"Alright," Bo-gum said, his voice taking on the tone of a foreman even off the clock. "You know the drill. We wait for the alert. Only if it's a cave-type. We go the moment it pops, day or night. So be—"

Si-eun cut him off with a grin. "Of course! More chow time for Jung, right, buddy?" He gave the Metalizard an affectionate pat on the side.

Jung, expressing his happiness, responded with his customary affectionate nudge. It was enough to make Si-eun stumble sideways with a yelp, barely catching himself on a lamppost.

Bo-gum sighed, finishing his sentence as if nothing had happened. "—ready."

Onjo gasped. "Oppa! That's rude! Don't cut Bo-gum oppa like that!"

Bo-gum just shook his head, a rare, almost invisible smile touching his lips. "It's fine, Onjo."

Han Maru nodded quickly, his words soft but earnest. "O-of course, w-we know, h-hyung."

Bo-gum turned to Joo-in. "Anyway, Joo-in-ah. If a dungeon appears at night, you don't need to come. Focus on resting. Leave it to us, and focus on your school."

Joo-in almost protested but recognized this familiar argument. "...Okay, but hyung. If the dungeon is high rank, I will come."

Bo-gum looked conflicted. Joo-in was their strongest member, and yet... he was a kid. He sighed. "Fine."

Joo-in brightened and left with a wave.

Bo-gum offered a final curt nod to the rest, then turned and walked off with his steady, purposeful stride.

The Bae siblings fell into step naturally. "C'mon, you big lug," Si-eun laughed, shoving Jung playfully. "Let's go home." The massive Metalizard fell in beside him. Onjo walked quietly on Si-eun's other side, offering a small, shy wave goodbye to Maru before turning away.

Han Maru stood alone for a moment, watching the three of them—a family in every sense of the word. The loneliness felt a little less crushing. They were his team. They were the reason he was still breathing.

He turned and walked his solitary path through the bustling city.

His apartment was a small, rented box on the top floor of an aging building. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing him into silence.

A cat meowed. A gray cat, a former stray named Oneul, rubbed against his legs. Maru knelt and patted Oneul, then took out cat food. The simple act was a ritual of normalcy.

He walked to the single chair and carefully hung his spider-silk suit jacket on the back. His fingers worked at his tie. He didn't change—if an alert came, it was faster to just put the jacket and tie back on.

With a weary sigh, he slumped onto the narrow bed. The thin mattress groaned. He didn't bother taking off his glasses.

His hand crept up to his collar, fingers finding the cold metal of the dog tag. He pulled it out, staring at the engraved initials—a bond to a promise that felt like it belonged to someone else.

He tapped his Hunter Brace, summoning his old smartphone. The wallpaper was a frozen moment: the three of them in their school uniforms. Him with an anxious smile. Suho grinning wildly. Yoo Seol with her small, quiet smile. They looked innocent. Happy. Unbroken.

The ache in his chest was familiar. He missed them.

"P-pathetic... M-maru," he whispered into the empty room, the words fracturing as they left his lips, a permanent reminder. He let the phone rest on his chest.

Han Maru's eyes slowly closed, exhaustion finally overwhelming him.

But sleep didn’t bring peace. It brought memory. The kind that wasn't a dream, but a reliving.

The darkness behind his eyelids wasn't empty. It was the deep, damp black of the Jadestone Mine. A ping echoed in his mind, not from a dream, but from the past...

It had been a routine mission, just a few months ago. A low-rank gate with a cave system perfect for mining. They were deep in the tunnel, the steady clang of their pickaxes a familiar rhythm.

Then, a simultaneous, chilling ping echoed not in their ears, but in their minds.

A status window, unsolicited and ominous, materialized before each of them.

[Madness Gauge: 0%]

The mining sounds ceased. The air went cold.

Maru felt a sweat break on his brow, his words, still mostly whole back then, laced with a dread he hadn't felt since the Daybreak End. "A-a Nightmors?!"

Si-eun paled. "Shit!"

Onjo’s face went sheet-white. Bo-gum’s knuckles were taut on his pickaxe. Before anyone could move, their Hunter Braces crackled to life with the raid leader’s voice, sharp with panic. "Everyone! Full retreat! This is a Nightmors! It's not for us! Go! NOW!"

Panic erupted. They ran as one, Jung thundering alongside them. But in the frantic scramble, Maru’s foot caught on a jagged outcrop. A sickening crack echoed in his own ears, a white-hot bolt of agony shooting up his leg. He stumbled, falling behind.

The gap between him and his team widened with every second. He saw Bo-gum glance back, his expression shifting from fear to alarm. In that moment, Maru knew they would stop. They would try to carry him. And they would all die.

