---

High above in the blue sky, a white hungry ghost was crying mournfully.

“Kkyuhing.”

That cry was filled with deep sorrow.

Just a little while ago, I was lying in a hospital room enjoying a peaceful daily life!

The peace I gained from the gray reaper’s departure didn’t last long.

It wasn’t peace I achieved through my own efforts, so it was bound to shatter easily.

Meanwhile, the orange reapers seemed to have big troublemakers in their midst, as they were becoming increasingly mischievous lately.

In search of a target to play tricks on, they immediately set their sights on the hungry ghost they found.

The orange reapers, who usually despised sticking together, now teamed up as four to begin tormenting the ghost.

They stuffed the ghost’s belly full of sweet hot chocolate, then used their ability to fly freely in the sky to lift each of its short legs and hoist it high into the air.

The destination was the Black Sugar Desert.

The Black Sugar Desert, which the orange reapers despised!

While other mini reapers liked it quite a bit, the orange reapers hated the Black Sugar Desert where sugar crystals kept digging into their fluffy bodies.

So, the orange reapers united their plans to play tricks on the mini reapers messing around in the Black Sugar Desert.

And while floating over the Black Sugar Desert, they looked for their target.

When they spotted mini reapers building a sandcastle, the orange reapers promptly tapped the ghost’s belly.

“Kkyuhing.”

The ghost let out a small cry upon the orange reaper’s command and opened its mouth wide, causing the hot chocolate to pour out like a waterfall.

The sweet hot chocolate bombardment engulfed the mini reapers building the sandcastle.

It was a scene reminiscent of artillery in a battlefield.

The sandcastles they worked hard to build collapsed and crumbled in an instant.

‘!!!’

The golden reaper building a massive castle couldn’t help but feel indignant as if their own house had been destroyed.

The blue reaper, secretly making its own small, delicate sandcastle among the golden reapers while wearing a golden reaper doll outfit, also shed tears.

The red reaper, smaller than the other mini reapers and cherished by the gray reaper, saw its sandcastle collapse under the hot chocolate as well.

Though it was a shining, beautiful sandcastle that looked like glass, molded by melting sugar, it couldn’t withstand the heavy hot chocolate pouring down.

Only the tallest spire sparkled like an overturned icicle, but even that had melted significantly to the point it couldn’t be called a spire anymore.

The orange reapers laughed with glee, chuckling like the gray reaper at the scene.

However, as a few golden reapers began drawing their light swords and started giving chase, the orange reapers hastily fled higher into the sky.

The now useless white ghost was simply discarded.

The ghost fell onto the melted spire, skewered and transformed like a kebab.

“Kkyuhing.”

The unhappy ghost cried sorrowfully.

Slowly approaching the miserable ghost was a yellow reaper.

With a grim smile, the yellow reaper asked if the ghost didn’t need a doll outfit to avoid pranks.

In response, the ghost cried out loudly despite its pierced belly.

“Kkyu!”

That was a big answer filled with the emotion of agreement.

*

Yerin was petting the odd golden reaper’s hair.

It didn’t seem strange while looking directly at it, but it felt off as soon as she turned her gaze away.

This odd golden reaper had recently been appearing at the Sehee Research Institute often.

Yerin closed her eyes tightly and began to think deeply.

While looking at it, nothing felt odd, and the presence of a golden reaper was overwhelmingly strong, so she shut her eyes.

Once her eyes were closed, strange thoughts began to surface.

It seemed the golden reaper didn’t exude a golden light from its body.

Weird.

The golden reaper walking on four legs wasn’t its usual appearance.

It definitely didn’t seem like it walked on four legs.

The golden reaper had let out a strange sound, like “kkyu.”

Hadn’t the golden reaper been unable to make any sounds?

It’s definitely strange!

And Yerin opened her eyes again.

The golden reaper before her was still happily lying on the floor.

That strange feeling disappeared the moment she opened her eyes.

Yerin smiled as she petted the golden reaper’s soft hair again.

The brief confusion was probably because she had just woken up from a nap in the isolation room without the gray reaper around.

The odd golden reaper enjoyed Yerin’s care and elegantly stood up, letting out a cute cry.

“Kkyu.”

*

[Broken Moon. Repeating Past. Twisted Conclusion.]

I continued to listen to incomprehensible sounds with my ear pressed against the crab.

Though the words lacked hints or context, as I kept listening, thoughts began to come to mind bit by bit.

[The Moon of the Snowfield.]

The environment here seemed perfectly suited for the appearance of the purple moon shining brightly in the snowfield.

As I thought of ‘the Moon of the Snowfield,’ I turned my gaze away from the empty snowfield and looked up at the sky.

And there it was.

