CHAPTER 5: What Raen ForgotRaen never remembered the fire.
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But the nightmares came anyway—always smoke in his lungs, someone screaming his name, the searing heat on his back as he ran.
The fire report said his parents died instantly.
The medical report said he survived with minor burns.
But what none of the reports could explain was why he remembered someone pulling him out—someone with no face.
He’d buried it. Until now.
Raen sat on the edge of his bed, the photo of him and Elara clutched in his hands. They were smiling. But he didn’t remember it. And the man in the background—the same one he thought he’d hallucinated as a child—was becoming real again.
He had to know the truth.
He reached for the envelope he never opened. Found in the ruins of his childhood home. Labeled: RAEN – OPEN ONLY WHEN YOU REMEMBER.
Inside was a single note.
“If you're reading this, it means he’s returned. The one who trades time for memory. Protect her. She’s the key to stopping him—and maybe saving yourself.”
—J.S.
J.S.
His mother’s initials.
Elara’s Hidden Past: The Origin of the Scar
Elara was seventeen when it happened.
She’d been volunteering at a clinic outside Seoul, helping catalog anonymous patients and unclaimed corpses. That night, the power went out. The generator failed. And the last thing she remembered was someone whispering numbers into her ear.
When she woke, she was in a hospital bed. Her neck bandaged. No signs of trauma—except for the scar etched like a brand into her skin.
A clean, curved number 7.
Authorities said she had fallen and hit her head.
But she remembered the voice. The pressure. The feeling of being chosen.
She spent years trying to forget. Became a doctor. Learned to cut into bodies hoping to understand death—and stop fearing it.
But she couldn’t stop dreaming of the faceless man.
- Writer
