush." Her grip tightened on his chin, her nails biting into the porcelain. "You don't get to choose."
In the mirror, his face was a mannequin's—glossy, lifeless, *wrong*. She smiled, her reflection fraying at the edges. "There. Perfect."
By noon, the makeup had cracked. Gold dust rained from his cheeks in third-period algebra, pooling on the linoleum like fallen stars. A freshman girl shrieked when a shard grazed her ankle, and Mr. Kendrick sent Jeong to the nurse with a note that read: "See attached medical report." The nurse took one look at him and called his mother.
"Psychosomatic," the doctor said later, snapping off her latex gloves. The clinic reeked of antiseptic and dread. "The mind's attempt to cope with trauma." She handed Jeong a questionnaire: On a scale of 1–10, how often do you feel sadness?
He left every answer blank.
"See?" His mother laughed, a sound like shattered china. "He's fine."
In the parking lot, Jeong pressed his palm to the car window. Frost bloomed across the glass, delicate as lace. His father ground his cigarette into the asphalt, the embers dying with a hiss.
"Stop that," he said. "You're not a child."
School became a graveyard of whispers -
Jeong drifted through the halls, his mask glinting under fluorescent lights. Students pressed themselves against lockers to avoid brushing his sleeves. A boy in his history class dropped his textbook when Jeong passed; it landed with a thud that echoed like a coffin closing.
"Freak," someone hissed.
In biology, Mara—a girl with neon-green braces and a constellation of acne across her cheeks—flinched when his gloved hand grazed hers. They were dissecting frogs, their slimy organs pinned open like macabre maps.
"Your skin's so cold," she muttered, scooting her chair away.
He wrote in his notebook: I'm sorry.
She crumpled the page and threw it in the trash.
Shin found him at the graveyard after school.
She sat beside him on a moss-eaten tombstone, her arms a latticework of scars. Her headphones dangled around her neck, leaking a dissonant symphony—violins screeching, cellos groaning. The crow from his dreams perched on a nearby oak, its beady eyes fixed on them.
"They say you can't feel anything," she said, kicking a pebble into an open grave. "Is that true?"
"Yes."
"Liar."
She pressed her palm to his chest. His heartbeat thudded, slow and distant, like a drum submerged in oil.
"You're still in there," she said. "Trapped."
"Does it matter?"
"Yes." She rolled up her sleeve, revealing fresh cuts, raw and angry. "Because I'm trapped too. Just… louder."
Jeong reached out, but she slapped his hand away.
"Don't pretend to care," she snapped. "You're just a mirror. All you do is reflect."
The crow cawed, its voice echoing hers. Shin didn't seem to notice.
That night, Jeong dreamt of the cliff again.
Wind screamed in his ears, carrying voices he almost recognized. The ground beneath him was littered with porcelain shards—faces he'd shed like snake skin. The crow circled above, shrieking.
"Jump!" it taunted. "They'll love you dead. A tragedy. A story."
He stepped forward.
A hand grabbed his shoulder—the old man from his dreams, **Orpheus**, his lantern casting fractured light. His hood had been torn away, revealing a face that mirrored Jeong's own, weathered and scarred.
"Not here,"* Orpheus rasped. "Not yet."
"Why?"
"The Vale wants you whole. You're no use to it in pieces."
The crow dive-bombed, snatching a strand of Orpheus's hair. Jeong glimpsed a memory in the lantern's glow: a younger Orpheus, whole and weeping, standing at the edge of the same cliff. A girl with Shin's wild eyes dissolved into the mist below, her name lost to the void—Eurydice.
"I couldn't save her," Orpheus said, the admission carving deeper lines into his face. "Don't let your Shin become my failure."
Jeong woke with a gasp. His mask had split further, a single tear of molten silver leaking from the crack.
The crow returned at midnight, dropping a thorny rose onto his windowsill—black petals, blood-red veins.
"For the feast," it croaked.
"What feast?"
"The Vale hungers. It wants your heart. Your noise."
It pecked at the crack in his mask, its beak clinking against porcelain.
"Six guardians. Six trials. You'll fail, of course. But your screams will be delicious."
Jeong crushed the rose. Thorns pierced his glove, oozing silver.
"Run, little ghost,"the crow hissed. "The Puppeteer is already pulling your strings."
In math class the next day, the shadows lengthened.
Jeong's pencil snapped as a voice hissed from the corner—a shadow with too many teeth and a grin stitched ear-to-ear.
"Dance for us, hollow boy."
The room melted into a carnival tent. Marionettes dangled from the ceiling, their faces his classmates'. Shin swung from a noose of violin strings, laughing manically as her wrists bled sheet music.
"Joy is a performance!" the shadow screeched, its voice the Puppeteer's. "Smile! Dance!"
Jeong's body jerked, bones cracking like dry kindling. He woke at his desk, his mask splintered further, one human eye staring back from the mirror of his pencil case.
Mr. Kendrick glared. "Daydreaming again, Mr. Voss?"
Shin cornered him in the library during lunch, her eyes wild, her breath reeking of nicotine and despair.
"I see them too," she whispered. "The shadows. The crow."
"You're lying."
"They whisper to me. They say… I'll die screaming."
She grabbed his wrist, pressing it to her racing pulse. Her heartbeat was a riot—fear, rage, longing—a cacophony Jeong's chest echoed emptily.
"You want to feel?" she hissed. "Feel this."
He jerked away, silver tears searing his cheeks.
"I'd rather be numb than this," she spat. "Than…this."
She fled, leaving him alone with the crow's laughter ringing in his ears.
That night, Jeong stood at the cliff's edge, the city lights below like discarded jewelry. The crow perched beside him, dropping a mirror shard at his feet.
"Do it," it urged. "They'll never love you. Not even dead."
He lifted the shard. His reflection stared back—cracked, silver-eyed, alive.
"Wait."
Orpheus emerged from the shadows, his lantern extinguished. "The fall won't kill you. It'll just…hollow you further."
"What's left to hollow?"
Orpheus smiled, bitter. "Oh, child. You've only scratched the surface."
The crow screeched, vanishing into the dark.
Jeong closed his eyes.
The shard gleamed.
Chapter 3: The Cliff with No Wind
The mirror shard trembled in Jeong's hand, its edge biting into his palm. Silver blood welled around the cut, dripping onto the cliff's edge where it sizzled against the stone like acid. Below, the city sprawled in a web of neon and shadow, indifferent to the boy poised above it. The air was unnervingly still, as if the world had drawn a breath and forgotten to exhale.
"Jump," whispered the crow, perched on a skeletal birch behind him. "They'll write poems about your silence."
Orpheus stood a few paces back, his lantern extinguished, his face a roadmap of old sorrows. "Don't let the Vale win before you've even begun."
