Tesetan remembered that day.

The sky, unlike anything he had ever seen before, was buried beneath heavy storm clouds.

And only when the cold raindrops began striking his face one after another did he realize it.

“My arm......”

The severed arm was whole again, as though it had never been lost.

And not just that.

The wound in his leg, the slash across his side scorched by magical energy, the internal injuries that had made him cough up blood all this time.

The dragon had activated some kind of power, and everything had vanished without a trace.

Dazed, he lowered his gaze.

Astie was in his arms.

The little girl who had been laughing brightly only moments ago puckered her lips at the raindrop that landed on her cheek.

“Tie......”

Hot tears welled in the corners of his eyes.

The child was alive.

Tesetan sank heavily to the ground.

Shielding her from the rain, he stared down at her face.

Thank god.

At least the child survived.

It was a vile, selfish relief for a man who had lost all of his comrades.

But there was no time to drown in grief.

Tesetan inhaled deeply, taking in the unfamiliar scent filling the air.

He would have to postpone mourning the dead.

“Hey, sir?”

Because in the distance, two men in strange clothing were approaching him and Tie.

“You can’t come in here! Don’t you see the barricade ahead?!”

The unfamiliar language struck his ears as naturally as if it had always been his own.

Waving °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° what looked like red batons, the men hurried closer.

“You could get killed out here! The road’s flooded, and if something happens, they won’t even find the body in weather like— Huh?”

About five steps away, the man frowned.

Turning to his partner, he muttered uncertainly,

“Hey, Changhun. Is that...... blood?”

Alarm flashed across the man’s face.

And then everything happened in an instant.

“H hey?! Stop! I said stop?!”

“Officer! He’s carrying a kid too!”

The moment Tesetan saw the man reach toward his waist, he immediately bolted in the opposite direction.

There was only one thought in his head.

He had to run.

He could not fight strangers in an unfamiliar place.

Tie burst into tears in his arms.

“Changhun, what are you standing there for?! Call for backup already—!”

“T the northern entrance to Jamsu Bridge is blocked off right now! Suspicious male spotted! Acting erratically! Requesting support!”

Panicked shouts rang out behind him.

“What the hell is this guy?! Why is he so damn fast?!”

“Hurry, please! Pursuit on foot is impossible! We can barely see anything in this rain!”

His heart pounded harder and harder.

The downpour intensified until his vision blurred.

At some point, Tesetan realized the water had risen all the way to his knees.

When he glanced back, the two men chasing him had vanished somewhere behind the curtain of rain.

A siren wailed in the distance.

Tesetan checked on Tie.

The cloth wrapped around her was soaked through.

He muttered incoherently,

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Tie.”

And kept walking.

He headed toward shallower ground, and before long, a strange-looking hill rose into view.

At the top stood an enormous stone structure.

The moment he settled beneath it, a deafening crash thundered overhead.

Tie started crying again.

Tesetan looked around tensely.

Something was moving above the structure sheltering them.

Judging by how long the noise continued, it was unimaginably massive.

“It’s okay, it’s okay......”

Stroking Tie gently, Tesetan murmured under his breath,

“As soon as the rain stops, we’ll leave. As soon as it stops.”

But the storm showed no sign of ending.

He wedged himself into a narrow gap between moss-covered stones.

Afraid the child was cold, he rubbed his hands together over and over before pressing them against her tiny forehead.

And then—

Something caught his eye.

“......A Magic Crystal?”

A smooth black stone was clenched in Tie’s hand.

No energy came from it, yet Tesetan understood immediately.

“......Dragon.”

The monster that had annihilated Tregava with a single sweep of its hand.

The creature that, at the very end, had sent him and his daughter here.

Now that creature had become a Magic Crystal.

For several seconds, Tesetan stared uneasily at the stone.

Then he carefully removed it from Tie’s hand and tucked it into the inner pocket of his clothes.

That was how their first day in Korea passed.

“For the first few days, we lived like that.”

After Tesetan finished speaking, the squad members collectively held their breath.

Maybe it could be called luck.

