By Zephyria 
The memory surfaced—of how he had named a sacred artifact ‘Happiness,’ praying for Tae-un’s happiness, believing they would never meet again. Had Tae-un been happy, then?
Was it merely his own endless dullness that made Tae-un’s smile, as he spoke of anticipating a choice, not seem particularly happy?
‘…That’s not it.’
Kim Si-baek remembered the fleeting moments when the child had smiled as if he were truly happy. From that semi-basement room to the rooftop of the orphanage that summer. Tae-un’s sincerity had existed solely for Kim Si-baek.
His clouded mind finally became clear. His dizzy limbs regained their strength, and the hilt of Sonas, which he had been gripping by force, finally settled firmly in his hand.
Kim Si-baek’s path was now clear.
To become happy together with Tae-un. To live a life within the same flow of time, together.
When Chaos first observed a world in another dimension, its goal was distinct: What would happen if a human who had overcome fate were made a follower? Could the eternally opposing currents be shifted?
Chaos had pondered this for a long time, but while the adjustment of time had been blocked in Mak Slecht due to the gods who opposed them, it was free on Earth. Even while rewinding the time of a small child found by chance, Chaos’s expectations remained unchanged.
However, the boy who approached the fate of the child—who was destined to die—produced a result that even Chaos could not have imagined. In exchange for saving the child, the boy offered up his own future, which should have been brilliantly radiant, without even knowing it; and Chaos sweetly savored a human’s future, something it had never possessed before.
Nine years later, the boy, who had crash-landed in Mak Slecht in a way no one could have predicted, built a new future. The life he constructed and walked through by his own will was a glorious radiance as brilliant as the future he had sacrificed in the past. It was, truly, beautiful.
Thus, Chaos harbored a new expectation. When the fates of the child and the boy intersected once more, what would they show? With what beauty would the human souls, which they could not mold, shine?
The vision of the past shown immediately after the Id Portal opened was a small expression of that anticipation. Chaos looked down upon the two humans from the apostle’s mental landscape.
The path became clear: to return Tae-un to being human.
There had been no precedent of a follower returning to being human. Unlike apostles or grand warriors who possessed divine grace, a follower literally accepted the energy of Chaos to become a ‘follower.’
However, Tae-un had not yet revealed his true form as an Apostle of Chaos. Kim Si-baek, having witnessed Edokus’s true form, was certain. No matter how much he maintained a human shape, there was an instinctive dread and a human repulsion toward the ‘thing’ residing beneath the human skin.
‘Then there is still a chance.’
He rapidly processed his thoughts while defending against a strike that lunged at him as if tearing through the void behind his back.
There had been a subtle doubt from the beginning. Judging by Tae-un’s words and actions within the Id Portal, he seemed unaware of the vision Kim Si-baek had witnessed. If he had known, he would have offered at least one excuse for his actions, which had been so grief-stricken.
If the entity that showed the vision was not Tae-un, there was only one answer.
‘…It must be a servant of Chaos.’
He had never heard of Chaos putting in so much effort—even going so far as to regress the world—just to create a single follower. Even less had he heard of Chaos providing an opportunity by returning a complete follower, who had already undergone exuviation, back to being human.
Though the reason was unknown, Chaos cherished Tae-un, its first apostle, immensely. Even if that cherishing was merely a means to an end.
Perhaps there was a gap there.
Before he could put a period to his thoughts, a slash blending intangible magical energy and darkness surged from the overflowing entity. Kim Si-baek neither defended nor dodged it.
“…!”
His left hand, imbued with divine power, grabbed the intangible magical energy directly. The two opposing energies collided head-on, causing the air to ripple in great waves. Human skin, fragile compared to a magical beast, was invaded by the dense magical energy and charred black, while simultaneously, divine power healed the wound.