Jeong turned the shard, watching his reflection fracture—a mosaic of the boy he'd been and the hollow thing he'd become. The porcelain mask had split further overnight, revealing slivers of raw, glistening flesh beneath. He pressed the glass to the crack, and for a heartbeat, he saw her.
Shin.
Her laughter echoed up the cliffside, sharp and frayed. "You're not the only ghost here, Jeong."
She emerged from the tree line, her arms bare to the cold, scars glowing like phosphorescent veins. The crow flapped its wings, unsettled, as she strode toward Jeong, her boots crunching dead leaves.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, though the shard had already shown him the answer.
"Same as you." She peered over the edge, her hair whipping in a wind that didn't exist.
"Looking for an ending that doesn't hurt."
The crow cawed, mocking. "Two for the Vale! How generous."
Orpheus stepped between them, his lantern flaring to life. The light caught Shin's scars, transforming them into glowing runes. "You don't belong here, girl."
"Neither does he." She grabbed Jeong's wrist, her touch feverish. "You feel that? Nothing. Just like me."
But she was wrong. Her skin burned, a live wire of rage and grief, and for the first time in years, Jeong flinched.
Shin's pulse thrummed against his fingertips, a discordant rhythm that made his teeth ache. She leaned closer, her breath hot with desperation. "You want to know what feeling is? It's this. Every. Damn. Day." She pressed his hand to her chest, where her heart hammered like a trapped bird. "I cut to make it quiet. To breathe."
Jeong tried to pull away, but she held firm. "You're not hollow," she hissed. "You're a coward."
The insult should've meant nothing. Instead, it stung—a flicker of heat in his frozen veins.
Orpheus watched them, his lantern dimming. "Enough. The Vale feeds on this."
"Let it feed," Shin spat. "Maybe it'll choke."
The cliff shuddered.
Cracks spider-webbed through the ground, vomiting plumes of black smoke. From the fissures crawled shadows—skeletal hands, eyeless faces, whispers that weren't whispers but screams compressed into soundless static. The first guardian.
Fear.
It took the shape of Jeong's father, his mouth unstitching into a cavernous maw. "Pathetic," it hissed, though the voice was all wrong, a chorus of Jeong's deepest shames. "You'll never be enough. Not for her. Not for anyone."
Shin stumbled back, clutching her head. "Make it stop—!"
"It's not real," Orpheus barked, thrusting his lantern at the shadows. They recoiled, hissing.
"Fear preys on memory. Fight it."
Jeong gripped the shard tighter. The shadow-father lunged, but he slashed the mirror across its chest. It howled, dissolving into ash, and the ground sealed itself—leaving only a scar in the rock, wet and pulsing.
The crow laughed. "Bravo! But the Vale has six guardians, hollow boy. How many cuts do you have left?"
Shin sank to her knees, her scars bleeding black. "I can't—I can't breathe—"
"You're drowning in your own noise," Orpheus said, hauling her up. "Both of you. The Vale wants you lost in the dark."
Jeong reached for her, but the crow dive-bombed, snatching the shard from his hand. "Too late!" it shrieked, vanishing into the abyss.
Eurydice's Echo -
Orpheus's grip on Shin tightened as she swayed, her scars now smoking. "She's not strong enough for this," he muttered, more to himself than Jeong.
"I'm right here," Shin snarled, wrenching free. "Stop talking like I'm already dead."
Orpheus's gaze darkened. "I've seen this before. A girl who felt too much, who thought her pain made her invincible. The Vale ate her."
"Eurydice," Jeong said, the name surfacing from the old man's fractured memories.
Orpheus flinched. "She thought she could outrun her heart. Instead, she became the Vale's first feast."
Shin laughed, bitter. "So I'm your redemption project? Sorry, grandpa. I don't need saving."
"You do," Jeong said quietly. "And so do I."
The crow returned, the shard gleaming in its talons. "Last chance, little ghost."
Jeong stared at Shin. Her eyes were wild, desperate, alive. He thought of the crayon star on his childhood drawing, the one his mother had erased. Thought of Shin's scars, her noise, her refusal to let the world sand her down to nothing.
"Give it to me," he said.
The crow dropped the shard. Jeong caught it, then did the unthinkable—he pressed the edge to his mask and pushed.
Porcelain shattered.
The world erupted in light.
When the glare faded, Jeong stood whole, his face a kaleidoscope of scars and shimmering glass. The cliff was gone. Below stretched the Shattered Vale, a nightmare landscape of molten rivers and forests made of bone.
Shin gripped his arm, her scars now glowing gold. "What did you do?"
"I chose," he said.
Orpheus's lantern flickered, his face grim. "The trials begin. Stay close."
The crow circled above, its laughter echoing. "Welcome home."
Shin didn't let go of Jeong's arm as they descended into the Vale, her touch a brand. "If you die, I'm using your face as a shield."
"Noted," Jeong said, the ghost of a smile tugging at his glass-streaked lips.
Orpheus walked ahead, his lantern casting jagged shadows. "The next guardian is Sadness. It will try to drown you in what you've buried."
"What's your buried thing?" Shin asked,"Besides Eurydice?"
Orpheus didn't turn. "Hope. I buried it with her."
Jeong glanced at Shin, her scars pulsing in the gloom. "Then we'll dig it up."
Chapter 4: Sadness and The Ghostly Guardian, Lira
The Shattered Vale swallowed them whole, its air thick with the metallic tang of rust and the suffocating sweetness of decay. Jeong's new face—a jagged tapestry of scars and glass—itched as the humidity seeped into its cracks, each breath a reminder of the mask he'd shattered. Beside him, Shin's scars pulsed gold, their glow dimming and flaring like a dying star. The swamp stretched ahead, a blackened mire of gnarled trees and stagnant water, their roots coiled like the veins of some ancient beast. Orpheus led the way, his lantern sputtering green light, its beam fraying at the edges as if the darkness itself were gnawing at it.
Shin kicked a pebble into the muck, watching it vanish without a ripple. "So we're just… wading into nightmare soup?" Her voice was all bravado, but her fingers brushed the raw lines on her wrists, a habit Jeong had come to recognize.
"Sadness isn't a fight," Orpheus said, his gaze fixed on the skeletal trees ahead. "It's a surrender."
Jeong's boots sank into the sludge, the water rising to his knees. It wasn't cold. It wasn't anything. The numbness crawled up his legs, leaching warmth from his bones, and for a heartbeat, he missed the hollow safety of his porcelain mask. Shin gasped beside him, clutching her ribs as her scars flickered.
"It's inside me," she hissed, her voice fraying. "Like spiders under my skin—"
"Keep moving," Orpheus snapped, but his own steps faltered as the hum began.
A girl sat beneath a weeping tree, her back to them, hair floating in a breeze that didn't exist. The melody she hummed was familiar—a lullaby Jeong's mother had sung before she decided joy was a liability. But here, it curdled, the notes warped into something mournful and sharp.
