Chapter 1

From the wooden gramophone in the living room drifted the fourth movement of the Holberg Suite[1].

Just who on earth had set the needle to the groove?

Beyond the heavy clouds, the heavens tore open as if someone were upending buckets of water. Ever since descending from the temple after completing his younger sister’s forty-ninth-day memorial rite, the rain had fallen without pause, intent on scouring the earth bare. Yet not even that deluge could wash away Cha Myeong-joo’s karmic sins.

Outside, the gale howled against the glass.

Framed against the rain-lashed window stood a man carved from pale jade—strikingly handsome, yet deathly pale, his dark eyes hollowed by an impenetrable gloom. When he spoke, his voice was flat, drained of inflection, the sound of a man straining with every ounce of restraint not to provoke the figure before him.

“…Hyungnim, put that down.”

“…”

A taut, suffocating silence stretched between them. Myeong-joo stared at Lee Yi-tan—his brother-in-law, once his own cadet—who watched him with a bloodless face. He despised himself for the attachment that still clung to his bones, for the pathetic swell of gratitude that he was permitted to see that face one last time before the end. Pressing the sharp point against the left side of his chest, Myeong-joo offered no answer.

Save for the drumming rain and the mournful strains of the gramophone, the mansion lay deathly still. No one in the world beyond the brother-in-law before him would ever bear witness to this death.

On a night when the sky fell in sheets, no fool would scale the garden wall to peer through the glass.

Only after setting the demonic fiend’s fang against his ribs did Cha Myeong-joo truly register that they were entirely alone. His younger sister, Myeong-in, had died at twenty-nine; now he and Yi-tan were the only living souls left in the vast, hollow house.

Today marked forty-nine days since Lee Yi-tan had lost a wife and Cha Myeong-joo a sister. And on this very night, trapped in the cunning snare of a demonic fiend, Myeong-joo had laid bare the shameful truth that he loved his own brother-in-law. Cornered into such humiliating ruin, he had no will left to live.

“Put it down. Now. I will not say it twice, hyungnim,” Yi-tan warned.

Even in that grim reprimand, Myeong-joo found a foolish solace simply in hearing Yi-tan’s voice—soft yet resolute, gentle yet undergirded with steel. This was the end. With no reason left to drag out his wretched existence, he felt only a bittersweet peace, as if Yi-tan had come in person to see him off at the threshold of death.

“I’m going to count backward from five,” Yi-tan said, the plea fracturing his tight restraint. “Then I’m coming over there. …Please, hyungnim.”

Myeong-joo smiled faintly. “Major.”

Major Lee Yi-tan. Second Lieutenant Lee Yi-tan. Cadet Lee Yi-tan. My young trainee, Lee Yi-tan… When had those broad shoulders filled out, when had the disciplined bridge of his nose sharpened into manhood, only for him to stand there trying to salvage this filthy heart—the heart of a man who had dared covet his own sister’s husband?

“Major, I have sinned too deeply,” Myeong-joo murmured. “There is no other way…”

Yi-tan reached toward him, his fingers trembling visibly. “Hyungnim…”

“…Then at least let me give Myeong-in a new life.”

“Absolutely not!” Yi-tan’s voice cracked sharp across the room. “Hand that over to me.” His eyes blazed with sudden, piercing blue fire.

The instant Yi-tan lunged forward, Myeong-joo tightened his grip on the relic. A prick of heat dragged down his chest as the sharp point pierced his white shirt and bit shallowly into the flesh beneath, drawing a slow trickle of crimson.

At the sight of the dark blood blooming through the fabric, Yi-tan froze. His pupils shuddered violently, the breath struck from his lungs, and Myeong-joo could only assume that desperate tremor was born of worry for him.

Ah, but Yi-tan. I harbored filthy feelings for my student—for my own brother-in-law. Worse, I let you see that pathetic, childish desire with your own eyes. Now that you know, you would spend the rest of your days in heavy silence, waiting with stubborn patience for your wretched brother-in-law to set his feelings straight. But Yi-tan, I have no reason to drag out a life with this ruined rag of a heart, patched together from shame. If this is all that remains of my days, I would rather surrender every last one of them to Myeong-in.

Today was the day his sister was meant to be granted rebirth[2].

Tradition held that the footprints of a soul returning to life would mark the grains scattered across the temple floor, yet no matter how desperately Myeong-joo had sifted through the rice, he had found not the slightest indentation. Oblivious to how wretched he appeared, he had knelt trembling in terror, convinced his own sinful karma had barred his sister from the cycle of reincarnation.

