Chapter Text
Yoo Joonghyuk watched as Kim Dokja dissolved like mist burned away by cruel light.
The weight in his arms vanished; solid in one breath, gone the next.Only a smear of red remained, slick and warm on his palms. A stain no water would ever lift.
Kim Dokja had just been here. Smiling at him like there was no tomorrow.
He was here.
Where did he go?
Where.
Where.
Where.
Where-
Clang.
The sound of his sword hitting the ground snapped him out of the reverie.The blade was wet.
Oh.
He’s gone.
But he said-
Kim Dokja lies.
He wouldn’t!
He would.
He would do that to him.
“Let’s meet again, Yoo Joonghyuk.”
The words echo, louder now in the silence than they ever were aloud.
He stares at the spot where Kim Dokja disappeared. The air hasn't settled. The world hasn't caught up. As if it, too, refuses to believe.
The blood seeps into his clothes.His skin. His soul.
He’s been through regressions-lifetimes.He’s seen death-given it and escaped it. But this - This is different. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
He clenches his fists.
Something wet drips into the ground. Blood, maybe. Or tears. He doesn’t care.
“You said you’d stay.”
No one answers.The silence is unbearable.
“Coward,” he breathes.
His voice shakes. He hates that it does. He looks at the broken sword beside him. All that’s left.
But what if?
What if he knows how to come back?What if he’s alright-somewhere else, in some other place?
He must be.
He has to be.
Otherwise,he wouldn’t have said those words.
He wouldn’t have looked at Yoo Joonghyuk like that.
He wouldn’t have given him hope-
He would.
Kim Dokja lies.
He’s a bastard.
A bastard who dies and gives them no time to mourn. Who plants hope like a curse - this black, rotting seed lodged beneath Yoo Joonghyuk’s ribs, growing, curling, tightening, choking him a little more with every breath, every second he’s still alive.
Yoo Joonghyuk can’t breathe. He's drowning-with no surface, no shore, no end in sight.
He is gone.
Yoo Joonghyuk killed him.
He killed him.
Kim Dokja asked, and Yoo Joonghyuk, like a fool, obeyed.
From the moment that man with starry eyes barged into his life, Yoo Joonghyuk knew he would never be able to deny him anything. Not even his own end.
“Kim Dokja will die at the hands of the one he loves the most.”
The one he loves the most.
Yoo Joonghyuk stared at the sword laying beside him. He picked it up and gripped it tightly, as the blade cut into his palm. Blood poured mercilessly. He didn’t feel it.
How could he feel anything, when the sound of Kim Dokja’s flesh tearing still echoed in his ears louder than his own heartbeat? His hand still remembered the shape of the blade, the warmth of skin it pierced. It had been his grip, his decision and yet it didn’t feel like him at all.
His veins had frozen in that moment; not from fear, but from the way Kim Dokja had looked at him. It was not with anger. Not with surprise either. Just... trust. Trust, even as blood bloomed like a promise breaking between them.
He looked up at him, eyes full of stars, full of something terrifying and tender,as if Yoo Joonghyuk was the only thing that mattered.
As if he always would be.
Yoo Joonghyuk inched closer and closer; with only the scabbard remaining between their trembling, breaking bodies, as Kim Dokja leaned in, pressing his forehead gently to his.
“It was a great story, wasn’t it?”
And now, behind his eyes, the memory burned, like a festering wound, like a name he couldn’t speak without falling apart. It lived inside him, quiet and searing. How could he feel anything else, when the person he could never let go of was the one he had to destroy with his own hands?
No.
Kim Dokja cannot love him.
He can’t.
Because if he did-
if he does-
“Yoo Joonghyuk killed the person who loves him the most.”
“Yoo Joonghyuk killed the person he lo-”
Forward. Move forward, Yoo Joonghyuk. Before the words finish.Before the truth sets in.
[Calculating Scenario rewards-]
[The Constellation without a name has been granted one.]
[The Constellation without a name shall now be known as: The Demon King of Salvation.]
The Demon King of Salvation.
The name lingered in the air. Why did it taste so familiar?
That moniker-
No, not just a name, but something else. Etched not in memory, but into the very marrow of his being. As if it had once pulsed through his veins in another life. Known to his tongue, yet foreign to his conscious thought.
Yoo Joonghyuk is forgetting something. Something vital. What is it? What is he missing?
An overwhelming compulsion welled up inside him - he had to speak the name. Carefully, almost reverently, he shaped the words with his mouth.
Then, without meaning to, he looked up.
No reply from the heavens. No radiant star blinking back.
Where…
Who…?
A sudden stab of pain bloomed behind his eyes. Yoo Joonghyuk collapsed to his knees, a gasp tearing from his throat as the world around him warped. Voices-distant and panicked - called out his name.
But his mind was spiraling and unraveling; making room for something vast and ancient. Memories surged forth: Not of the 3rd, or the 1st,
But of the 0th turn's.
