Chapter 11: Before the End Begins Again
758 Words
The morning after was not soft.
There was no sunlight on silk. No gentle teasing. No shy glances over breakfast.
There was only chaos.
Screens across the house screamed red. Military blockades were forming. Gyeonggi Province was gone—burned, silenced, erased. Civilians locked in their homes. Communications monitored. The “incident” was being covered like a gas leak.
It wasn’t a gas leak.
It was the first breach.
Min-woo had barely returned from a government briefing when the storm struck again—from inside.
Yena found Ha-eun standing in the central stairwell, her face pale and her hands trembling around a tablet.
She didn’t look up.
“You lied,” Ha-eun whispered. “All this time.”
Yena froze.
Ha-eun held up the tablet—shaking. A stream of files scrolled across the screen. Chaebol documents. Behavioral logs. Recordings. Psychological profiles.
And a face.
The real Seo-jun.
“Who sent this?” Yena asked, voice low.
Ha-eun’s mouth twisted. “Han Ji-won.”
Yena didn’t breathe.
“She said I deserved the truth. That I was the only innocent one left in this house.”
Yena closed her eyes. Pain, thick and rising. Not from guilt.
From the rage building in her spine.
---
Ji-won didn’t wait to be summoned.
She sat in the parlor, legs crossed, sipping tea like a queen in a warzone. The curtains behind her fluttered from a cracked window—unusual. The air carried the scent of ash.
“You look tired,” she said sweetly.
Min-woo stood near the door, jaw clenched. Ha-eun lingered in the corridor, ghost-pale.
Yena entered last.
Ji-won’s eyes sparkled when she saw her. “Or should I say... whatever your name really is.”
Yena didn’t speak.
Ji-won set the teacup down with exaggerated care.
“You’ve done well,” she said. “Truly. I never thought you had it in you. The deception. The manipulation. The way you wrapped him around your—”
Yena’s hand snapped out.
The teacup shattered against the floor.
Ji-won blinked.
Yena stepped forward.
Min-woo said, quietly, “Yena—don’t.”
But something had already come unlatched inside her.
Ji-won kept talking, slower now. “All I wanted was the truth. You were never one of us. You don’t belong here.”
Yena’s eyes gleamed dark.
“You want the truth?” she said, voice raw. “The truth is you never mattered. Not in the world I came from. Not in the one I bled in. You would’ve lasted three days before something ate your bones.”
Ji-won stood. “You think being savage makes you strong? It makes you a dog.”
Yena moved.
One breath.
That’s all it took.
Her hand slammed Ji-won against the wall with such force the plaster cracked. Her forearm pressed against Ji-won’s throat, lifting her slightly off the ground. Ji-won kicked once, gasped, clawed at Yena’s wrist.
“Yena!” Min-woo snapped, stepping forward.
But he didn’t reach her.
Not in time to stop what she’d become.
“You don’t get to speak my name,” Yena hissed into Ji-won’s face. “You don’t get to touch what’s mine.”
Ji-won choked, legs thrashing.
Min-woo’s hand grabbed her shoulder. “Let go. Now.”
Yena’s breath was fast. Too fast. Her body trembled—not from effort, but from restraint that was unraveling.
Then Ji-won met her eyes.
And what she saw there wasn’t jealousy, or rage, or madness.
It was death.
The same look she had seen in pictures from war zones. In monsters caught mid-transformation.
Something not human.
Yena dropped her.
Ji-won hit the floor hard, coughing violently, crawling backwards like an animal.
No smug smile now.
Only terror.
She scrambled to her feet and ran—past Min-woo, past Ha-eun—without another word. Not a threat. Not a scream.
Just escape.
---
Yena stood frozen.
Min-woo didn’t speak.
Ha-eun was crying quietly in the hall.
Yena’s hands were still shaking.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
But the words felt useless. Late.
Min-woo stepped to her. His voice was rough, barely restrained.
“That’s what you were like,” he said. “In the old world.”
She nodded.
He stared at her.
Then whispered, “What the hell are we about to become?”
---
That night, the sky burned.
Flames reached the outskirts of the city.
The first breach officially spread.
Sirens never rang.
The world didn’t scream.
It just—shifted.
Like a door opened.
And something older than language stepped through.
---
- Writer
