Silence.
The kind that didn't feel earned.
For the first time in living memory, the city woke without a hum beneath its skin. No whispering reflections. No glowing veins. No ghosts in mirrors.
Just stillness.
And for most, that was enough.
But for Eunha, peace tasted like something stolen.
---
⚜️
It started small.
The customers at her bookshop had stopped asking about stories.
They'd walk in, browse, and leave with blank looks — as if the idea of "fiction" was foggy, half-remembered.
When she mentioned old tales — dragons, rebirth, lost kingdoms — they blinked in polite confusion.
One man even frowned and said, "Why make things up when the truth's enough?"
That was when she realized something was missing.
Not fear. Not memory.
But imagination.
---
⚜️
That night, Eunha walked home under a silver sky. The moon hung still — too still, like a painting that had forgotten to move.
When she reached her apartment, Jiheon was there — barefoot, cooking noodles with the clumsy focus of a man rediscovering domestic life.
He looked… normal. Mortal.
No glow. No tremor.
"Long day?" he asked, tasting the broth.
"You could say that," she murmured.
"People forgetting their debt to destiny again?"
She smiled faintly. "People forgetting stories, actually."
He turned, puzzled. "Stories?"
"Yes. Dreams, myths, imagination — gone. Like someone erased the world's ability to wonder."
He raised an eyebrow. "And that's bad?"
Her silence said enough.
---
⚜️
After dinner, Jiheon fell asleep on the couch, half-buried under a blanket.
Eunha watched him — the rise and fall of his chest, the faint shadow of peace on his face.
He deserved it.
He deserved everything they never had in their last lives.
And yet, her gut twisted.
The Axis was gone.
The cycles were over.
But maybe, just maybe, the world had paid too high a price for serenity.
---
⚜️
Around midnight, she woke to a sound.
A faint tick.
The clock on the wall was moving backward.
Her heart froze. "No…"
She stood and touched the glass — but the hands kept reversing, seconds unspooling into nothing.
Then — silence.
Her reflection in the glass blinked a moment too late.
> "Countess."
The voice was faint, distorted — like a radio between worlds.
Eunha's breath caught. "Who's there?"
> "You severed the thread but not the loom. The pattern persists."
The reflection's eyes shimmered gold for a heartbeat before the clock cracked.
And then everything went still again.
---
⚜️
By morning, she had almost convinced herself it was a dream.
Until Jiheon walked into the shop holding a half-burnt page.
"I found this taped under your door," he said, frowning.
Eunha took it — her fingers shaking.
The page was from a book that didn't exist. The words were written in their old language — the script of the First Cycle.
She translated it slowly under her breath:
> "When gods sleep, their dreams become the world.
When dreams die, the gods awaken once more."
Jiheon exhaled sharply. "That's a warning."
Eunha nodded. "Or a countdown."
---
⚜️
The signs grew subtle but clear.
Artists stopped painting.
Poets stopped writing.
Children stopped pretending.
Every creative spark dimmed, like candles snuffed by invisible fingers.
The world wasn't alive — it was functioning.
Stable.
Predictable.
Soulless.
Jiheon watched her pace the shop one evening. "You think we traded imagination for peace?"
"I think the Axis didn't vanish," she said quietly. "It changed forms."
He frowned. "Into what?"
She met his gaze. "Into the world itself. A prison made of calm."
---
⚜️
That night, Eunha couldn't sleep.
She sat by the window, sketching shapes she half-remembered — runes, circles, sigils. But the lines came out wrong, incomplete.
The Axis used to hum beneath her thoughts like a hidden chord. Now there was just silence.
And in that silence — a whisper.
> "If you wish to awaken the world again, you must dream louder than the gods."
She froze, eyes wide.
"Who are you?"
> "The voice you silenced. The part of you that remembered."
The room darkened. The temperature dropped.
And from the reflection in the window, a faint gold shimmer pulsed — the same light that once bound her and Jiheon together.
Her reflection smiled.
> "The Countess may rest. But the Axis still dreams."
---
⚜️
By morning, Eunha made a choice.
If the world had lost its imagination, she'd become its dreamer.
She turned the bookshop's backroom into a studio. Walls lined with inked runes, papers filled with fragments of lost myth, sketches of symbols she barely remembered.
Jiheon stood in the doorway, crossing his arms. "You're playing with fire again."
She didn't look up. "Then stand close. You're my knight, aren't you?"
He sighed — half annoyance, half admiration. "You're going to undo the balance."
"Balance isn't living. It's sleeping with your eyes open."
He hesitated. Then stepped inside. "Fine. If you're going to wake the gods, I'm not letting you do it alone."
---
⚜️
That night, they drew a new circle. Not to bind — but to remember.
Eunha whispered the names of every dream the world had lost.
Jiheon poured his will into the lines, his hand steady as he wrote the final rune.
When they joined hands over the sigil, the world didn't tremble.
It breathed.
The air shimmered faintly. Somewhere far away, a child began to hum an unfamiliar tune — the first dream to return.
Eunha smiled, tears slipping down her cheeks. "Do you feel that?"
Jiheon nodded. "It's starting again."
Her smile deepened. "Good."
Then her eyes glowed gold.
> "Let it."