A ruined noble house, a lineage stripped bare until not a single sound roof tile remained to their name. As the heir, Cha Myeong-joo had been consumed by the desperate urge to rebuild it, and in that frenzy, he had practically sold his sister. Desperate to piece together some semblance of dignity despite their squalor, he had plunged into crippling debt to dispatch two palanquins of bridal dowry behind her wedding litter. Yet no amount of borrowed splendor could wash clean the truth: he had bartered his own flesh and blood.

Even so, the man chosen to become his brother-in-law was upright and honorable. Cha Myeong-joo, having once been his instructor, could vouch for his character without hesitation. That was why, even after bartering his sister away for the delusion of restoring their house, a corner of his conscience had found solace. He had never doubted that Lee Yi-tan would prove a devoted husband to his gentle, brilliant sister.

To ease the burden on the elder brother who had raised his two sisters from childhood, toiling day and night without complaint, Myeong-in had consented to the match. That was where ruin had taken root. Myeong-in was a Harmonizer afflicted with a condition that caused her internal organs to rot if the exchange of harmonization ceased for even a short span. Yet for reasons no one could fathom, the newlyweds had never once exchanged harmonization throughout their entire marriage. That silence had driven her affliction into fatal decline.

And so Cha Myeong-joo had lost her. He himself had been the brushfire that devoured her life in empty vanity and futile striving, reducing the flower of her youth to cinders. It was little wonder she had lacked the trust to confess her illness to him.

From the day she passed until the forty-ninth-day rites, Cha Myeong-joo had wept incessantly. He wept out of blistering anguish and heartsickness, out of an apology too vast for words, out of a suffocating shame that left him nowhere to hide. The tears had simply refused to dry.

Without even the presence of mind to look after his youngest sister, he had driven his motorcycle through the deluge, convinced he was returning to the cramped bachelor quarters where he lived alone. Instead, by some cruel trick of habit, he had arrived at the marital residence of his sister and brother-in-law.

He had lacked even the sense to question how he had ended up there. Cha Myeong-joo had dragged his soaked limbs up to the second floor, thrown open the door to the room he once occupied, and wept until his throat tore. The grief had burned through him without reprieve, scouring his innards and tearing his spirit to ribbons.

That was when a demonic fiend wearing Lee Yi-tan’s face had drawn near.

As Myeong-joo wept as violently as the gale outside, a gentle voice murmured, “Hyungnim, please stop crying.”

A broad palm—warm and large enough to envelop his entire cheek—cupped his wet face. Cha Myeong-joo blinked through his tears, dazed. The most beautiful shame of his life was cradling him.

“From now on,” the figure whispered, “the two of us will live out my wife’s share of life together.”

Myeong-joo could not grasp the words. While he sat frozen, the man leaned close, his face drawing nearer until thought abandoned Myeong-joo entirely. Only when a cold touch pressed against his lips did he realize, with a shock of disbelief, that he was kissing his brother-in-law. And because it was the man he had loved in secret for so long, a rapturous illusion enveloped him—as though soft flower petals were folding over him, layer upon fragrant layer.

A thunderous roar tore through the room. “Hyungnim, what is the meaning of this?!”

In that split second, the world flared blinding white. What he had mistaken for the dazzling ecstasy of a kiss was lightning ripping through the storm outside. A vicious chill plunged down his spine.

Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

Trembling from head to foot, Cha Myeong-joo turned his head.

Framed in the doorway stood a man. Thunder crashed overhead, and another stroke of lightning caught the high bridge of his nose, carving severe, furious contours across his features. It was Lee Yi-tan. The turbulent aberrant wavelength radiating from him made the sickening truth unmistakable: the man who had just kissed him was an imitation, and the one shouting in rage was the real Lee Yi-tan.

Understanding crashed over Cha Myeong-joo like a frozen wave. Then who in God’s name is kneeling between my legs?

Numb with shock, Myeong-joo looked down at the figure whose lips had just parted from his own.

As if mocking him for his slow wits, the false Lee Yi-tan burst into laughter. It brayed like a beast, its eyes narrowing to crescent slits. Through an ugly, clicking rasp, the creature sneered with leering insolence, “I was only playing the part of the pestilence spirit who seduced Cheoyong’s wife[3].”

The eyes that had shone with tender affection shrank into pinpricks the size of red beans. Jagged, venomous fangs jutted from the corners of its mouth, and mottled snakeskin erupted across its sallow cheeks.