The beginning of everything.
Yoo Joonghyuk-a simple pro-gamer, still green behind the ears - unknowingly marching toward an apocalypse. No weapon,no knowledge of the future, only his stubborn will to survive and his unyielding spirit to fight.
Yet this was his most successful turn.
He cleared every scenario. Gathered a loyal band of companions. Led them all safely to the shore. Got married. Settled down. Lived long enough to grow grey and old.
How?
If all that truly happened, then why was he still trapped in this hell? Why was he still here?
Three questions. One answer.
The Demon King of Salvation.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest heaved. His eyes trembled as the truth settled over him.
[Constellation Demon King of Salvation is laughing at incarnation Yoo Joonghyuk.]
[Constellation Demon King of Salvation is worried for incarnation Yoo Joonghyuk.]
[Constellation Demon King of Salvation is lending probability to incarnation Yoo Joonghyuk.]
[Constellation Demon King of Salvation is-]
[Constellation Demon King of Salvation says: I’m right here.]
He is.
He always has been.
His constant.
His ....star.
[1864.]
[Constellation Demon King of Salvation says: That is the number of lives you must live before you reach the end.]
He had said it before - every truth, every sorrow laid bare at his feet.
Yoo Joonghyuk had long loathed his sponser for their silence and their stillness; for watching without reaching.
But now he sees; it was never apathy. No, it was helplessness.
And now...
There’s no one left to apologize to. No voice to catch him when he falls. No presence to keep him grounded.
[Constellation Demon King of Salvation asks: Are you not happy, now?]
“…I am happy.”
(A life lived to its fullest.)
His voice cracked, threaded with longing and a grief he couldn't name.
“Tell me, you fool… If I keep regressing…will I ever get to meet you again?”
["You dumb bastard."]
1,864 lives.
He has lived 1,864 lives to find his star and the truth of this world.
And he never knew.
He had been there - right there beside him. Shoulder to shoulder, just beyond reach.
And he lost him.
He killed him.
By his own hand, with his own blade.
How does a man bear the sin of killing his god?
How does a man go on,when the purpose of his suffering was lost to his own violence?
There is no answer.
He is gone.
Yoo Joonghyuk crumbled. He doesn't remember the bewildered and concerned stares he got from his companions. He doesn't remember how they forcefully took away the blade he placed upon himself. He doesn't remember how they dragged his catatonic body out of the demon castle into safety. He doesn't remember and he doesn't care.
He knows now.
There is no Kim Dokja in the other regressions. No second chance and no path to redemption. He has to live a life in the shadow of a single, unbearable truth.
He killed his star.
He walks the streets of a ruined Seoul, like a ghost in his own skin.
Nothing matters anymore.
.
.
.
Until it does.
[Your notoriety is spreading in the Demon Realm.]
Yoo Joonghyuk sank to his knees, breath catching in his throat as the message appeared before him. A single line of text and it shattered him. For the first time in lifetimes, he wept. Not out of sorrow's, but out of relief. Relief so pure and so staggering.
So this is what it feels like, he thought. Tears that don’t burn with loss, but soothe like rain.
He didn’t hesitate.
To the Demon Realm,then.To him.
.................
"Don't touch my incarnation, Asmodeus."
Yoo Joonghyuk preened.
.................
He had never run this fast before.
After ensuring that he won't regress at Asmodeus's hands, he launched himself from Gilobat Complex to Syswitz Complex, pushing his body to its limit with Red Phoenix Shunpo. Every step was fueled by desperation, every breath a prayer. He was close. So close.
When a woman opened the door, startled by his sudden appearance, he didn’t wait.
“Kim Dokja. Where is he?”
She blinked in confusion before realization settled in her eyes. “Ah… so that’s his real name,” she murmured to herself.
“Where is he?” he asked again, this time lower, more urgent.
“He’s… recuperating. Wait, who are you-?”
She didn’t finish her sentence. He was already moving.
Yoo Joonghyuk tore through the complex, ignoring every voice, every hand trying to stop him. Door after door, hallway after hallway, until finally, one opened and the world fell quiet.
There he was.
Kim Dokja lay unconscious, pale and still. A thin cannula connected to the Story Bag pulsed faintly with light, feeding him the essence of survival. He looked untouched by the chaos, as if merely sleeping through a storm.
Joonghyuk approached slowly, reverently. His hands trembled as he reached out and cupped Dokja’s face, thumb brushing gently across his cheek. He was real. He was here.
'Wake up', he thought. 'Look at me'.
Kim Dokja didn't move.
So, Yoo Joonghyuk lowered himself, resting his head against Dokja’s chest.
There it was - the heartbeat. It was steady. And warm.
Real.
Each beat stitched something shut in Joonghyuk’s soul. Each swell a balm to years of yearning.
He stayed there for hours, ears pressed to his star’s chest, tuning his own fractured heart to the rhythm of Kim Dokja’s.