Lira.
She turned, and Orpheus's lantern hit the water with a splash.
Eurydice's face. Eurydice's smile. But her eyes were hollow, leaking black tears that pooled in the swamp like ink. "You left me," Lira said, her voice a chorus of drowned whispers. "You let me sink."
Orpheus reached for her, trembling. "I tried—"
"You watched."
The swamp surged, dragging him under.
Jeong lunged, grabbing the old man's arm before the current could claim him. Orpheus thrashed, clawing at his throat as if the water were inside him, filling his lungs with the memory of Eurydice's last scream. "Look at me!" Jeong snarled, shaking him. "She's not real!"
"She is," Shin whispered. She stood transfixed, her golden scars now streaked with black, tendrils of ink spreading beneath her skin like poison. "She's everyone."
Lira rose, her form shifting—Eurydice, then Jeong's mother, her lips painted the same cruel crimson as the day she'd broken his crayons. "You buried us," she whispered, becoming Shin's reflection, scars fresh and weeping. "You let us drown."
The swamp thickened, its water clotting in Jeong's throat. He tasted honey and burnt toast, heard his father's voice: "You're a void." His knees buckled, the weight of every erased emotion crushing him.
Shin grabbed his collar, yanking him upright. "Don't you dare," she spat, her nails digging into his neck. "You don't get to check out now." Her scars blazed, the heat searing his chest where her fist gripped his shirt. The pain was electric, alive, cutting through the numbness. Jeong gasped, the swamp retreating from his lungs.
"How?" he croaked.
She bared her teeth. "I've had practice drowning."
Lira watched them, head tilted. "You carry so much," she said to Shin, shifting into her mother—sneering lips, vodka on her breath. "Why not let go?"
"Because I'm not you," Shin snapped, but her voice cracked.
"Aren't you?" Lira's hand brushed the water, conjuring a reflection: fourteen-year-old Shin, razor in hand, her bedroom walls scribbled with I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. "You wanted to die. You still do."
"Shut up—"
"But you're afraid," Lira pressed, her form dissolving into smoke. "Afraid you'll fail even at that."
Shin screamed, lunging, but Lira melted into the mist. The swamp boiled, dragging her down.
"No!" Jeong seized her wrist, glass cuts reopening as he pulled. "Fight it!"
"I can't—"
"You can." He pressed his forehead to hers, their breaths mingling—his cold, hers feverish. "You're the loudest thing in this damn place. Use it."
She shuddered, her scars erupting in a crescendo of light. The water recoiled, hissing, and Shin surged free, dragging Jeong with her.
Orpheus stood waist-deep, Lira-Eurydice cradled in his arms. "I'm sorry," he wept, his tears freezing the water around them. "I should've jumped after you."
"You did," Lira whispered, her fingers curling around his throat. "You just forgot to stop falling."
Jeong waded toward them, Shin's light carving a path. "Orpheus! She's not—"
"I know." The old man's voice was calm, final. He pressed his lantern to Lira's chest. "But I need her to be."
The glass shattered.
Light exploded, vaporizing the swamp, the trees, Lira's screams. When it cleared, Orpheus knelt alone in a scorched crater, clutching Eurydice's locket—a tarnished thing, its chain snapped.
"You loved her," Shin said softly.
"I failed her." He stood, his face ashen. "Don't make my mistakes."
The swamp was gone. In its place stretched a desolate beach, black sand littered with shards of Jeong's porcelain mask. The crow circled above, silent for once.
Shin collapsed, her scars dimming. "Did we win?"
"No," Orpheus said. "We survived. There's a difference."
Jeong sat beside her, picking up a mask fragment. His reflection glared back, fractured but whole. "What's next?"
Orpheus nodded to the horizon, where a volcano belched crimson smoke. "Anger. It's… louder."
Shin laughed, raw and real. "Can't wait."
Jeong helped her up, their hands lingering. Her pulse thudded against his palm, a chaotic rhythm that no longer felt like noise.
It felt like a song.
Chapter 5: The Guardian of Anger
The volcano loomed like a festering wound, its slopes bristling with jagged obsidian spines. Rivers of molten rock cut through the ashen plains, hissing where they met the black sand of the shore. The air tasted of burnt metal and rage. Even the crow, ever-present and mocking, had vanished, leaving behind a silence that throbbed like a missing heartbeat.
Shin wiped sweat from her brow, her golden scars dulled under a film of ash. "Remind me why we're walking into the murder mountain?"
"Because Anger doesn't wait," Orpheus said, his lantern dim. "It hunts."
Jeong scanned the horizon, glass shards in his face catching the hellish glow. "It's already here."
The ground trembled. From a fissure erupted a figure—a molten giant, its body a lattice of magma and charred bone, eyes like supernovas. "The Guardian of Anger."
Its voice shook the earth: "WHO BROUGHT THEIR WHISPERS TO MY FIRE?"
Shin grinned, all teeth. "Oh, this one's fun."
The giant swung a fist, and the world exploded.
Jeong tackled Shin behind a boulder as lava rained down. She shoved him off, her scars flaring. "I don't need saving!"
"You're welcome," he snapped, glass cutting his palms as he gripped the rock.
Orpheus shouted a warning, but the giant's roar drowned him out. It tore a spine from the volcano and hurled it. Jeong rolled, dragging Shin with him. The spine impaled the ground where she'd stood, quivering.
"Okay," she panted. "Maybe a little saving."
The giant loomed, magma dripping from its joints. "YOU BURY YOUR RAGE IN SILENCE. LET IT BURN!"
Jeong's hands shook. He knew this voice—not the giant's, but his father's, twisted and amplified. Pathetic. Weak. Void.
Shin grabbed his arm, her touch scalding. "Don't let it in. Breathe."
He almost laughed. She, who wore her fury like armor, telling him to breathe.
Orpheus struck first, hurling his lantern. It shattered against the giant's chest, green fire spreading. The giant howled, swatting at the flames, and for a moment, Jeong saw it—a core of cold, black stone in its heart.
"There!" Shin lunged, leaping onto the giant's arm. It bucked, magma surging, but she clung on, climbing toward its chest.
"Are you insane?" Jeong yelled.
"Usually!"
The giant grabbed her, its fingers closing like a furnace door. Shin screamed, her scars blazing white-hot.
Jeong moved without thinking.
He plunged his glass-edged hand into the giant's leg, scaling its molten flesh. Pain seared through him, but he bit back the scream, hauling himself up. The giant swiped, missing by inches. Jeong reached its chest, driving his fist into the black stone.
It didn't budge.
"WEAK," the giant boomed. "LIKE YOUR FATHER."
Jeong roared, striking again. Blood and molten rock sprayed, fusing with his glass scars. The stone cracked.