A faint purple moon that seemed ready to shatter at any moment was suspended above.

It was so dim that an ordinary human eye couldn’t see it, and its presence was reduced to a level my senses could hardly detect.

This moon was completely different from the moon I had seen in Dobong-gu.

The purple moon in my memory had cast a strong confusion and created amusing shadowy figures.

But the moon now didn’t emit any light visible to the human eye, nor did it seem to emit any purple light that could pass through matter.

‘That thing has also died, huh.’

The moon too was dead like the purple crab.

To be precise, it wasn’t dead, but it felt more appropriate to describe it as ‘already dead.’

It was alive, yet in a halted state, but it had already lost all its power and seemed ready to collapse at any moment.

‘….’

As I stared at the moon for a long time, dreams began to flow out in a hazy manner.

A dream constantly repeating at an incredible speed.

It was like a liminal dream seen at the boundary of life and death.

An unending nightmare, from which I couldn’t wake.

Strangely enough, simply watching it made the moon gloomy, so I hurriedly checked the conditions for destruction.

[Dream reaches a proper conclusion.]

Is it necessary to manipulate the dream?

Fortunately, I had the ability to freely traverse dreams, and I had experience manipulating dreams to destroy objects.

‘This will be easy!’

With a confident smile, I used the golden tree’s power to delve into the dream of the Moon of the Snowfield.

The moment I fell into the dream, it felt as if I brushed past a bright light ring.

*

As soon as I entered the dream, a burning pain surged through my entire body.

“Hah…!”

A groan escaped my lips involuntarily.

Once I entered the dream, I could breathe, but there was no time to pay attention to that.

It hurts!

What on earth is going on?

It felt different from when I used the halo.

There was no blow that shaped my body, but it was strangely unbearable pain.

And my ability to see through my skin, like I used to, had disappeared.

To assess the situation, I slowly opened my pain-laden eyes.

In front of me was a grotesquely burnt human face reflected in a mirror.

Of course, there was no hair, only the face of a human twisted and ruined.

I was lying in a room entirely made of mirrors, as if I were being forced to admire that very sight.

It didn’t seem I was in the body of a gray reaper, but rather in someone else’s human body in the dream.

“Ugh.”

I tried to speak but only a sound like wind escaped my lips.

I hadn’t lost the ability to speak from not using it too much, though.

My tongue was severed.

As soon as I confirmed that, faces began to come to my mind.

The ninjas of Gyeonggaksan!

Burns all over the body and a severed tongue.

That was characteristic of the ninjas I’d seen in Gyeonggaksan.

However, the body I had possessed was different from the ninjas.

The ninjas were tightly wrapped in plain black cloth without any quirks, but this body wore luxurious-looking clothing.

A splendid outfit combining black and white.

In fact, it looked as if the clothing had been put on rather than worn.

For good reason, my wrist and ankle were pierced with metal spikes.

What the hell was this all about?

At that moment, a ninja entered through the mirror directly in front of me.

And handed me a note.

[Saintess, have you coughed? It’s morning prayer time.]

The moment I saw that note, I felt my body stiffen.

It was as if my body remembered the terror.

Simultaneously, flames began to rise from the floor, scorching my body.

“Ugh.”

Air escaped involuntarily from my lungs.

For any ordinary human, it would be a situation where dying in an instant wouldn’t be strange, but strangely enough, this body kept regenerating and wouldn’t die.

What the heck?

No sooner did that question form in my mind than I felt an enormous volume of firewood in my chest.

It was almost more than twice the amount Yerin had.

That firewood was weakly acting upon this human body, restoring it to a level where it wouldn’t die.

Of course, it wasn’t a blessing but a curse.

It meant I would suffer eternally.

*

‘Ggrgh.’

As soon as the ‘morning prayer time’ ended, I was pulling out the metal spikes firmly embedded in my wrists and ankles.

Yet, I tried my best to suppress my groans so the ninja outside wouldn’t notice.

How could I still move after my whole body burned, my tendons severed, and spikes drilled into me?

Because I was a pro at handling firewood.

No matter how human the body was, with this much firewood, I could cause a miracle or two.

Clink. Clink.

As I pulled out all the spikes, my body felt light as if I had come back to life.

And I began to distribute the firewood in my chest throughout my body, starting to heal all the wounds.

From burns to tendons and even my tongue.

I looked down at my white and soft palms and chuckled softly.

“Hah, haha. It really works.”

As I listened to the unfamiliar voice ringing in my ears, I clenched my palms tightly.

And when I raised my head to look in the mirror, I was frozen like a stone.

‘?’

A girl who looked about ten years old, ‘Yerin,’ in splendid clothing was reflected in the mirror.

‘???’