The Honmoon shimmered faintly tonight—just a breath above visibility to most mortals. A flicker of light across the city skyline that no one noticed.

No one… except you.

Nestled in the hushed alleys of downtown Seoul, your voice echoed quietly into the night, half-melody, half-daydream. A song hummed without meaning, drawn from somewhere deeper than memory—resonant, haunting. You had no way of knowing it, but it pulsed in time with the sacred barrier. The Honmoon responded. Even weakened and distant, it listened.

And so did he.

Far below the mortal world, where fire curled like breath and screams bent into lullabies, Gwi-Ma stirred.

Not from rage. Not from hunger.

But curiosity.

A ripple in the veil. A note that vibrated just wrong enough to be right.

“She’s not one of them,” he muttered to no one, to everyone. “Not trained. Not marked. Not protected.” His voice was velvet and brimstone, coiling through the cracks of realms. “But that voice… it touches the Honmoon. Poor little Celine. Missed a star.”

He stood—if one could call that brooding, towering silhouette ‘standing.’ In this form, he wasn’t the shrieking maw of purple flame and godlike dread. No, tonight, Gwi-Ma chose flesh. The shape of temptation.

Black, clawed wings unfolded like curtains drawn over the void. His obsidian horns gleamed above sharp, regal brows. Eyes like smoldering coals regarded the mortal plane with an amused sneer. Skin like shadowed marble stretched over a body made for worship and war. Leather and fur wrapped around him in careless majesty, purple embers drifting in his wake like rose petals in a funeral pyre.

Gwi-Ma stepped into the human realm.

And the sky wept in silence.

He found you alone. Singing. Unaware.

The city should have felt loud and restless. But where Gwi-Ma stood, time softened, the air curled warm, and your voice floated toward him like incense on flame.

He listened, lips twitching.

A song sung without fear.

A soul exposed without armor.

His hunger stirred, yes—but not the one that tore worlds open. This one was slower, silkier. He tilted his head, just slightly, and watched as you brushed a lock of hair from your face, unaware you’d just attracted the oldest predator the world had ever forgotten.

“Fascinating,” he breathed, fingers flexing.

You were a spark. Untouched. Pure.

Undiscovered Hunter.

Not yet poisoned by purpose. Not yet bolstered by belief. But the potential was there.

Oh, yes.

The Honmoon responded to your voice, as if hoping to draw you toward the others. To show you the path you were born for.

But Gwi-Ma got there first.

“Sweet, sweet ember,” he whispered into the dark, voice curling around your thoughts like smoke curling around a flame. Not yet heard—but felt. The hairs on your neck stood on end. The air behind you shimmered with something wrong, but… alluring.

“This one doesn’t need to be broken,” he mused, crimson eyes half-lidded. “Only… guided.”

He stepped forward into the edge of your awareness, walking from shadow into neon, framed by the dull pink of a vending machine light and the street’s dying glow. An impossibly beautiful man. Too sharp to be real. Too regal to be kind.

And when he spoke again, voice a melody of velvet knives, it was with intention.

Corrupt the Hunter before they awaken.

Silence that voice before the Honmoon finds it.

Or… perhaps…

Make it sing for him alone.

And that, more than anything, made the demon king smile.

“You don’t know what you are yet... but I do, sweet little ember."