The summer air in Seoul carried a stillness that Minjae found both familiar and foreign.
In his past life, silence meant danger—a pause before a storm, a hunter's breath held tight, a tension just beneath the skin of the world. But here, silence simply… was. Unthreatening. Unremarkable. Innocent in a way he struggled to trust.
And yet, that very innocence made it harder to ignore. It unsettled him more than the howling voids he had once flown through.
Because here, no one feared what came after the quiet.
They just lived in it.
He spent more time alone that summer. Not to avoid anyone, and not even to think—though thinking came naturally when nothing else intruded. No, he withdrew because solitude made things clearer.
There was a precision to loneliness, a refinement of edges. It carved away distraction. In silence, his mind returned to old rhythms—strategies without battlefields, purpose without an army.
He walked through early markets before the city woke. He wandered late at night through quiet alleys where the neon buzzed overhead like a warning no one heard. He sat in bookstores without reading, listening to the murmured exchanges of strangers.
There was no magic to it.
But it had a pattern. Subtle. Predictable. Ordinary.
And sometimes, that was harder to understand than sorcery or war.
One afternoon, he sat in a corner café tracing patterns into the condensation on his glass, absent-minded. He hadn't ordered anything sweet. The staff didn't ask him to move. He had become a regular—a quiet boy with haunted eyes who tipped well and never lingered too long.
The door jingled behind him, and a familiar voice slid into the silence like a stone breaking still water.
"You always look like you're solving something invisible."
He looked up. Hana.
She stood there, holding her drink and sketchbook.
"Do you think you're better than everyone?" she asked.
Minjae blinked. "No."
"Then why do you keep yourself separate?"
"I don't intend to."
"But you do."
Her voice wasn't angry. Just curious. Almost tired.
She sat down across from him. "Everyone has stuff to deal with. Most just don't hide it."
He looked at her. She had pencil dust on her hand. Maybe she just wanted to talk.
"Is it bad to be different?" he asked.
"No. It's worse to pretend you're not." Her voice was soft. "Don't disappear, okay?"
He was quiet. Then said, "I wasn't always like this."
"What were you like?" she asked.
"Louder. Bigger."
"But not now?"
"No. It's gone."
She looked at him. "You look tired."
"I wasn't made for softness."
"Maybe, but you don't have to be tough all the time."
He laughed. "I wasn't taught that."
She looked at her cup. "Maybe it's time to learn."
They sat in silence.
"Do you pretend to be normal?" he asked.
"All the time," she smiled. "Sometimes pretending helps."
"You're not what I thought."
"Neither are you."
She nodded, sipped her tea, and sat quietly.
And that, somehow, unsettled him more than any argument could have.
Later that week, Minjae joined a small investment group meeting at a quiet conference room downtown. Not as a member. Just as an observer. They were a collection of graduate students, junior analysts, and a curious professor or two—eager, uncertain, ambitious.
They assumed he was just another student interested in theory.
None of them realized he had already shifted positions weeks earlier—gently nudging funds and options to hedge against a slight ripple in oil futures that no one else had noticed. A ripple that would, in a month, become a wave.
He didn't manipulate anything.
He only moved first.
Quietly.
One night, Minjae was walking through a park. The lights were old and dim, and sometimes fireflies blinked in the dark. He stopped walking for a moment.
A little girl ran by him. She was chasing a red balloon tied to her wrist. She laughed loud and happy, not knowing how the world could hurt her.
Her parents followed behind, tired but smiling.
He watched them pass. Watched how the balloon bobbed in rhythm with her steps. Watched the warmth of that moment ripple outward without ever reaching him.
So human.
So fragile.
And yet, it held something that dragons had never understood.
Hope without cause.
Joy without armor.
He whispered to himself, "This world… it's terrifying in its softness."
At home, Minjae stood at the kitchen sink, unmoving, hands resting on the counter as if anchoring himself.
His mother walked in, paused at the doorway, and studied him for a moment. Then she filled a glass of water and handed it to him without speaking.
He took it. Sipped.
Then asked, "Was I always this strange?"
She laughed gently. "Only when you think no one's watching."
He almost smiled. "I think I'm starting to understand things I couldn't before."
She ruffled his hair like she had when he was a child. "That's life, Minjae. It never makes sense all at once. Just in glimpses."
He nodded. "And if those glimpses scare me?"
"Then they're probably real."
That night, he sat by the window.
No books.
No notes.
Just the city lights stretching in all directions—ordinary lives glowing in their quiet way.
He closed his eyes.
There were no voices from his past. No flames. No battles.
Just the rhythm of a life that had never been his… but might someday become so.
For now, that was enough.
Outside, the skies remained pale and unmoving.
No omens.
No thunder.
Just clouds drifting.
And Yoo Minjae, once Valmyros the Last Flame, sat beneath them—
Not above the world.
Not apart from it.
But under it.
And, for once, he didn't feel like he was falling.