Ignoring the wounds on his hand that were turning raw red as injury and healing repeated in succession, Kim Si-baek wrapped himself deeper in the magical energy and pulled. The magical energy held in Kim Si-baek’s hand scattered, and the entity split left and right like a tidal wave, revealing Tae-un. He wore a calm expression, unchanged from before his form had collapsed.
“Do you have something to say?”
Kim Si-baek threw out a question to buy time to organize his thoughts and to resolve the doubt that had been weighing on his mind.
“You, how many times have you regressed?”
“It ended with one.”
“Then what are these corpses of yours here?”
“I imagined dying frequently, so a lot of them appeared.”
Kim Si-baek stared at Tae-un, who had responded nonchalantly, then wiped his face with a sigh.
“…Even when you were only fourteen, all your old acquaintances said in unison that you were adept at handling every situation. And there’s a discrepancy between people’s memories and yours. Could such a difference be caused by just one regression? I think the answer that solves all these doubts is that you repeated regression multiple times. Am I wrong?”
“…”
“The person who sent the email to Si-woon was you, right? Telling him in advance via phone would also be possible if you had collected information through regression.”
After answering with silence for a while, Tae-un suddenly leaned over and rummaged through the corpses at his feet. His back was defenseless, as if inviting an attack at any moment.
Tae-un, searching through the corpses with the same face as his own as if he were scavenging animal carcasses, eventually lifted one of them. It was an age that didn’t seem very different from the current Tae-un.
“This is probably right…”
The dark gaze of Tae-un as he lifted the corpse held an unpredictable light—perhaps tinged with anxiety, or perhaps with a strange anticipation.
“What are you doing?”
“Mentioning Si-woon hyung reminded me. I’ve killed Si-woon hyung a few times before.”
Kim Si-baek could not immediately comprehend the casual remark. Un… had killed someone?
His face went blank for a moment, forgetting even the fact that they were in a confrontation, and Tae-un carelessly threw his own corpse in front of him.
“Do you want to check for yourself, hyung?”
The corpse thrown at Kim Si-baek scattered like water mist, and a portion of it flowed into him. The moment he touched the fragments of memory and time held within the corpse, Kim Si-baek saw.
〈Do you know my brother?〉
A younger brother desperately searching for his whereabouts, and a cruel hand ruthlessly murdering that brother. The hand that tore open the chest and ripped out the bleeding heart was definitely a hand he knew.
The hand that used to touch him softly, act spoiled, or beg for kisses was now tearing the brother’s body to shreds.
Kim Si-baek, as if swallowing the shock, lifted his head. Because the expression on his pale, frozen face was a chilling blankness, Tae-un unconsciously swallowed hard.
Even his heart, which was gradually distancing itself from being human, throbbed at the utterly unfamiliar gaze, but he understood that a great opportunity had arrived. Kim Si-baek took a step forward and swung the sacred artifact in his hand, cutting through the air in a wide arc.
The strike, which tore through the intangible darkness like ripping paper, reached Tae-un. Kim Si-baek’s attack, which had been purely defensive until now, had finally begun. Only after being shown the sight of Cloud being killed. Finally. Finally.
Tae-un drew a long blade from his own hand, struggling to maintain a composed expression. His conviction that Cloud would be the decisive keyword to move Kim Si-baek was correct, but instead of being happy, it felt as agonizing as having raw flesh carved out. How hideous and gruesome must his image be in Kim Si-baek’s memory?
In his heart, he wanted to expose his neck to the blade rather than attack Kim Si-baek. But he couldn’t. Chaos would not permit such a death, which was tantamount to suicide, nor could Kim Si-baek pity him or have his resolve shaken.
To ensure that Kim Si-baek would not regret the result of killing him and saving everyone, it had to be an inevitable choice. Cloud was the sorrow and pain engraved in Kim Si-baek’s soul. His choice was justified now that he knew not only that his brother was alive, but that he had even died by his own hand in the past.
As a result of that justified choice, Tae-un’s world of mental imagery was being violently shaken.