A surge of visceral revulsion rose from the pit of Cha Myeong-joo’s stomach—a sickened disgust directed not at the monster, but at himself for being so pitifully seduced by an imitation.

“Foolish beings, foolish things! This is the limit of you Aberrants and Harmonizers!” the demonic fiend shrieked, cackling with manic delight.

With a shrill scream of laughter, the monster drove its elongated talons straight into Myeong-joo’s left eye.

Myeong-joo crashed to the floor with an agonized cry. Through the blinding shock of pain, he heard the real Lee Yi-tan bellow.

“Hyungnim!”

True to his terrifying reputation on the front lines, Yi-tan unleashed his aberrant wavelength without a moment’s hesitation. The instant that crushing wave engulfed the demonic fiend, the creature shrieked, burning to ash where it stood. It was merely a low-ranking demonic fiend—and to think he had been thoroughly duped by something so pitiful.

Reason abandoned Cha Myeong-joo entirely. Clamping a hand over his ruined eye as warm blood poured between his fingers, he threw himself off the bed. Leaving Yi-tan to deal with the ashes of the intruder, he bolted blindly down the hall toward his brother-in-law’s study and tore open the desk drawer.

When the creature had pressed against his lips, Myeong-joo had instinctively reached out, curling a hand around the nape of the false Yi-tan’s neck. His brother-in-law had witnessed every single gesture. His unspeakable affection had been stripped bare, exposed beyond all denial.

If so, only one path remained.

Inside the drawer rested a mother-of-pearl box, lacquered layer upon black lacquer until it gleamed obsidian. As his trembling fingers pried it open, a hideous screech scraped inside his skull, like ten thousand insects rubbing their wings against his eardrums, violently sawing away his sanity.

It felt as though he had screamed in agony over and over, yet barely a second had passed. When his senses cleared, an animal tooth lay inside the box, nestled in crimson brocade.

The Fang of the Temporal Demonic Fiend.

According to ancient texts of Ilyah, it held the power to turn back time. Lee Yi-tan had shown it to him only once, chuckling like a boy as he confessed he could scarcely believe such nonsense himself. Curved like the tusk of a wild boar or the canine of a tiger, it had seemed laughable that such a curio belonged to a demonic fiend, and Myeong-joo had laughed along with him.

Now, driven to the edge of the abyss, the memory flared with blinding urgency.

As if summoned by the relic itself, he had come for it, entirely spellbound.

The artifact that had once lain dormant now seemed to throb beneath his gaze, recognizing the sacrifice who had offered himself up. A sinister, repulsive aura seeped from the enamel, raising chills across his flesh as cold sweat drenched his clothes.

Cha Myeong-joo forced down the sickness roiling in his gut. I will offer my heart to the Temporal Demonic Fiend’s fang and restore Myeong-in to life. I should have done this from the start. Before this vile adoration for my brother-in-law was ever exposed to the light, I should have paid with my life to save her.

“Hyungnim, please! Give that to me!”

And so he stood here now, back in the living room, with Lee Yi-tan shouting in desperate terror. Through the red tears streaming from his gouged eye, Cha Myeong-joo stared at him, bewildered by the agony contorting Yi-tan’s face—as though it were Yi-tan whose flesh was being torn apart.

Why was he looking at him with such eyes? A man who had harbored foul lust for his own brother-in-law deserved only contempt and spit. Yet the pomaded hair that was always immaculate—not a single stray lock out of place even during Myeong-in’s funeral—was in utter disarray. Yi-tan’s shaking gaze darted frantically between Myeong-joo’s face and the fang clenched in his fist, his eyes brimming with pure terror.

Looking into those eyes, Cha Myeong-joo sank into final, absolute despair. You know. You truly know that I love you. …Then I have no regrets left to cling to.

Cha Myeong-joo hardened his heart. Come what may, he would return Yi-tan’s wife to the man he loved. It would be his final offering to the sister who had worn herself down for his sake—and to the former cadet for whom he had harbored an impossible, forbidden love.

Lee Yi-tan stared at the fang, his eyes wide and hollow with shock. When he spoke, his voice frayed to pieces. “Hyungnim, that is…”

“Major, I am sorry,” Myeong-joo murmured. “I have no face left to show you.”

Those were his final words. Cha Myeong-joo drove the fang straight into his heart.

From the wooden gramophone in the living room, the fourth movement of the Holberg Suite drifted mournfully through the dark. He felt his heart—poised to pump blood through his veins—stumble in bewilderment, seize, and stop.

Death was instantaneous.

***