The Qi tsunami had scoured the valley clean, leaving behind a silence deeper than any night. The eerie starlight was gone, and a true, consuming darkness had taken its place.
Hours later, a pale sun rose over a broken world.
Birds began to call again, but the valley below told a different story. It looked like the aftermath of a celestial hammer strike. Forests were now fields of ash. The beasts had fled or died. Only the moans of the crippled and dying rose from the scorched earth.
On a massive, scarred stone, half-buried in shattered bushes, lay what was left of Ji-Hoon.
He looked like a doll thrown aside by a giant.
A dark pool of blood had seeped into the earth beneath him. His body was a testament to violent physics: both arms bent at impossible angles, bone gleaming white through the tears in his skin. One leg was a swollen, purple mess. A deep gash on his forehead wept a steady stream down his temple, and his breathing came in wet, ragged hitches.
These were not just injuries. They were a death sentence. Without a miracle, he had hours—maybe minutes.
A guttural groan tore from his throat as consciousness returned. The world swam into focus—a world of agony. When he tried to push himself up, his body betrayed him. A white-hot lance of pain shot from his shattered leg up his spine, and he collapsed back into the dirt.
Reality, cold and absolute, descended.
A raw, wordless scream ripped from his throat.
Both arms. One leg. My head… what's broken inside?
He lay there, panting, balanced precariously on his one working limb. His mind, a frantic animal in a trap, skittered from thought to thought.
This is my luck. First thrown here, now smashed against the stones. The starlight healed me before… but the light is gone. The light is gone, and I am gone with it.
Regret, more bitter than the blood in his mouth, washed over him.
If I hadn't frozen. If I had just kept running…
But the choice had been his. And the price was now being collected in flesh and bone.
Gritting his teeth until he thought they would crack, he looked at his ruined arms. The sight—muscle torn, limbs twisted like broken branches—sent a fresh wave of nausea so intense his vision tunneled. A deep, cold part of him had already accepted the end.
Yet, a stubborn ember in his chest refused to be snuffed out.
"Do you still wish to live?" Layla's voice was a clinical echo in his skull. "Be honest. From where I stand, I see no path. Even if you survive this, you will be a shell. A broken thing."
Ji-Hoon exhaled, a bubble of blood popping on his lips. "There's… always a way," he rasped. "There has to be. Tell me what I must do. Whatever it is."
Layla paused, sensing the shift in his will—not hope, but a desperate, razor-edged resolve.
"Your spirit is still sharp," she remarked. "Like a dagger in the dark."
A weak, bloody smile touched his lips. "An angel's dagger, right?" The smile vanished. "Now guide me. How do I live? I am ready. I will do anything."
"Interesting," Layla mused, a hint of grim approval in her tone. "What if 'anything' means breaking yourself further? What if survival demands you tear at your own soul?"
"Explain," Ji-Hoon commanded, his voice gaining a sliver of steel. "No more riddles. Give me the truth."
"You know the destination," Layla said. "The divine light. The Genesis Starlight. It returns every seven days in this valley. It can rebuild a body from scraps. It can reignite a still heart."
A spark ignited in Ji-Hoon's dimming eyes. "A free rebirth…"
"More than that," Layla cut in. "For a human with will, that light is not just healing. It is cultivation. It is the foundation of a Ranker's power, offered on a silver platter."
Ji-Hoon's mind latched onto the idea, the pain momentarily forgotten. Power. A foundation. A way forward.
He laughed, a choked, painful sound. "Then that's the answer. I die. I come back. I rise."
"You are insane," Layla stated flatly. "The light revives the body, but it scrubs the mind clean. You would wake up a newborn. No memories of Earth. No memory of your name. Your past, your pain, your reasons… all gone. You would be a Ranker with the mind of an infant."
The laughter died instantly.
Ji-Hoon remembered Earth. The simple, distant comforts. The faces already fading. A deeper, more visceral instinct revolted. To lose himself… was that not a truer death?
"What about you?" he whispered.
"I am born of your will," Layla replied, her voice softer than he'd ever heard it. "If your mind is wiped clean… I cease to exist. A new spirit might form for the new you. Or there might be nothing at all."
Silence hung between them, heavier than his broken body.
Ji-Hoon saw the two paths with terrible clarity. One: a slow, agonizing death as a cripple, his mind intact. The other: a glorious, powerful rebirth as a stranger in his own skin.
He thought of the angel who threw him here. The promise of strength. The vengeance that now felt empty if he wouldn't remember why he sought it.
His eyes, clouded with pain, found a final, stubborn clarity.
"…Then forget it," he breathed, the defiance costing him his last strength. "I don't want to die."
He chose to live, as himself, for whatever shattered moments remained.
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