The rain in Seoul came down in sheets, washing the city in silver. Hana stood at the window of their new safehouse in Gangnam, watching cars blur past like ghosts. But her mind wasn't on the street or the storm.
It was on him.
The man in the vision. The reflection. The one Lucien had once loved enough or feared enough to destroy.
Lucien stood behind her, silent, his hand resting against the frame of the window. They hadn't spoken much since her dream. Since his confession. Not because there was nothing to say, but because the weight of what needed to be said could crush them both.
Finally, Hana broke the silence. "Why didn't you tell me about him before?"
Lucien closed his eyes.
"I wanted to believe he was gone."
"But you knew he wasn't."
"I hoped," Lucien whispered, "that if I loved you hard enough… he'd never find a way back."
Hana turned to face him. "He said you promised to forget him. That you created him."
Lucien's voice was hoarse. "It wasn't a promise. It was a curse."
Flashback – The First Cycle
Lucien knelt beside a dying woman under a red eclipse sky. She was Hana's first incarnation—Jian, a healer of the old Eastern kingdoms. The world was crumbling around them, mountains splitting, rivers reversing flow. The timeline was collapsing.
He held her in his arms as her blood soaked through the white silk he wore.
"You must sever your soul," she whispered. "Or he'll follow us forever."
"I can't lose you," Lucien said. "Not again."
"Then destroy the part of you that lets go. The one that moves on. The one that forgets me."
Lucien had kissed her bloodied hand. "And if that part becomes something else?"
She'd looked at him with tears in her fading eyes.
"Then promise me you'll never remember him."
Present Day – Gangnam Safehouse
Lucien turned from the window, hands in his pockets now. "He calls himself Kael."
"Kael?" Hana repeated.
"He took that name in the broken timelines. In the ones that didn't survive."
"Why does he want us?" she asked. "Why now?"
Lucien's eyes narrowed. "Because now… we're winning."
Elsewhere – Silla Holdings, Private Archives
Jisoo leaned back from the glowing monitors, her brows furrowed as the encrypted footage from the rift played frame by frame. In the corner of the screen, just before the rift closed, a silhouette stepped forward Kael.
His face. Lucien's face. But colder. Crueler.
Jisoo turned to her colleague, Dr. Yoon, who was chewing nervously on a pen cap.
"I ran facial recognition," he said. "The software matched it 93% to Lucien. But there's no official birth record, no trace in any census or surveillance grid."
Jisoo's fingers hovered above the keyboard.
"I don't think he's from here," she said. "I think he's older than here."
Yoon blinked. "You mean"
"He's an echo. A remnant."
She paused, then opened a secure communication line.
"This is Jisoo. I'm activating Protocol Phoenix-Null."
Incheon – Temple Chamber
Kael sat barefoot, sharpening a blade that glowed with dark light. Beside him, the chained girl, an oracle from the Shamanic Orders, trembled in silence.
"I don't need her eyes," he murmured, motioning to the ancient scroll beside him. "I already know where their next life starts."
"But it's this one I'm going to end."
He pressed the blade into the floor, and a symbol burned into the stone an old sigil Hana had seen in her dreams.
A fusion of her name and Lucien's.
Kael's smile cracked like broken glass. "The future belongs to me."
Back in Seoul – The Safehouse
Lucien reached into a drawer and retrieved a small silver locket. He handed it to Hana.
She opened it slowly. Inside was an engraving:
"Cycle 0 – When We Forgot Ourselves."
"What is this?" she asked.
"A tether," Lucien said. "Something I made to keep part of us alive between timelines. I scattered them across our lives. You've probably seen them and just didn't know it."
Hana nodded slowly, recognizing the pattern certain objects that felt familiar, places she was drawn to, even names that whispered across her dreams.
"It's how I've always found you," Lucien said. "Even before I knew your name."
Tears prickled in Hana's eyes. "And Kael? Can he find them too?"
Lucien's voice was like steel. "He already has."
Later That Night – Hana's Room
Hana dreamed again.
But this time, it wasn't Kael who came.
It was herself.
She stood in a white field, and across from her was a version of herself in black robes. The girl didn't speak but held a mirror toward her. The surface shimmered.
Hana stepped closer.
In the mirror, she saw a different version of her life a timeline where Lucien died, where she married someone else. And then another where she was Kael. She became the one who chased love across cycles like a curse.
The black-robed version of herself spoke.
"There is no version of you where he survives without sacrifice."
Hana reached out to shatter the mirror
And woke up with a scream.
Lucien burst in, sword already drawn. "Hana!"
She gasped, staring at the mirror on the dresser.
It was cracked.
Kael's Next Move
Kael stood in the ruins of a church deep in the Italian Alps. Snow fell through the broken stained glass as he stared at a grave.
Lucien Ricci.
Year of Death: 1894.
Kael knelt and touched the grave, whispering something into the stone.
A light pulsed from the earth, and a voice Lucien's own answered.
"Who disturbs the sleep of my failure?"
Kael grinned. "Only the part of you that never died."
He opened a scroll and unsealed it with blood.
Across the world, every tether Lucien had buried began to glow and burn.