Ji-yeol backed away from the spilled gold liquid, the smell of aged spirits turning sour in his nostrils. The violins screeched a high, dissonant note, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
A cold breath tickled his ear.
"Miss me already, Scribe?"
Ji-yeol spun around, his heart hammering against his porcelain ribs. Ka-yeon was standing inches from him, her long white hair glowing under the chandeliers. But the sight didn't bring him relief.
Something was fundamentally wrong. Usually, the right side of her face was a frozen, blank mask of bone-china—unmoving and stoic. Now, the porcelain was warped. The ceramic lips were pulled back into a wide, ecstatic grin that mirrored her human side perfectly. Both eyes—the obsidian and the brown—were wide, pulsing with a manic, wet light.
She looked happy. Deeply, unnervingly happy.
"Ka-yeon?" Ji-yeol rasped, his hand tightening on his suitcase. "How did you get into the tomb?"
She didn't answer. She didn't laugh or crack a joke about his jumpiness. She simply tilted her head until her neck made a sound like dry wood snapping.
Ji-yeol's stomach dropped. The Ka-yeon he knew used her porcelain half as a shield, a stiff barrier against the world. This creature was wearing the porcelain like a celebratory mask.
"You're not her," he hissed, stepping back.
The fraud didn't scream. It launched.
It moved with a speed that defied physics, a white blur of lace and long hair. Ji-yeol had no time to reach for his tools. He hit the marble floor hard, the impact sending a jarring shock through his fractured leg. He threw his arms up, shielding his face as the entity pinned him down, its weight feeling like a slab of cold lead.
He braced for the strike, for the porcelain fingers to tear into his throat.
But the pressure suddenly vanished.
Ji-yeol opened his eyes to a nightmare. The "Ka-yeon" above him was evaporating, turning into a thick, oily black smoke. As her body dissolved, the face lingered for a final, horrific second—the skin melting away to reveal a distorted, elongated jaw and eyes that had migrated to the center of the forehead. It wasn't a girl; it was a shapeless thing that had tried to fold itself into a human shape and failed.
The unsettling face winked at him before turning into soot.
Ji-yeol scrambled to his feet, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. He spun in a circle, his suitcase raised like a shield.
"Show yourself!"
The ballroom was silent. The silhouettes on the walls had returned to their frozen waltz.
The empty tables stood in perfect, haunting rows. The soft violin music resumed, but it felt closer now, as if the player were standing right behind his shoulder, moving just as he moved.
"Damn it... how do I get out of here?"
He began to walk, his boots clicking hollowly on the marble. Every pillar he passed felt like a hiding spot; every shadow on the wall felt like it was peeling itself off the paper to follow him. He couldn't shake the sensation of a thousand obsidian eyes watching him from the dark corners of the ceiling, waiting for him to blink.
He was in the center of a masterpiece, and something was waiting for the ink to dry.