The rain had stopped hours ago, yet the world still sounded like it was drowning.Rang stood at the window of a cheap motel, eyes lost in the reflection that didn't quite look like him anymore.Bruised, pale, sleepless—he looked like a ghost still pretending to breathe.
On the table beside him, the clock he carried since that night ticked faintly.Tick—tock.Then it hesitated.And, almost deliberately… it ticked backward.
Rang froze.
His chest tightened as the air in the room shifted—heavy, electric, the kind of silence that comes before something remembers you.He reached out, fingers trembling, and the clock clicked open. Inside, beneath the gears, something tiny glimmered—a slip of scorched paper.
He unfolded it carefully.Four digits burned into the corner: 0404And a single line beneath it:"Where time stopped, truth began."
Rang's throat went dry. The number wasn't random.404—the same number whispered by that voice message, the same number that haunted his father's research logs before the accident.
The whispers came back. Seo-rin's voice, soft and broken, echoing inside him."Don't trust her."
He moved before he could think, slipping through the rain-soaked streets, drawn by instinct more than direction.The city's pulse grew quieter the deeper he went—until he reached the ruins of a fire-gutted building on the edge of the industrial zone.The air stank of ash and rot. The sign on the wall, half-torn and blackened, read:HYUNG LABORATORY – CLOSED SINCE 2016
His father's name.
He pushed the door open. Rust screamed against the hinges. Inside, only shadows remained—shadows and the faint hum of something still alive.Rang followed the sound, step by step, until his boot struck metal. A broken monitor. He brushed away the soot, hit the switch… and the screen blinked to life.
Grainy footage appeared—static, flickering, but real.
He saw Han, younger, standing beside his father.And then… a woman.Half her face hidden by a dark scarf, her movements silent and precise. She placed something on the table—a silver chain—and turned slightly toward the camera.The same eyes that had stared at him in the dark.Wan.
Rang's pulse spiked.The recording crackled, and Han's voice filled the room:"Phase 404 begins tonight. No witnesses."
Then the video died.
Rang staggered back, his breath shuddering.Wan had been there.Not a savior… but a ghost from that night.
His hands clenched into fists. The two chains—Seo-rin's and his father's—dug into his palm until blood trickled down.He wanted to scream. To destroy the screen.But then his phone buzzed.
Unknown number.He opened it.
A message.Black background. White text."If you want the truth, bring the chains to where it all began.""404."
Rang's heartbeat thundered.Was it her? Was it Han's trap? Or something worse?
He looked up—the reflection on the broken glass was no longer his own. His face had changed. The softness, the grief… gone. Only coldness remained.He wiped the blood off his palm and smiled faintly, a dangerous kind of calm.
"Fine," he murmured. "If truth wants me… I'll come to it."
Outside, the storm returned.Thunder cracked like the sound of chains breaking.Somewhere across the city, deep underground, security cameras blinked to life—tracking his every move.
Inside a dim control room, a woman sat before a dozen monitors, her face half-veiled, amber eyes glowing faintly under the light.She watched Rang's image walk into the rain, a whisper curling from her lips like smoke.
"Good," she murmured. "You're finally ready."
Her fingers danced across the console, activating something deep below the city. A system booted—lines of ancient code scrolling across the screens.
PROJECT 404 — REINITIALIZING
Rang didn't look back.The wind howled through the broken streets, carrying the faint echo of Seo-rin's voice and the ticking of the backward clock.Each step he took felt heavier, sharper, closer to something inevitable.
When he reached the crossroads, lightning split the sky.He opened his palm—both chains glinting under the stormlight.
One engraved LEE HYUNG.The other, SEO-RIN.
And beneath the blood-streaked metal, faint letters began to appear on the second chain—like the rain itself was carving them out.
LEE RANG.
He stared. The world tilted. His breath hitched.
Three chains.Three names.One truth waiting in the dark.
And far away, deep beneath the city, a voice echoed through the hidden tunnels—female, distorted, yet unmistakably human.
"Welcome back to 404."