Below, Shin writhed in the giant's grip, her light guttering. "Jeong…!"
He struck a third time.
The core shattered.
The giant collapsed, dissolving into a river of slag. Jeong tumbled into the ash, his hand mangled, glass and flesh melted together. Shin crawled to him, her burns still smoking.
"You're an idiot," she rasped.
"Learned from you."
Orpheus approached, eyeing Jeong's hand. "The Vale's mark. It won't heal."
Jeong flexed his fingers, the glass gleaming. "Good."
The crow returned as they trudged onward, its silence broken by a single, shrill cry. Ahead, a bridge of bone arched over a chasm, leading to a forest of frozen screams.
Shin bumped Jeong's shoulder. "Next time, I'll save you."
"Next time, I'll let you."
Above, the volcano belched fire, but its roar felt quieter now. Jeong's scars ached, his blood humming with a new, ferocious heat.
He was starting to understand Anger.
It wasn't the enemy.
It was a weapon.
Chapter 6: The Forest of Hungry Shadows (Fear)
The bridge of bone groaned underfoot, its arches strung with sinew and teeth. Below, the chasm breathed—a low, rattling sound that smelled of rot and forgotten things. Shin walked ahead, her scars flickering like fireflies in the gloom, while Jeong kept his glass-scarred hand curled into a fist, the ache a constant reminder of what Anger had cost him. Orpheus lingered at the rear, his lantern sputtering, its light barely piercing the mist that clung to them like cobwebs.
"Cheery place," Shin muttered, kicking a skull from the path. It tumbled into the void, silent as ash. "What's next? A carnival of clowns?"
"Worse," Orpheus said. "Fear."
The trees began as shadows. Then, all at once, they were there—towering pines with bark like charred flesh, their branches clawing at a sky choked with smoke. The air thickened, tasting of copper and cold sweat. Jeong's breath hitched as whispers coiled around him, voices he'd spent years burying.
"No one will love you if you're this messy."
"You're a void."
"Jump."
Shin froze, her scars snuffing out. "They're here," she whispered.
The shadows peeled from the trees, taking shape.
Jeong's father emerged first, his face a rictus of disappointment, frost crawling up his suit. Behind him, Shin's mother swayed, a vodka bottle in one hand, a razor in the other. And between them—smaller, frailer—stood a ghostly version of Jeong himself, his porcelain mask intact, blank and accusing.
Fear had arrived.
The shadow-father pointed. "You'll never be enough."
The shadow-mother laughed. "You'll always be too much."
The porcelain boy reached for Jeong, his touch colder than the Void. "You should have jumped."
Shin screamed first.
Her shadow-mother lunged, razor glinting. Shin stumbled back, her scars flaring, but the light died as the blade pressed to her throat. "You'll never escape me," the shadow hissed. "I'm in your blood."
Jeong moved to help, but his father's frostbound hand clamped his shoulder. "Look at what you've become. A monster. A joke."
The porcelain boy wrapped glass fingers around Jeong's wrist. "Come back. It's safer."
For a heartbeat, Jeong wanted to. The numbness, the silence—it had been safer.
Then Shin's voice cut through the static. "Jeong! Don't you dare!"
Her scars blazed, not gold but black, swallowing the shadows around her. The razor at her throat melted, her shadow-mother shrieking as the darkness consumed her. Shin stood panting, her eyes wild. "They're lies," she spat. "All of them!"
Jeong wrenched free of his father's grip, glass hand slashing through the porcelain boy's face. It shattered, the mask dissolving into smoke. "I'm not you anymore," he growled.
The forest recoiled.
Orpheus stood motionless, his shadow already upon him—Eurydice, her hands around his throat. "You let me die," she wept. "You watched."
"I know," he whispered, tears freezing on his cheeks. "I'm sorry."
Instead of fighting, he dropped his lantern. It shattered, releasing a burst of green flame that engulfed Eurydice's shadow. She screamed, dissolving, and Orpheus collapsed, his face ashen.
"Why?" Jeong demanded, hauling him up. "You could've fought!"
Orpheus smiled, blood on his teeth. "Some fears… you have to let burn."
The forest retreated, the trees unraveling into mist. What remained was a field of mirrors, each reflecting a different horror—Jeong's mother erasing his drawings, Shin's wrists bleeding stars, Orpheus kneeling at Eurydice's grave. At the center stood the crow, its feathers now ink-black, eyes glowing like dying embers.
Crow: "Clever little ghosts. But Fear was only the appetizer."
Shin lunged, but the crow vanished, its laughter echoing. "Next comes Disgust. Such a messy emotion. You'll drown in it."
A mirror shattered, revealing a garden ahead—vines writhing with thorns, flowers oozing pus, and at its heart, a figure in a rotting wedding gown, her face a swarm of maggots.
Shin gagged. "Oh, hell no."
Jeong flexed his glass hand, the scars humming. "Stay close."
Orpheus gripped his arm. "This one… it poisons from within. Trust nothing. Not even yourselves."
As they stepped into the garden, the air reeked of decay. The ground squelched underfoot, and Jeong realized too late—it wasn't earth.
It was flesh.
Chapter 7: The Banquet of Rot
The Garden of Disgust breathed.
Flesh-moss squelched underfoot, each step releasing a wet, sucking sound that clung to the air like the stench of an open wound. Trees pulsed with veiny bark, their branches sagging under bulbous fruit that wept yellow pus. Flowers yawned open, petals lined with teeth, their centers glistening with mucus. At the heart of it all stood the Bride of Decay, her wedding gown a tapestry of mold and maggots, her face a writhing mask of larvae. She smiled, and a beetle crawled from between her lips.
"Welcome," she rasped, gesturing to a banquet table piled with rotted meat and thorny vines. "Eat. Feast."
Shin gagged, covering her mouth. "Hard pass."
Jeong's glass-scarred hand trembled, the fused shards in his skin catching the garden's greasy light. Orpheus hung back, his face pale, as the Bride's gaze settled on him.
"Eurydice," he whispered.
The Bride laughed, a wet, choking sound. "She's here. In every bite."
The table groaned as the feast shifted—rotting apples oozing black bile, goblets brimming with congealed blood, a cake crawling with worms. The crow perched on a skeletal tree, its feathers slick with oil.
Crow: "Such delicacies! A taste of what you truly are."
Shin's scars itched, the golden lines now tinged green. She scratched at them, hissing as pus welled beneath her nails. "Something's wrong—"
"Don't touch it," Jeong warned, but too late.
The infection spread, her scars bubbling like poisoned veins. Visions flooded her—her mother's sneering face, "You ruin everything," her own reflection in the razor's edge, "Worthless, worthless, worthless." She stumbled, retching.
The Bride loomed over her. "You've always hungered for this. To rot from the inside out."
