Prologue
It was a mountain of corpses. Blood flowed like a river, and the stench rode the wind.
Out of place with the cruel landscape, a single majestic throne who was stained with blood, stood solemnly at the center.
Step by step.
A man walked toward the solemnly standing throne.
The man thrust his blood-rusted sword and spear into the ground and collapsed onto the throne, with his entire body drenched in blood.
As if time itself had frozen, the man stared blankly at the sky with unfocused eyes. And his god spoke to him.
-One of my long-cherished wishes has been fulfilled through you. I shall grant you a reward. What do you desire?”
The man remained silent for a long time before suddenly speaking.
“I want to go back.”
“Go back? Are you not reluctant to leave behind all that you have achieved here?”
At those words, transparent tears rolled down the man’s eyes. He was surprised by this fact. The tears he thought had dried up over a hundred years of blood, betrayal, and massacre.
But in the end, it seemed even he was caught up in his emotions. Or perhaps not. Maybe he was simply too broken.
“My homeland, I miss my homeland so much.”
-If that is your will, I will also respect it. But remember, eventually you will come back to me.
A bright light flashed, and the man lost consciousness. And when he opened his eyes again, the world had become a completely different place.
“Hey! Over here! There’s a survivor here!”
Spotting the man in the midst of the rescue operation in the ruins, a paramedic called out to his colleagues, who hurriedly ran over with a stretcher.
“Hey, can you hear me?”
“Huh? Ah, yes. I can hear you.”
Disheveled hair, thick caterpillar-like eyebrows, narrow eyes, and red lips. The man’s appearance seemed ordinary, but the problem was that he was trembling in the ruins, completely naked.
It was odd in every aspect but assassuming he had fled in a panic during the sudden catastrophe, the paramedics checked his pupils and asked.
“Your name? Do you remember your name?”
At that, the man fell silent.
But rather than avoiding the question, it was more like searching through memories that had been long forgotten. Finally, the man spoke, having recalled.
“Kim Se-hoon, it was Kim Se-hoon. My name is Kim Se-hoon.”
Speaking his name with a strangely joyful expression, the man smiled brightly.
His narrow eyes curved into crescents, and his cheery-like lips which were unusually delicate for a man grinned.
As if uninterested in how long it had been since the man last smiled, the paramedic jotted down his name in a notebook and shouted to a colleague.
“Take Kim Se-hoon and get him treated! The rest of you, follow me! Keep searching for survivors!”
As he was carried away on the stretcher, Se-hoon looked around. Though the buildings and concrete structures were in ruins as if they had been bombed, the moment he saw the painfully familiar structures, Kim Se-hoon murmured in a low voice, filled with emotion.
“I’ve returned. To my homeland.”
