NOVPUBVol. ll Arc: Blessings and Corruption of Gods
****
Daegon turned the black pearl once between his fingers, feeling its pulse match the slow thrum of his own heartbeat. Without a word, he walked back to where Yuna still lay trembling on the cold marble floor, her mascara smudged, her body barely able to push itself upright, her eyes glassy with fear and confusion. He crouched down just enough to catch her gaze, that empty, broken look that he drank in like wine — then he shoved the pearl against her chest, the impact making her gasp once, sharp and thin, before the darkness exploded outwards.
Yuna's back arched violently, her hands clawing at the floor, her nails scraping useless lines into the stone as the black energy devoured her.
It wasn't gentle, wasn't clean — it wrapped around her like a living thing, tendrils lashing across her limbs, prying her apart from the inside out.
She convulsed, shrieking — a raw, primal scream that scraped against the walls and clawed at the soul itself. Her body lifted an inch off the ground, spasming, thrashing, the darkness biting into her like fangs, and for a moment it looked like she would simply shatter into ash and be forgotten.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the blackness receded, shrinking and slithering back into her pores, into her veins, leaving her collapsed on the ground, panting raggedly.
But she wasn't the same.
Tendrils of lingering dark mist clung to her skin like tattoos carved from nightmares. Her eyes — once bright and human — had gone pitch black, soulless, empty. The girl she had been was gone, swallowed whole by the dark thing wearing her face now.
Slowly, with a mechanical, jerking precision, Yuna pushed herself onto her knees and bowed her head low to the floor.
"Master," she rasped, her voice no longer her own.
Daegon smiled, a lazy, cruel stretch of his mouth like he was indulging a pet. He leaned down just enough to whisper his first order, savoring the moment like a sip of rare wine.
"Go kill Jaehee."
Without hesitation, without fear, without the slightest flicker of her former self, Yuna vanished into the shadows, the remnants of darkness swallowing her completely.
The agent watched it all with the detached air of a man inspecting machinery, nodding once in approval. "The puppets gain magic upon rebirth," he said, slipping into professional tones like they were discussing a stock acquisition. "If they were normal humans, their strength now rivals that of a fourth-tier warrior. Fast. Deadly. Utterly obedient." He paused, adjusting his gloves with an idle flick of his wrists.
"You can control them with a thought. A single will. No need for commands once they're tethered."
Daegon said nothing, but he could feel it — the connection already forming in his mind, like a silk thread wound tight around a blade. He could see her now.
Miles away, in the dim quiet of her apartment, Jaehee slept unaware, tangled in soft sheets, breathing slow and steady in the glow of her bedside lamp. But the shadows in the far corner of her room began to ripple, thickening, bleeding into something darker than night itself.
Yuna stepped out of that darkness, silent, her feet barely touching the ground, her body wrapped in black mist, a dagger forged from pure shadow clenched in her hand.
Her movements were no longer human — not really — and the light caught her darkened eyes, empty, hollow, radiating nothing but obedience and death.
Far across the city, Daegon watched through their tether, smiling that cruel, thin smile he reserved only for moments like this. 𝓃𝓸𝓋𝓹𝓾𝓫.𝒸ℴ𝓶
"Kill her," he whispered, the words curling from his lips like a blade drawn slow and savoring.
And in the small apartment, the darkness leapt.
****
The city sprawled beneath him like a lit-up wound, pulsing with life and noise and sweet, innocent ignorance.
Neon lights painted the skyline in strokes of gold and red, flickering against glass towers that reached for a heaven that hadn't listened in a long time. Traffic moved like veins, voices tangled in the air—laughter, cursing, plans, petty heartbreaks. And standing far above it all, unmoved, untouched, was Daegon.
He stood at the edge of the tallest building in the district, a monolith of steel and shadow. His coat whispered against the wind, the fabric dark enough to vanish into the night if not for the way the moonlight clung to him—like even the sky couldn't decide whether it loved or feared him. In his hand, he held a small black pearl, smooth and unholy, pulsing with something that felt alive.
It was a core of twisted energy—an artifact of corruption, the very one that had hollowed Yuna out and left behind only obedience, silence, and hunger.
The pearl didn't need to scream for it's presence to be known. It hummed. It beckoned. It fed on the air itself.
Daegon's eyes were still and obsidian, carved from the memory of mountains. He looked down at the world beneath him—not with hate, not even with disdain.
But with something colder.
Something older. Indifference, maybe. Or understanding. The kind only a fallen god could afford. The streets were full tonight—pedestrians moving like a sea of breath and muscle, lost in their routines, in their cheap dramas and fleeting joys. None of them knew how close the scythe hovered. None of them felt the edge.
Among the crowd, his gaze found a moment. A child—no more than five—clutched his mother's hand, dragging her toward a bakery window where warmth spilled like honey and shelves brimmed with sugar-dusted bread. The boy pointed, grinning, tugging with pure, unfiltered glee.
The mother smiled down at him, her eyes soft with a kind of love only mortals could manage.
That simple, unshakable devotion. She bent to whisper something, her fingers brushing his hair as the boy bounced in place, completely certain the world was safe.
Daegon watched it all, the pearl dimming slightly in his palm as if feeding on the quiet perfection of that moment. But perfection never lasts, and Daegon knew that better than anyone. With a single thought—less than a blink—he could twist the woman's heart, flood her soul with rot, make her turn on her child with a blade and a lullaby.
And the most terrifying part? She'd do it with tears and love in her eyes, whispering that it was mercy.
His lips curved into a slow, bitter smile. Humans feared corruption like it was some grand evil that crashed through walls with fire and chaos. But corruption was soft. It was patient. It didn't come screaming—it came whispering. Through loneliness. Through bitterness. Through the moment someone said, "just this once."
It started in a sigh, a compromise, a betrayal so small you barely noticed until it had eaten everything.
And he would know.
Because he had been a titan. Not just a god, not just a dragon, but the very breath of Korea's bones. The guardian. The balance.
Daegon, the Mountain's Heart, the unshakable protector who once ripped arrogant gods from the sky for daring to tilt the world. He didn't fall to rage or war or ambition. All it took was love. Not even his own. Seoryeon—the only soul he had ever bent toward—chose another. And not just anyone. She chose Hwanung, the son of the Lord of Heavens, the golden flame of heaven wrapped in mortal skin.
Daegon hadn't needed betrayal. Just that look. That shift in her eyes. The way her voice softened for Hwanung like it used to for him.
That was all it took.
The beasts that had once circled him as whispers—Envy, Jealousy, Wrath, Pride and more—he didn't just let them in. He embraced them. Fed them. Taught them his name. And in return, they gave him clarity.
He stopped guarding a world that never once thanked him and began sculpting one that would never forget him. And for that, nature itself had cast him out like a disease. His own blood had turned on him.
The wind, the stone, the rain—all had abandoned him.
*
The pearl pulsed again in his palm, darker now, heavier. It had been feeding off the city's hidden fractures, swelling with each passing second. Daegon didn't speak. He didn't need to. The city was already listening, already trembling beneath its illusion of peace. He looked once more toward the child and mother, then past them—past the skyline, past the sea of people, past the world of dreams and noise and softness.
The time for observing was done.
The city wouldn't know it yet. But tonight marked the return of something it couldn't imagine. Not a demon. Not a god. Not a monster.
Something worse.
Something ancient.
Something forgotten.
And with every breath they wasted on meaningless words, with every light they flicked on to chase back the dark, they moved one second closer to the moment Daegon reminded them just how easy it was to take everything away.
And so the corruption of the whole city began!