Jeong grabbed a thorned vine, slashing at the Bride. She dissolved into flies, reforming behind him. "And you," she purred, her breath reeking of gravesoil. "So proud of your scars. But what are they but proof of your ugliness?"
His mother's voice slithered into his ear: "Stars don't belong on faces."
The glass in his hand fogged, reflecting not his mosaic face, but the porcelain mask—whole, pristine, safe.
Orpheus stood frozen before the banquet, a goblet in his hand. The blood inside shimmered, showing Eurydice's face—rotted, accusing.
"You let me die," she wept. "You loved your guilt more than you loved me."
He drank.
The garden lurched. Vines coiled around his legs, thorns piercing his flesh as memories flooded him—Eurydice's laughter, her hand in his, the cliff's edge where he'd hesitated, always hesitated. The Bride's maggots spilled into his mouth, choking his scream.
Shin lunged, black-scarred hand seizing the goblet. "Spit it out, you idiot!"
Orpheus collapsed, vomiting beetles. "I deserve this," he choked.
"No," Jeong said, hauling him up. "You deserve to fix it."
The Bride's laughter echoed. "You are the feast. Your shame. Your filth. Devour yourselves."
The banquet table twisted, food morphing into their deepest revulsions—Shin's razor, Jeong's shattered mask, Orpheus's lantern, now cracked and leaking Eurydice's ashes.
Shin grabbed her razor, its edge rusted. "This isn't me anymore," she snarled, slicing her infected scars open. Black sludge poured out, and for a terrifying moment, Jeong thought she'd die—but the rot spilled away, her scars glowing gold again.
The Bride shrieked. "You can't cleanse what's born rotten!"
"Watch me," Shin spat.
Jeong faced the mask. Its hollow eyes stared back, pleading. "Come back," it whispered. "It's easier."
He crushed it underfoot. "I'd rather be ugly."
Orpheus staggered to the lantern, cradling it. "I'm sorry," he told Eurydice's ashes. "But I won't bury myself with you."
He hurled it into the feast.
The garden erupted in flames, the Bride writhing as her maggots burned. "You can't escape Disgust! It lives in you! It is you!"
"Then we'll carry it," Jeong said, glass scars blazing.
The Bride collapsed into a swarm of flies, her final scream echoing. "You'll choke on it! You'll drown—"
The crow swooped, swallowing the last of the flies. "Delicious," it croaked, bloated and gleaming. "But Surprise awaits! A feast of… frozen delicacies."
The flames died, revealing a frozen field beyond the garden. Statues dotted the landscape—people mid-scream, faces locked in terror, frost blooming from their eyes.
Shin shuddered. "What now?"
Orpheus stared at the field, his breath frosting. "Numbness. The quiet killer."
Jeong flexed his glass hand, the cold already seeping into his bones. "Then we melt it."
Chapter 8: The Ice That Binds
The cold was alive. It slithered into their lungs with every breath, sharp and venomous, frosting Jeong's glass scars into jagged icicles. The field stretched endlessly, a graveyard of frozen screams. Statues of men, women, and children littered the ice, their faces contorted in perpetual terror, frost blooming from their eyes like parasitic flowers. Shin hugged herself, her golden scars dimmed to a dull ochre, their light smothered under the weight of the numbness seeping into her bones.
Orpheus knelt beside a statue of a young girl, her hands clawing at her throat. "This isn't just ice," he murmured. "It's apathy. The kind that kills slowly."
"How do we fight something that isn't there?" Shin snapped, her voice brittle.
"By feeling," Jeong said, flexing his glass hand. The shards sparked faintly, embers fighting the dark.
The crow swooped low, its feathers now glazed with frost. "Too late," it croaked, landing on the girl's statue. "They're already gone. Empty husks. Like you'll soon be."
Shin hurled a shard of ice at it. "Shut up!"
The crow laughed, dissolving into mist. The statue's eyes flickered blue.
Then it moved.
The girl's ice cracked, her scream thawing into a wet, guttural wail. She lunged at Orpheus, frost spreading where her fingers grazed his arm. He staggered back, his skin graying, veins bulging black.
"Don't let them touch you!" Jeong yanked him away as more statues shuddered to life, their cries fracturing the silence.
Shin darted between them, her scars flickering. "They're not alive! They're just… echoes!"
"Echoes of what?" Jeong ducked as a frozen farmer swung a pickaxe.
"Of what they lost," Orpheus said, his breath ragged. "Their surprise. Their wonder. The Vale twisted it into this."
The statues herded them toward the field's heart, where a spire of black ice loomed. At its peak stood a figure cloaked in frost, her hair a cascade of icicles, her eyes two voids of endless winter. The Frostweaver.
She raised her hands, and the ice answered.
The ground split, swallowing Shin. Jeong grabbed her wrist, glass hand grinding against the ice as she dangled over a chasm of swirling shadows.
"Let go!" she shouted.
"Never," he snarled.
The Frostweaver's voice slithered through the storm. "Why cling to her? She is all knives and noise."
"Because she's real," Jeong spat.
Shin's scars blazed gold, melting the ice around her fingers. She hauled herself up, her eyes meeting his. "You're such a hypocrite."
"Learned from you."
The Frostweaver descended, her cloak billowing like a blizzard. "You fight for feeling? Look what it's done to you." She gestured to the statues. "Look what it does to everyone."
Orpheus limped forward, his arm still grayed by frostbite. "You were like them once, weren't you? Frozen by your own despair."
The Frostweaver's void-eyes narrowed. "I was saved. I became more."
"No," Orpheus said softly. "You became nothing."
The Frostweaver screamed, and the storm exploded.
Ice shards rained down, slicing Jeong's face, but he barely felt them. The cold was inside him now, numbing the edges of his anger, his resolve. Shin's scars dimmed again, her breaths shallow.
"Jeong," she whispered, clutching his arm. "I can't… I can't feel my legs."
The Frostweaver loomed over them. "This is mercy. No pain. No fear. Just… peace."
"Liar," Jeong growled. He pressed his glass hand to the ice, focusing on the embers in his scars—the memory of Anger's fire, the molten giant's roar. Heat flared, the ice beneath him hissing.
The Frostweaver recoiled. "Stop! You'll destroy yourselves!"
"Better than becoming you," Shin slurred, her golden light flickering back to life. She pressed her palms to the ice, her scars melting a path toward the spire.
Orpheus staggered to the Frostweaver, his grayed hand trembling. "You want peace? Let me show you what it truly costs."
He clasped her face, flooding her with memories—Eurydice's laugh, the cliff's edge, the centuries of hollow wandering. The Frostweaver shuddered, her ice cracking, tears of black water freezing down her cheeks.
"No," she whimpered. "I don't want to feel again—"
"Too late," Orpheus said.
The spire collapsed.
