After nearly dying a second ti, Kang Soo Jin dread.
But it wasn’t a dream of his own.
It was a foreign mory—he had inherited the brain of the deceased, and with it, his mories.
In this dream, he saw a child—a boy with pale skin, dressed in a tattered coat, boots stained by lted snow—exploring a cave hidden beneath a steep cliff, far from a frozen hamlet.
It was a habit of his, a form of escape from the oppressive stares and harsh words of adults.
The place was damp, its walls slick with frost, and a strange violet luminescence glowed at the back of the cavern.
He loved this atmosphere. The cold that bit into the skin, the absolute solitude that beca a comfort.
But that day, he ventured further than usual.
His steps brought him before a black rock, embedded in the ground as if hurled from the sky.
It was glossy black, streaked with scarlet veins that pulsed like a heart of magma.
A strange aura emanated from it—neither hot nor cold, but simply unnatural.
He approached it, fascinated. He touched it.
It was just a stone, he thought. Just an unimportant rock.
Later, he returned to help his father chop wood, as he did every winter.
In that region, winter never ended.
The boy lived in absolute poverty, in a patched-up wooden house, where the icy wind seeped through every crack.
But after a few days, symptoms appeared.
Dark patches on the skin, like internal burns, and uncontrollable tremors.
His father was hit the hardest. The man, who stayed hidden from others, beca unrecognizable.
His eyes filled with blackness, veins swollen under the skin. It was too late.
A neighbor had reported their condition.
And one morning, as the boy returned with food for his father, he found only a smoldering ruin.
The house was on fire, consud by flas and human cruelty.
The Heresy Inquisitors had co—rciless and thodical.
No care, no compassion. Why ? Because they were poor. Because they were nothing.
Trash in the eyes of the established order.
Since then, the boy had gone to live with his mother, a quiet woman who lived with her daughter, his younger sister.
He received dication—bitter capsules with a tallic taste, said to slow the corruption.
They were experintal antiviral inhibitors, analogous to HIV triple therapies, but even more unstable and painful to digest.
These treatnts suppressed the visible effects, but the corruption still slept beneath the skin.
— "Fuck... that story’s fucking sad."
Kang Soo Jin suddenly opened his eyes, torn from the poisonous dream.
He was lying in a narrow bed, covered by a rough sheet.
The room was simple, modest, the walls painted a dull white. A ray of light pierced the half-closed shutters.
He sat up, groggy. His hands were trembling. He looked at them. They were smaller than before, younger.
He jumped out of bed and rushed to the adjoining bathroom.
The mirror above the sink reflected an unfamiliar face.
A young man with pale skin, scarlet irises.
The features were harmonious, but fixed in a lifeless expression.
His hair was black and smooth, framing a face devoid of warmth.
A bandage, still stained with dried blood, covered his forehead.
When he removed it, he expected a gaping wound. There was nothing. Not even a scar.
His regeneration still worked, he thought.
But sluggishly. The impact of his fall had been colossal.
He had burned through the equivalent energy of hundred teors—absorbed from the surface, from the Hells, and across the corrupted astral layers.
A suicidal expenditure. His current body didn’t seem able to channel the power he once had.
But he knew it wasn’t over.
The demons would continue to rain down their teors.
These artifacts were forged in the limbo, the black stones drawing their energy from the pain of the damned—a chaotic energy, made of pure hatred.
As for the white teors, their nature remained a mystery. So believed they ca from a higher plane, a dinsion opposite to Hell.
As he continued to examine this foreign body, he felt a trace of warmth on his forehead.
Focusing, he saw seven markings— the number "6" repeated seven tis, etched in incandescent digits, visible only to him.
When he touched his forehead, they vanished.
When he channeled a bit of energy, they reappeared—burning, alive.
But those numbers seed to seal his full potential.
It’s annoying but it’s a miracle because Dante’s body would probably have exploded without it.
— "Godwin Dante. That’s the na of this body. Eighteen years old. That’s my age now." He sighed. "If only I had been that old, that healthy, and that energetic when I was arrested by those assholes."
He would have to get used to it.
He opened the bedroom door. The light of the hallway briefly blinded him.
A feminine figure was waiting for him.
His sister—or rather, the sister of the body he now possessed.
Jophiel.
A young girl with delicate features, a worried expression on her face.
Her chestnut hair was tied ssily.
She wore a sweater far too big for her, stained with dust.
When she saw him, she instinctively stepped back. Sothing about him unsettled her.
Though he had the sa voice, the sa stature, sothing had changed.
An infernal aura. A pressure that weighed on her shoulders.
But she pulled herself together. She forced a smile.
She wanted to believe it was Dante—her brother, the one she often argued with, but who always protected her.
She stepped forward.
— "Are you okay ?" she asked. "You... you fell off the cliff. You don’t have to... to give up like that. We can talk about it, you know ?"
Kang Soo Jin—or rather, Dante—offered her an awkward smile.
— "I’m fine, Jophiel. I’m already healed."
He gently tapped his head. A familiar gesture.
She laughed nervously.
That smile was weird, but it had sothing comical about it.
And after all, it was the first ti in months he’d smiled.
This house had long been steeped in depression.
Their mother was also afflicted by the corruption.
She showed no visible signs, but dical exams had confird internal anomalies.
Treatnts were expensive.
Both Jophiel and Dante worked to pay the dical bills, juggling between small jobs and debts.
She was just about to leave for the hospital when soone knocked on the door.
An ecclesiastical unity specialized in eliminating internal or external threat to the dogma of the church. (Mutants, rebellious Awakened, ect.)
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