**White light dissolved into sterile fluorescence.**
Min-jun gasped awake strapped to a medical chair, his limbs bound by thick nylon restraints. The air smelled of antiseptic and ozone. Through blurred vision, he saw a familiar silver-haired woman adjusting dials on a massive machine—younger, softer-faced, but undeniably Xia.
*1999. The original experiment.*
"Subject is conscious," she called over her shoulder, voice crisp with scientific detachment. "Beginning final sequence."
Min-jun strained against the restraints. His brand was gone. The Eclipse Rot's whispers were silent. He was just a man again—no, less than a man. A *test subject.*
Across the lab, a younger Dr. Kang checked a clipboard. "Vital signs stable. Proceed with dimensional infusion."
Xia's fingers hovered over a red switch. "May God forgive us."
The machine *screamed* to life.
---
**Agony beyond comprehension.**
Min-jun's cells unraveled and reknit as the beam struck his chest. His vision fractured into infinite perspectives—seeing himself from above, from within, from angles that shouldn't exist.
Then *it* noticed him.
A presence vast and hungry, pressing against the fragile barrier between dimensions. The Void didn't speak in words—it *imprinted* directly into his neurons:
**WE SEE YOU**
The lab's lights exploded in a shower of sparks. Containment tanks shattered as a *tear* opened in reality itself—not a full gate, but a bleeding wound in the air above Min-jun.
Dr. Kang screamed as black tendrils lashed out, wrapping around his arm. His skin *bubbled*, reforming into something translucent and blue-veined—the first Echo.
Xia slammed the emergency shutdown. Nothing happened.
"IT'S FEEDING ON THE POWER GRID!" she yelled, grabbing a fire axe.
Min-jun watched in horror as his own body began to change. Black veins spiderwebbed from his chest—not the Eclipse Rot, but its *origin*. The first infection.
The axe came down on the machine's core.
The world *shattered.*
---
**Consciousness returned in flickers.**
- *Xia dragging his convulsing body into a decontamination shower*
- *Military personnel in hazmat suits sealing the lab with concrete*
- *A whispered argument about "containment protocols" and "necessary erasures"*
Then—
A hospital room.
Soo-ah, younger than he'd ever seen her, asleep in a chair beside his bed. Her hand rested on her swollen belly.
And inside her womb...
*Something pulsed in response to Min-jun's presence.*
Not a child.
A *reaction.*
---
**Xia stood in the doorway**, her lab coat replaced by military fatigues. She looked aged decades in mere days.
"They're calling it a failed reactor experiment," she said quietly. "Fifty-seven dead. The survivors... changed." She nodded to Soo-ah. "Except her. And what she's carrying."
Min-jun's voice came out raw. "What did you do?"
Xia's eyes glistened. "We tried to create a bridge between dimensions. Instead..." She touched her own chest where Min-jun's brand would one day be. "We made a door. And *something* is trying to come through."
Outside the window, a news report showed the first "natural disaster" casualties—people melted into impossible shapes near the sealed lab.
Xia placed a hand on Soo-ah's belly. "Your son is the only one who can fix this. He's part of *them* now."
Soo-ah stirred, her sleepy eyes meeting Min-jun's.
"Hey stranger," she murmured. "You were out for days."
Min-jun couldn't speak.
Because now he understood.
Ji-hoon wasn't just the key.
*He was the lock.*
---
**TO BE CONTINUED...**