Forced into a union she would never have chosen, Seo-yeon signs away her life, gaining valuable time for the real crescendo.
The morning sunlight struggled to penetrate Seoul's thick, grey overcast sky, filtering through broken slivers that seemed to cut the air in half. It was the sort of light that made everything subtly, uncannily false—a little too golden in some areas, a little too immaculate in others, as if the city itself were working hard to pretend that today was an entirely normal day.
The metropolis' normal frenetic heartbeat was subdued, a distant thrum under a layer of forced stillness. But Seo-yeon knew otherwise. Today was anything but normal. This was not a day; it was the brink, the knife-edge between realms.