He made a choice.

Forcing himself upright, he masked the pain behind a wave. "I-I remember another path up ahead!" he shouted, the lie tearing at him. "I'll loop around! I'll be fine! You guys keep running! Don't stop!"

He saw the conflict on their faces—the trust they had in him warring with the terror of the monster behind them. The trust won. With reluctant nods, they turned and continued their flight, believing their friend had a plan.

The moment they vanished around a bend, Maru’s leg gave way. He fell face-first, the impact cracking the lens of his glasses. He tried to push himself up, but a shadow fell over him.

The Lion Nightmors was there. A swift, brutal slash of its claw ripped across his shoulder. Blood sprayed the cave wall. Maru cried out, collapsing again. The creature loomed over him, pinning him with its weight. Maru looked up into its furious, red eyes. "P-please..." he whimpered.

The lion raised its claw and with a terrible, precise force, brought it down, piercing through his chest.

The agony was absolute. A final, guttural scream was torn from Maru's lungs—a sound of pure, undeniable mortal terror that echoed down the stone corridors.

It was that scream—the sound of their friend's certain death—that stopped the fleeing team in their tracks.

Onjo froze, her blood running cold. "Maru-ssi!"

Si-eun skidded to a halt,his face a mask of horror. "He lied..."

Without another word,Si-eun yelled for Jung to armor up. Bo-gum, his expression grim, turned back. The plan was forgotten. Their friend was dying.

But they were too far away.

Back in the chamber, Maru’s world ended. The light faded from his eyes. The Lion Nightmors stared at its work, then at its own bloody claw. A strange shudder ran through its form. It looked back at Maru’s lifeless face, and a single, glistening tear fell.

It began to stomp on Maru's chest, a desperate, rhythmic pounding. When that failed, driven by an incomprehensible instinct, the lion plunged its claw into its own chest. It withdrew its own, still-beating heart and placed it into the hollow cavity it had created.

Weaker now, it continued to stomp, pouring its own life into the corpse before it. With one final, feeble impact, the Lion Nightmors dissolved into a cloud of black dust.

A weak, wet cough rattled from Maru's lips. A heartbeat, strong and alien, thumped to life within his ravaged chest.

It was then that Onjo, Si-eun in Jung's armor, and Bo-gum burst into the chamber. They saw the impossible: Maru, alive, a horrific, open wound in his chest somehow housing a beating heart.

Onjo didn't hesitate. She fell to her knees, her hands glowing with a frantic, brilliant light, weaving the flesh over the impossible heart.

When Han Maru woke in a sterile hospital bed days later, the first thing he felt was the steady, unfamiliar thump in his chest. The second was a phantom memory—a lion's tear-streaked face. The third was a cold dread.

He tried to speak, to call for a nurse. But the words wouldn't come. They caught in his throat, fracturing into halting, struggling sounds. The neural pathways for speech, damaged in the moment of his death, had been rewired around a foreign heart. The stutter was no longer just a sign of nerves; it was permanent. A scar etched into his very ability to communicate.

He summoned his Status Window. The familiar blue interface was gone, replaced by a screen of crimson static and glitching text. And at the bottom, a truth he could not escape:

[Ň!9hþMøŕs Awakening : Hollow Heart Lion]

He was alive because his lie had failed. His team had come back for him. And the monster that killed him had given him its heart. He had died in that cave, and the voice that tried to form words now was the voice of something that had been stitched back together. What walked out was something else entirely.

In his apartment, Han Maru's body went rigid. A strangled, wet gasp ripped from his throat. His hand shot to his chest, clawing at his shirt, desperate to stop a pain that was only a few months old.

Then, a familiar weight. Gentle, persistent, aiming for its usual spot on his chest.

But Maru's hand was a frantic, protective shield over the trauma. Annoyed by the blocking movement, Oneul let out a soft mrrp of protest, circled once, and was forced to settle heavily onto Maru's stomach instead.

The cat began to purr, a rumbling vibration that cut through the silent screams in Maru's mind.

Maru's flailing hand swatted weakly at the air. Undeterred, Oneul simply kneaded his paws into the softer flesh and purred louder, the steady rhythm a stark contrast to the frantic, alien heartbeat in the chest just above.

Slowly, the purring vibration became the only real thing. The warmth seeped through his shirt. The phantom pains began to recede, replaced by the solid, living weight on his stomach.

The nightmare loosened its grip. Maru's breathing hitched, then evened out. His guarding hand fell limp from his chest onto the blanket.

He was still exhausted and hollow. But he was no longer reliving his death. Oneul, with simple, accidental grace, had anchored him back to the now. The nightmare was over. For tonight.