The call came from a dead line.
An emergency number Ji-Hyuk had buried years ago, tied to an orphanage outside Incheon.
The woman on the line — Sister Hwa — sounded like she hadn't slept in days.
"She says you're her father," she whispered. "But she's never met you."
"She draws cities that haven't been built. People that don't exist. And last night… she rewound time. Just a little. Just ten seconds. But we felt it."
"Please. Come."
Then the line went dead.
The orphanage stood on the edge of a forest, wrapped in fog. No monsters. No Fold glyphs. No signs of breach.
But the moment Ji-Hyuk stepped inside, every child fell silent.
Because they recognized him.
Not from the news.
Not from the viral dream floods.
From her.
The girl stood at the end of the hall, barefoot, maybe seven years old, with bright black eyes and a spiral drawn on the back of each hand.
She looked up at him and smiled.
"Hi, Daddy."
Maeryn froze beside him.
Ji-Hyuk's mind screamed.
He had no daughter.
Never had.
He'd been too careful.
But the signature in the room…
The glyph-laced memories in the walls…
It was his. Or a perfect imitation.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The girl tilted her head.
"I'm what you could have been… if you stopped hiding."
They sat on the porch while the other children watched from a distance.
The girl's name, according to the files, was Yuna.
No last name.
No birth record.
But when she spoke, she used phrases Ji-Hyuk hadn't said aloud in a decade.
When she drew, she recreated battlefields he'd sealed away with magic.
Maeryn watched from the edge, hands on her weapons.
"She's not Fold," she muttered. "Or human. She's…"
"Both," Ji-Hyuk said.
Yuna leaned forward, her voice conspiratorial.
"I don't like the dreams they send me. They're quiet. But I like your dreams better. They have fighting. Fire. A lot of yelling."
She giggled.
"Do you think I'm broken?"
Ji-Hyuk's voice was low. "I think you were made."
Yuna smiled again — too sad for a child her age.
"Then maybe being broken is how I know I'm real."
That night, she showed them.
She slept under Maeryn's watch — heartbeat steady, mind glowing like a star.
Ji-Hyuk placed his fingers on her temple.
And saw everything.
Not memories.
Not implants.
But possible futures.
Hundreds.
In one, she led a rebellion. In another, she turned into a Fold-spire. In one, she died at ten. In another… she erased the Fold from time entirely.
And in the very last one—
She killed him.
He jerked back, gasping.
Maeryn steadied him.
"She's not a person," he said. "She's a seed. One shaped like a child, but meant to grow into something worse."
Maeryn looked toward the room where Yuna slept.
"She still has a choice," she whispered.
"Not if the Fold decides first."
But when Ji-Hyuk entered her room again… she was awake.
Waiting.
"I saw it too," she said softly. "The version where I become the end of things."
She hugged her knees.
"I don't want to be that."
Ji-Hyuk stared at her.
"You don't have to be."
She looked up.
"But you'll kill me if I start to become her, won't you?"
He didn't lie.
"…Yes."
She nodded once.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"If that's what it takes," she said. "To stay me."
And for the first time in a long time, Ji-Hyuk felt something strange.
Hope.
Not for a better world.
But for a smaller one — a single soul, choosing to be good even when built to be monstrous.
Later, Maeryn approached him under the stars.
"Are we keeping her?"
Ji-Hyuk didn't speak for a moment.
Then:
"She's coming with us."
Maeryn blinked. "That's not what I meant."
"I know."
He looked up at the sky.
"They tried to make her the Fold's weapon. Let's see what happens when she's ours instead."
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