The statues thawed, their screams softening into sighs as they crumbled to dust. The field melted into a meadow, the air sweet with rain and wildflowers. Jeong slumped against Shin, his glass hand steaming, the ice in his scars reduced to smoke.
The crow circled overhead, its frost-mottled feathers shedding in clumps. "Clever," it hissed. "But Love awaits. And it will devour you."
Orpheus stared at the horizon, where a garden of thorned roses writhed under a blood-red sky. "The final guardian."
Shin flexed her fingers, her scars still faintly gold. "Love? After all this? That's the worst one?"
Jeong helped her stand, his touch lingering. "Maybe it is."
Orpheus picked up a fallen rose petal, its edges razor-sharp. "Love isn't a trial. It's a choice."
The crow laughed, vanishing into the storm clouds.
Somewhere in the garden, a ghostly melody began to play.
Chapter 9: The Garden of Shattered Hearts
The air in Love's domain smelled of rose oil and rust. A labyrinth of thorns stretched before them, crimson blooms pulsating like open wounds under a sky the color of dried blood. The roses were grotesquely beautiful, petals velvet-soft but edged with serrated teeth, stems coiled like barbed wire. At the center loomed a gnarled tree, branches heavy with golden apples that glinted like forbidden promises. The crow perched on a thorn, frost-mottled feathers molting, eyes gleaming with malice.
"Welcome," it croaked, "to the feast no one survives."
Shin scowled, her golden scars flickering. "Love? This looks like a slaughterhouse."
Orpheus brushed a finger over a rose, jerking back as a thorn pricked him. Blood welled, black and viscous. "Love is a slaughterhouse. It guts you quietly."
Jeong stared at the tree, glass scars humming. "Then we walk through it."
The thorns parted, inviting them into the labyrinth. The deeper they went, the heavier the air grew—thick with perfume that made their heads swim, their chests ache. Roses whispered as they passed, voices overlapping:
"You'll never be enough."
"They'll leave you."
"You're unlovable."
Shin gripped Jeong's arm, her nails biting. "Ignore them. They're just lies."
But her breath hitched as the thorns rearranged, forming a familiar doorway—her childhood home, paint peeling, her mother's slurred laughter seeping through the cracks. Before Jeong could stop her, Shin stepped through.
The room reeked of vodka and regret. Her mother sprawled on the couch, razor glinting in her hand. "Back so soon, girl? Missed my lessons?" Shin's scars blazed. "You're not real."
"Aren't I?" Her mother lunged, blade grazing Shin's cheek. She stumbled, fists passing through smoke as the room dissolved into a hall of mirrors. Each reflection showed her bleeding, screaming, alone.
"This is all you deserve," the roses hissed.
A shadow moved behind her. Jeong stood in the glass, his scars reflecting her fractures. "Let me in," he said.
"No!" She backed away. "I'll ruin you."
He caught her hand, cold and steady. "Try."
The mirrors shattered.
Jeong stumbled into his old kitchen, walls bleeding porcelain. His mother scrubbed honey from the floor, snapping a crayon. "Draw yourself properly this time." The mask waited on the table—pristine, suffocating.
"Put it on," his father demanded, frost spreading. "Be quiet. Be good."
Jeong reached for it.
A laugh echoed—sharp, alive, hers. He turned. Shin stood in the doorway, scars raw, eyes daring him to look away.
"You'd choose her?" his mother sneered.
Jeong crushed the mask. "Every time."
The kitchen burned.
Orpheus stood beneath the gnarled tree, Eurydice waiting with ash-stained hands. "You've come to join me?"
He trembled. "I've come to say goodbye."
She cupped his face. "You don't have to let go."
"I do." He pressed her locket into her palm. "You're not her. You're just my ghost."
She dissolved, the tree shuddering. Golden apples rotted, revealing hearts inside—still beating, still bleeding.
They reconvened at the tree's base, roots erupting like serpents. The crow shrieked above as the final guardian emerged—a figure of thorns and shadow, chest a hollow cage. The Heartless.
"Give me your hearts," it intoned. "Or die clinging to them."
Shin stepped forward, scars blazing. "You want my heart? Take it." Golden light poured from her chest, searing the Heartless's thorns. "You… burn."
"Yeah," she grinned. "Turns out love's good kindling."
Jeong plunged his glass hand into his own chest, wrenching free a shard of ice—his buried sorrow, fragile hope. He hurled it. The Heartless shattered.
Orpheus placed Eurydice's locket in the empty cage. "For the one you loved."
The tree bloomed, thorns softening into petals.
The garden faded, sky clearing to bruised twilight. The crow writhed, feathers falling like ash. "You fools… Love will kill you…"
Shin crushed its skull under her boot. "Already dead."
Jeong smiled, scars catching the dawn. "Now we live."
Orpheus lingered at the garden's edge, Eurydice's melody fading. "What now?"
Shin threaded her fingers through Jeong's. "We find out."
The horizon stretched, endless and unknown.
Chapter 10: The Lure of Forgotten Light
The horizon stretched endlessly, a tapestry of twilight blues and molten gold, as if dawn and dusk had collided and decided to linger. The air hummed with a strange, sweet melody—the same ghostly tune that had followed them since the garden, now richer, warmer, as though the notes had learned to breathe. Shin walked ahead, her scars flickering faintly, not with pain but with something softer. Jeong watched her, the glass shards in his skin catching the fractured light, their sharp edges softened to a muted glow. Even Orpheus seemed lighter, his shoulders no longer hunched under the weight of centuries.
"It's… quiet," Shin said, her voice tentative, as if speaking too loudly might shatter the stillness.
"Not quiet," Orpheus murmured. "Full."
And it was. The barren wastes of the Vale had given way to rolling hills blanketed in wildflowers, their petals shimmering like crushed gemstones. Trees heavy with ripe, golden fruit bent toward them, offering sustenance. A river cut through the valley, its waters clear and singing. It was beautiful in a way that felt dangerous—a feast laid out before a famine.
The crow's corpse had long crumbled to ash, but its final warning lingered. Love will kill you. Jeong wondered if joy might do worse.
For days—or maybe minutes; time bled here—they wandered, lulled by the melody. Shin laughed more, a sound Jeong hadn't realized he'd memorized until it became routine. She taught him to skip stones across the river, her hands steadying his, her scars brushing his glass. Orpheus carved flutes from hollow reeds, playing along with the invisible orchestra. It was easy. It was kind.
But the Vale did not deal in kindness.
The first warning came at dusk.
Shin plucked a fruit from a tree, its skin warm and glowing. When she bit into it, honey burst onto her tongue, but the aftertaste was ash. She spat, gagging. "What the hell?"
The fruit in her hand rotted instantly, its flesh collapsing into maggots. The tree shuddered, branches retracting, and the hill beneath them sloped sharply into a pit of writhing roots. Jeong yanked her back as the ground split, the idyllic landscape peeling away like a painted curtain.
