He, covering my sight with his hand, spoke in a gloomy yet languid and sweet voice.

“Now, look.”

I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t move my body. As my vision was engulfed in darkness, I felt as if my body was thrown into the middle of the abyss.

‘It’s okay. I’ll go.’
‘You don’t have to sacrifice yourself like this. ██, please…!’

Amid that, faint voices could be heard. The desperate screams, muffled by noise, eventually turned into terrible anger.

Soon, my surroundings began to fill with an entirely different scene.

In a world filled only with despair befitting the word ‘apocalypse’, the last hope grasped by people struggling to survive somehow.

It was a city built upon sacrifice.

It was the final bulwark built on death.

It was the last paradise built on corpses.

The Sin that showed me this horrific sight whispered to me.

“Is this the sight you wished for?”

Someone wailed. Why do I find that voice familiar?

My whole body felt repulsed. I had to shake it off. I didn’t want to know anymore. I didn’t want to hear.

‘Because of your prophecy-!’

‘If only you hadn’t made such a prophecy!’

I wanted to turn away from those desperate screams.

“There might have been another way. Just because one person’s sacrifice would suffice.”

Sin whispered to me.

“Solely for the reason that it was the most convenient and had the highest probability.”

Someone’s despair continued. Where did that resentment, having lost its way, turn to?

‘You knew? That ████ would die, you knew and still pushed them in…’

“Is this the sacrifice you desire?”

He asked me. It was strange. The question he was asking me now.

Aren’t you the one trying to destroy this world?

If you just stop trying to destroy the world, wouldn’t the problem be solved?

A question I couldn’t ask because my mouth wouldn’t move.

And then.

“…Wake up!”

A clear voice rousing my consciousness.

A strong light engulfing the darkness wrapped around my body. As I finally opened my eyes and gasped for breath, I saw the Saint looking somewhere with a very tense expression.

“We finally meet, Sin.”

“…I didn’t particularly want to meet you.”

“Too bad, I wanted to meet you.”

The Saint, who stood in front of me protectively with her arm, growled lowly. Seeing this, Sin’s expression twisted unpleasantly.

Soon, I couldn’t help but be shocked by what the Saint said.

“You too, like me, are a returnee who went to another world before this world underwent a drastic change.”

At 14, not long after I returned. I often had dreams.

In dreams I couldn’t remember, I experienced countless situations. When I woke up, with not even a fragment of memory remaining, as I went about my days as usual, sometimes inexplicable anguish would overwhelm me.

The doctor in charge of my memories said this.

That I had erased painful memories from my mind.

At such times, I would question.

In the boundary between memories mixing chaotically and the blurring line between dream and reality, what should I believe in and how should I live?

Perhaps I wanted to turn a blind eye.

To the fact that nightmares I couldn’t remember were still with me.

To the Saint, Nisha’s words, he merely replied in a bored voice.

“Do you want to feel a sense of kinship now?”

“No, I was just curious.”

“Whatever you’re curious about, I have no intention of telling you.”

“Why are you trying to destroy this world? Is there a reason why you, who was once a hero of a world, must destroy this world?”

“…”

I don’t understand what conversation these two are having. I carefully rolled my eyes and got up.

“Hero, huh. Interesting. I’m just a remnant, that’s all.”

“Ha! I didn’t know a remnant could destroy this world.”

“…How annoying.”

Before my eyes was an altar. An altar inscribed with unknown languages, now overgrown with grass and moss as no one tended to it anymore.

“I’d like to be alone with this child for a moment, so please don’t interfere.”

Sin waved his hand. Before the startled Saint could take any action, darkness in the form of chains bound her and pulled her somewhere.

“You…!”

Darkness engulfed the surroundings. All the faint lights that had been shining until just now disappeared, leaving only enough light to barely make out what was in front.

Even though I couldn’t see him, I could tell he was looking at me.

“…”

“Were you looking at the grave, Shin Ah?”

“Grave?”

“Yes, grave. This place is a grave. It’s a place I’m quite fond of.”

“Why, that expression. …This incident wasn’t my intention. Really, you just happened to get involved and came here by chance.”

“…What happened to Nisha.”

“Nisha? I’m jealous… Have you already become close enough with that thing to call it by name?”

“Stop talking nonsense!”