Tesetan was clever, after all.

As he wandered through the unfamiliar city, he quickly learned who to avoid and how not to draw attention to himself.

Once he realized his clothes stood out too much, he even changed into clothing people had thrown away.

The problem was that he did not have a single coin.

“At least I still had my jewelry.”

Tesetan sold the jewelry and managed to get money.

But that disappeared quickly too.

Only later did he realize it.

The people who bought his jewelry had cheated him.

Still, before long he discovered a place nearby that resembled a market in Tallocium.

Vendors displayed goods openly across stalls.

If he blended into the crowd, he could at least find something to eat amid the chaos of people passing by.

And one day, just as he had begun thinking they could not continue living like this—

“Hey! What are you doing here?”

He met Chae Boksu.

Chae Boksu was an unbelievably kind person.

She brought Tesetan and Tie home with her, fed them until they were full, and put them to bed.

Tesetan slept for two entire days, as if he had blacked out.

When he finally woke and hurriedly searched for Tie, the little girl was already sitting in a strange woman’s arms, smiling brightly.

“Oh my, what a sweetheart. What’s our little baby’s name?”

“Ma! Mu...... bu!”

“Oh, listen to her babbling so well. Did you like the baby food Auntie made that much?”

“I’m telling you, she’s still too young for that! Just give her formula already, seriously......”

“Oh, there Grandma goes again. Grandma~ say, I can already hold my head up and eat from a spoon. I’m a big girl now~ say it.”

Room 107.

That tiny cramped room never once felt suffocating.

Only then did Tesetan realize how exhausted he truly was.

While he recovered, those two women became family to them.

“Tie’s Papa, they say Room 106 is opening up. I was thinking maybe you could rent it?”

“Yes. I’ll help somehow with the deposit.......”

They were the ones who helped Tesetan settle down.

“Work’s hard, huh?”

But the jobs available to Tesetan were limited.

Because of the documents.

Or because of how striking his appearance was.

He had no choice but to keep changing jobs over and over.

Many times, he worked an entire day only to never receive his wages.

And since there was no way for him to demand the money, the number of days he endured in silence kept growing.

Meanwhile, Tie learned how to walk, how to speak, how to run.

“Papa!”

Whenever he returned home from work—

and Tie came running barefoot to greet him—

for some reason, it always filled him with a strange sense of guilt.

“Did you play with Grandma again today?”

“Yeah! With Auntie and Gwamma.”

He needed to return home soon.

Tie should not spend her days trapped in such a cramped, dark place.

She deserved to grow up somewhere brighter and wider than anywhere else.

Running beside lakes in summer, and across snowy plains in winter.

“Before Tie turns five, we’ll definitely go home. Okay?”

“Home?”

“Yes. Papa’s homeland, Tallocium, is a beautiful country. Before Magic Crystals started appearing, it was even more beautiful......”

“......”

“It’s far more spacious than this place, and the air is cleaner......”

But it was a promise he could never keep.

“There’s nothing to worry about. I’ve seen you working at heights before, you’re strong as hell! Just think of it as a fish factory. A fish factory.”

It was illegal work.

“But the pay’s good. Meals are regular, and the refrigeration keeps the place cool in summer. Isn’t it paradise?”

An unregistered seafood processing plant.

Which meant most of the workers there were people in unstable situations.

“Kim, earn what you can while you’ve got the chance. How long are you gonna keep scraping by? You even brought your little daughter here.”

Click.

“Everyone left, right? Lights are off. Freezer door’s shut. Good work today, everybody. That’s it.”

The illegally constructed freezer warehouse had a broken internal release mechanism.

And inside the freezing storage room, where the oxygen slowly ran out, Tesetan was powerless.

Just like that day on the plains of Elderin, when he lost his comrades.

He had to go.

Tie was waiting for him at home.

His consciousness gradually blurred, yet the words never left his lips.

Only the monotonous buzzing of the fluorescent light filled the space.

The shadow cast against the freezing wall never moved throughout the entire night.

No.

It simply could not move.