The first sign came on the news.
A morning broadcast glitched mid-sentence — then changed.
Not to a commercial.
Not to static.
But to him.
Ji-Hyuk.
Face bloodied. Armor scorched. Screaming in a language Earth didn't have.
Fighting on a battlefield made of bones and sky.
The news anchor froze. The camera zoomed in. Every screen in Seoul flickered—
"You are not who you think you are."
And the video ended.
But the damage had already started.
By noon, it was viral.
"Is this a movie?"
"Some underground ARG?"
"That scream—did you hear it?"
They didn't understand what they'd seen.
But Ji-Hyuk did.
Because it wasn't a clip.
It was a memory.
His memory.
Ripped from the Fold.
Spliced together.
And then broadcast across an entire city.
The Fold wasn't trying to erase him.
It was trying to make him common.
To dilute the myth.
Yeonho pulled the footage offline as fast as he could, but not before it had been duplicated, clipped, re-uploaded a thousand times.
"It's everywhere," he said, slamming his laptop shut. "I can't scrub it. It's already burned into the cloud."
Maeryn hovered over the table, glowing faintly.
"They've changed tactics," she said. "No more whispers. No more dreams. They're rewriting reality by exposing yours."
Ji-Hyuk sat in silence.
"They think I'm a weapon," he muttered.
Yeonho glanced at him. "You are."
"No," Ji-Hyuk said. "I'm a virus to them. Too unpredictable. So they're neutralizing me the only way they can."
Maeryn's eyes widened.
"By turning you into background noise."
It worked.
Within hours, a hundred content creators had dissected the clip. Debunked it. Reenacted it. Laughed at it.
People forgot it was real.
That was the Fold's plan all along.
Not fear.Not control.Mockery.
Ji-Hyuk's legacy, turned into meme fodder.
By evening, someone had made a remix.
His battle screams… auto-tuned.
Even Maeryn winced.
"They're poisoning your identity."
"They're turning me into fiction."
Ji-Hyuk walked alone that night.
Past flashing signs.
Past laughing crowds.
Every time he looked at a phone screen, his face was there.
But not him.
Just a performance.
He wasn't a warrior anymore.
He was content.
At 2 a.m., the first collapse happened.
A boy — seventeen, harmless — collapsed in a café, screaming Ji-Hyuk's name.
Not in reverence.
In pain.
The Fold had done more than just share his memories.
They'd embedded emotional residue.
Every replay of the video bled fragments of his psyche into others.
Guilt. Rage. Fear.
By dawn, five more had broken.
By mid-morning, twelve.
Yeonho locked down their base.
"This isn't just exposure," he said. "This is replication. They've cloned pieces of your trauma and laced it with viral Fold data. Everyone watching it is getting infected with you."
Maeryn's voice was flat. "The Fold has made you its payload."
Ji-Hyuk stood still for a long time.
Then said: "Good."
Yeonho looked up. "What?"
Ji-Hyuk's eyes were calm now.
"If they want to flood the world with me — then I'll choose which version they get."
That night, Ji-Hyuk recorded a message.
Not viral.
Not flashy.
Just him. Sitting in shadow. Eyes sharp.
"You've seen things that don't make sense.I'm not here to explain them.I'm here to remind you:Not all dreams are yours.Some are sent to soften you.And some want to take you.If you ever doubt what's real,Feel the pain.Pain is the anchor.And I promise—If you're still hurting,You're still awake."
He uploaded it without tags.
Let it drift.
And within hours… it caught fire.
Not viral like before.
But real.
People began listening.
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