Before them stood a palace of light, its spires crystalline, its gates open in invitation. From within echoed laughter—not the crow's mockery, but genuine, infectious joy.
Orpheus's flute slipped from his hands. "A prison," he whispered. "For those who choose bliss over truth."
Shin scowled. "So joy's a trap now? Figures."
Jeong touched the glass in his cheek, now throbbing faintly. "We don't have to go in."
But the melody swelled, sweet and relentless, and the citadel's doors beckoned.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of candied flowers and burning sugar. Ghostly figures waltzed in endless circles, their faces blurred, their laughter harmonizing with the unseen choir. At the center of the hall stood a throne of mirrors, and on it sat a woman made of sunlight, her hair a cascade of liquid gold, her eyes two spinning galaxies.
She smiled, and the room brightened. "Welcome, weary ones. Rest. Feast. Forget."
Shin crossed her arms. "Hard pass, thanks."
The woman's light dimmed. "You cling to your pain as if it defines you. How small."
"And you hide in this… candy prison," Shin shot back. "How sad."
Jeong stepped forward, glass grinding. "What do you want?"
"To give," the woman said, rising. Her gown billowed, scattering prismatic dust. "Joy without cost. Love without loss. A world where nothing hurts."
Orpheus laughed bitterly. "A world where nothing matters."
The woman's galaxies narrowed. "You, who let love curdle into guilt—you dare judge me?"
The floor shifted.
Shin stood in a sunlit kitchen, her mother humming as she baked. No vodka. No razors. Just warmth.
"Stay," her mother whispered, offering a cookie. "I'll be better here."
Shin's scars ached. "You're not real."
"I could be."
She reached for the cookie—
Jeong's voice cut through. "Shin. Look at me."
The kitchen dissolved.
Jeong sat at a table, his mother's crayons in hand, his father smiling. "Draw whatever you like."
The paper was already filled—a star, a storm, a boy with a face of scars and glass.
"Stay," his father said. "We'll be better here."
Jeong crumpled the page. "You never were."
The table burned.
Orpheus stood in a field, Eurydice dancing, alive, laughing. "No cliffs. No Vale. Just us."
He hesitated.
"Stay," she pleaded.
He kissed her forehead. "I already did."
She faded, taking the field with her.
The woman of light screamed, her brilliance fracturing. "You fear joy! You cling to scars!"
"No," Jeong said. "We earned them."
Shin's scars blazed gold. "And we'll keep earning them. Outside."
Together, they shattered the throne.
The palace collapsed, its light dissolving into dawn. The woman's galaxies dimmed to embers, her final whisper a sigh. "You'll regret this."
"Probably," Shin said. "Still leaving."
The horizon stretched anew, the melody now a defiant march. Orpheus retrieved his flute, playing a tune that was his alone.
Jeong glanced at Shin. "Next trial?"
She grinned. "Bring it on."
Hand in hand, they walked into the light.
Chapter 11: The Return
The light they walked into was not dawn, nor dusk, but a bridge—a corridor of fractured memories stitching the Vale to the world they'd left behind. The melody that had haunted them now guided their steps, its notes crystallizing underfoot like glass. Shin gripped Jeong's hand tighter, her scars pulsing in time with the rhythm. Orpheus trailed behind, his flute silent, eyes fixed on the shifting path ahead.
"Do you think it's still there?" Shin asked, her voice barely a whisper. "Our world?"
"It has to be," Jeong said, though the doubt gnawed at him. The Vale had a way of erasing truths, of replacing them with prettier lies.
The corridor narrowed, walls bleeding into familiar shadows—the cliff's edge where Jeong had once tried to fall, the swamp where Lira had drowned in sorrow, the carnival tent where joy had been a noose. Ghosts of their trials flickered, reaching out, but Shin pressed on. "Don't look back," she muttered. "Never look back."
Ahead, a door materialized—an ordinary thing, weathered oak with a brass knob. It should have been comforting. It wasn't.
Orpheus hesitated. "This is where I leave you."
Jeong turned. "What?"
The old man smiled, a rare, unguarded thing. "The Vale doesn't release guides. Only survivors." He pressed his flute into Shin's hands. "Play something loud for me."
Before they could protest, he shoved them through the door.
They stumbled into cold, biting air. The cliff. Their cliff. The city sprawled below, its lights duller, smaller, as if the world had aged without them. Jeong's knees buckled, the weight of his body—his real body—crashing into him. His face was no longer glass and scars, but flesh, unmarred. Human.
Shin collapsed beside him, gasping. Her arms were bare, smooth. No scars. "What the hell?"
"It's gone," Jeong said, touching his cheek. "All of it."
"No." She grabbed his wrist, pressing his palm to her chest. Her heartbeat thudded, frantic, alive. "It's here. We just can't see it."
The door behind them splintered, dissolving into ash. Orpheus was gone. The flute in Shin's hands was just a stick.
The world was quieter. Too quiet.
They returned to their homes, their schools, their hollow routines. Jeong's parents didn't ask where he'd been. His mother set an extra plate at dinner, her eyes skirting his face as if searching for cracks. His father drank in silence, the frost between them thawed to a brittle truce.
Shin's mother left voicemails. "Where are you? We need to talk." She deleted them.
But the Vale wasn't done with them.
The crow found Jeong first.
It perched on his windowsill, half-rotten, one eye a milky void. "Did you think it would end?" it rasped. "The Vale is a circle. You're still running."
He slammed the window, but its laughter followed him—into his dreams, into the mirror, into the hollows of his now-ordinary face.
Shin found him at the cliff a week later, her hands stuffed into her jacket, breath frosting. "You hear it too, don't you?"
"The crow?"
"The music."
It was faint, but there—the melody, threading through the wind.
They followed it to the graveyard. The tombstone they'd once sat on was cracked, its epitaph erased. Beneath it, the earth had split, revealing a staircase of roots and bone.
Shin grinned, wild and bright. "Told you it wasn't over."
Jeong stared into the dark. "We could walk away."
"And do what? Pretend?" She grabbed his hand, her touch electric. "We're not liars anymore."
They descended.
The Vale had changed.
The Shattered Vale was now a prism—a kaleidoscope of their fears and hopes, the trials they'd survived reflected in jagged splendor. The molten river of Anger ran beside the swamp of Sadness; the carnival of Joy's ashes smoldered under the Citadel's collapsed spires. At the center stood a new tree, its branches heavy with mirrors.
In the largest mirror stood Orpheus, his back to them, facing a reflection of Eurydice.
"He never left," Shin realized.
"He's the anchor," Jeong said. "The Vale's last tether."
Orpheus turned, his eyes hollow. "You shouldn't have come back."
"We didn't," Shin said. "You brought us."
The ground shook. The crow circled above, whole again, wings glinting like knives.