A low laugh was heard. I was particularly on edge because I couldn’t see well in front. When I felt something embracing my waist, it was enough to send chills down my spine.

“Don’t worry. That thing won’t die so easily.”

I quickly detached myself from him.

“…More importantly, Shin Ah, don’t you have anything you want to ask me?”

Despite my actions, he just smiled. His pitch-black eyes never left me. Eyes filled with heavy and complex emotions that seemed like they might suck me in if I wasn’t careful. I bit the inside of my cheek to regain my senses.

“If I ask, will you answer?”

He answered my question with a low laugh.

“There’s nothing I can’t answer if it’s a question from you. However, there are some answers I can’t give right now.”

“In the end, you’re saying you’ll answer as you please.”

“So you won’t ask anything?”

“…”

My heart beat anxiously. I slowly exhaled and asked him.

“Who are you?”

“Who am I, huh…”

I asked him again. I wasn’t asking for his name. Nor was I asking about his identity.

The question I had asked many times but never received an answer to.

What exactly are you to know me, and why do my emotions become so twisted when I see you?

What kind of relationship did you and I have?

“Haha. …Even I can’t define myself anymore, so what should I call myself? The villain trying to destroy this world? Or should I say I’m a remnant of delusion that shouldn’t exist?”

“Are you playing word games with me now?”

“It’s not time yet. Someday, when the day comes that you can understand me…”

The pitch-black man made a faint smile on his white face. It was a precarious smile that seemed like it might shatter and scatter at any moment.

In the end, it was just a long and verbose way of saying he couldn’t tell me now. I exhaled carefully once again.

Anyway, that thing has no intention of harming me. Then, wouldn’t it be better to extract as much information as possible now?

So I asked the question that Saint Nisha had asked but didn’t hear the answer to.

“…Why are you trying to destroy the world?”

“…”

He stopped smiling at my question. His calmly sunken eyes resembled the darkness sunk in the deep sea.

He said this.

That he would destroy the world for my sake.

So I asked. Why destroying the world was for my sake.

After a brief contemplation, he simply answered this.

“…My world was destroyed.”

A white hand stroked my cheek. My heart beat fiercely.

“Why does this world exist and go on intact?”

He then ran his hand through my hair. My short bob haircut instantly grew longer. He took my lengthened hair and brought it to his lips.

“The world where I can live and breathe no longer exists, yet everyone goes on laughing and talking as if nothing’s wrong.”

In the end, it was another irrelevant answer. That answer was disconnected from both saying he would destroy the world for my sake and why he was trying to destroy the world.

“It makes me angry and resentful. Then this world should be destroyed too, right?”

His laughter after removing his lips from my hair was low and gentle, and also innocent.

As if he had no feelings about trying to destroy this world, as if he was just doing what should naturally be done.

I couldn’t understand it.

“…You’re a returnee too, aren’t you? It’s unfortunate that the world you lived in was destroyed, but to try to destroy someone else’s world for that reason…”

The words wouldn’t come out. It felt like I had said something I shouldn’t have. The reason words wouldn’t leave my throat wasn’t just because his expression looking at me was infinitely sunken.

“It’s too cruel.”

When I finally finished speaking, he reached out his arms and pulled me into an embrace.

“This world took my world away.”

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t handle this enormous malice. At the same time, incomprehensible complex emotions constricted me.

“Remember? What I said.”

As if throwing a tantrum, he rested his cheek on my shoulder and exhaled slowly. I suddenly got goosebumps feeling his breath on my skin.

“Everything I do is solely for you. So, for your sake, I can wait as long as it takes.”

He, that thing, Sin, destruction. The one who had called himself Park Ha Young looked at me.

“Until you come to me. Until the end approaches for the story of this world that’s not yet ready.”

He was arrogant. His smile contained all the arrogance in this world.

“So I’ll send you back for now.”

As if it were only natural.

“Because someday, you’ll have no choice but to understand me.”

He said such things with a smile.

“Gasp-!”

My body reflexively sprang up. It seemed like I was in an urgent situation just a moment ago. As I slowly caught my breath and turned my head, I saw a familiar yet unfamiliar face.

“Hic!”

“Y-you woke up…”

“Move.”

Cheon Shin Woo kicked away the emperor who was next to me. The skinny man fell forward without any resistance.

I was really surprised. To see the deathly pale face of a man as soon as I opened my eyes.