"Finish it," it screeched. "Break the mirror. Break him."
Eurydice's reflection reached out. "Choose, my love. Them or me."
Orpheus lifted his flute—the real one, carved from Vale-bone—and played a single, shattering note.
The mirror exploded.
The Vale collapsed, the tree, the crow, the ghosts dissolving into starlight. Orpheus faded with them, his final smile aimed at the sky.
Jeong and Shin woke on the cliff, the city's lights blazing below, the melody now a distant hum. The door was gone. The scars were gone.
But the ache remained.
Shin pressed her palm to Jeong's chest. "You feel that?"
His heartbeat. Hers. Out of sync, but alive.
"What now?" he asked.
She stood, pulling him up. "We live. Loudly."
They didn't jump.
They walked down the mountain.
Chapter 12: The Unquiet Symphony
The lullaby followed them.
It hummed in the rattle of the subway, in the drip of the kitchen faucet, in the wind that whistled through their daughter's bedroom window. Shin heard it most at night, when the house settled into silence and the shadows stretched long. Jeong felt it in the cold glass of his office window, frost etching patterns that almost looked like stars. Their daughter, Seri, sang it to herself while drawing—her crayons scratching furiously, gold stars and storm clouds blooming across the page.
"She's got your eyes," Shin said one evening, watching Seri press a blue crayon hard enough to tear the paper.
"And your stubbornness," Jeong replied, but his smile faltered. The drawing was too familiar: a girl with a cracked face, light spilling from the fractures.
They never spoke of the Vale, but it lived in the spaces between their words, in the way Jeong traced his unmarked cheekbone when he thought no one was looking, in the way Shin's hands still curled into fists at the sound of raised voices.
Seri's first day of school broke something open.
The teacher called it "troubling."
"She drew this during recess," the woman said, sliding a page across the desk. A black crow, wings outstretched, its talons gripping a heart-shaped mirror.
Shin's scars itched beneath her sleeves. "Kids draw weird stuff."
"She told the class it's a 'memory from before she was born.'"
Jeong stiffened. The crow's laughter echoed in the hollows of his mind.
They took Seri to the cliff that weekend, the one they hadn't visited in years. She scrambled ahead, her backpack jingling with crayons.
"Why here?" she asked, plopping onto the grass.
"We used to come here," Jeong said. "To think."
"About what?"
Shin ruffled her hair. "How to be brave."
Seri frowned, digging a red crayon from her pocket. "You're scared now."
They couldn't lie to her. They never could.
The nightmares began that winter.
Seri woke screaming about a "lady made of ice" and a "song that eats people." Shin held her, humming the lullaby until dawn. Jeong paced, his old restlessness returning, his hands trembling with the ghost of glass.
"She's seeing our past," Shin whispered.
"Or the Vale's future," Jeong said.
They found Seri's sketchbook open to a new drawing: a door of bone, half-open, with a shadowy figure beckoning.
"Orpheus," Jeong breathed.
But it wasn't. The figure had Seri's storm-cloud eyes.
The crow returned on Seri's tenth birthday.
It perched on her windowsill, rot peeled away, feathers gleaming like polished obsidian. "Happy birthday, little ghost," it croaked.
Seri smiled. "You're late."
She'd been waiting.
Jeong found them in the garage, Seri chipping at the old flute Orpheus had left behind. The crow watched, head tilted.
"What are you doing?" Jeong demanded.
"Making a key," Seri said, blowing dust from the flute. "The door's stuck."
"What door?"
She pointed to her latest drawing taped to the wall—the cliff, split by a fissure, a staircase spiraling into the earth.
Shin gripped Jeong's arm. "She's not us. She doesn't have to fight."
"Yes, she does," he said, staring at the crow. "But not alone."
They descended at dusk, Seri clutching the flute, Jeong and Shin flanking her like shadows. The stairs were slick with memory, the walls etched with faces they'd fought and buried.
"It's smaller," Shin muttered.
"Or we're bigger," Jeong said.
The Vale's heart was a mirror-pool, its surface reflecting not their faces, but their fears: Jeong's mask, Shin's scars, Seri's trembling hands.
The Radiant Sovereign rose from the water, her light dimmed to a sickly glow. "You broke the cycle. Why return?"
"To end it," Seri said, raising the flute.
The Sovereign laughed. "You can't kill a shadow, child."
"No," Seri agreed. "But I can stop feeding it."
She played.
The melody was the lullaby, the carnival tune, the scream of the molten giant—all of it, fused into a single, defiant note.
The Sovereign shattered.
The mirror-pool stilled, showing not their fears, but their faces: Jeong's laugh lines, Shin's sunburned cheeks, Seri's ink-stained fingers.
The crow dipped its beak into the water, drinking deep. "Clever girl," it rasped, before dissolving into smoke.
They climbed out as dawn broke, the fissure sealing behind them. Seri slept in the backseat, the flute now just a stick.
"Will it hold?" Shin asked.
Jeong glanced at the rearview mirror. "Long enough."
Years later, Seri left for college, her suitcase stuffed with sketchbooks. Jeong and Shin stood on the porch, watching her car vanish down the road.
"She'll be okay," Shin said.
"She'll be more," Jeong corrected.
The lullaby hummed in the wind, softer now, a reminder, not a chain.
Epilogue: The Portrait
The gallery was hushed, sunlight filtering through high windows to cast honeyed beams over Seri's triptych. Crowds lingered, their murmurs blending with the faint hum of the lullaby she'd piped through hidden speakers—a melody only a few recognized. Jeong stood in the corner, his fingers brushing the raised scar on his cheek, long faded to a silver thread. Shin hovered near the empty frame, her arms crossed, as if daring anyone to ask.
A woman paused, tilting her head at the third panel: The Child Who Muted the Song. "Why the crow's feather?" she asked.
Seri adjusted the sketchbook under her arm. "It's not a crow. It's a reminder."
"Of what?"
"That some monsters make good muse material."
Shin snorted. Jeong hid a smile.
Later, when the crowd thinned, Seri approached the empty frame. Her parents joined her, their reflections ghosting in the polished wood.
"It's not really empty," she said. "It's got the best parts. The quiet mornings. The burnt pancakes. The way you still hold hands when you think I'm not looking."
Jeong squeezed Shin's fingers. "Not as exciting as golden giants and shadow forests."
"More important," Seri said.
They left as the gallery lights dimmed, the lullaby fading into the city's noise. On the subway home, Seri sketched a new portrait—a family, unremarkable and unbroken, their edges blurred by motion, their faces bright with tomorrow's light.
The Vale's melody lingered, but now, it harmonized with the rhythm of keys turning in locks, of teacups settling into sinks, of laughter muffled by closed doors.
Somewhere, a crow's feather drifted into a gutter.
Somewhere, a star blinked.
And somewhere, the portrait grew.
THE END