---
The moon hung still.
Blue-violet swords hovered around him like specters, humming with silent menace.
Their edges shimmered faintly—an unnatural light, neither flame nor moonlight, but something colder.
Blossom petals, the color of crushed blueberries, drifted on a windless field of corpses.
Blood pooled beneath him.
Still warm.
Still weeping from torn necks and split ribs.
In the center of it all he stood in white robes, stained dark near the hem.
A single black blade hung from his hand, its tip dripping red.
Nameless, breathless, detached.
That scene had taken nearly four hours to render.
"..."
[Jihwa District, Seoul | SilverLine Entertainment HQ (AAA Game Company]
"You've been staring at that model for twenty minutes, Seo Joon."
Lee Minjae stepped in, holding two canned coffees.
One was offered wordlessly.
"Thanks."
Seo Joon said, eyes not leaving the screen.
The character model rotated slowly in wireframe—long black hair, blue eyes, white robes stained faintly gold at the cuffs.
A ledger was tucked into the belt beside a white blade sheath.
Minjae took the seat next to him and sipped his coffee.
"Still working on the registry guy?"
"'Chief Overseer of Internal Affairs.'"
"A mouthful."
"I know."
"…And you're placing him in the demonic faction?"
Seo Joon didn't answer.
He opened a settings window and adjusted lighting filters around the model—bluer hue, dimmer atmosphere.
A soft glow accentuated the character's outline.
Minjae leaned forward, studying it carefully.
"It's clean work.
But it's… unexpected.
The demonic faction doesn't exactly strike me as a place with rules and paperwork."
"That's the point..."
Seo Joon replied.
"You can't call something 'unruly' unless there was once structure.
Even chaos has a logic."
Minjae smiled faintly.
"You always talk like a novelist when you're tired."
"Do I?"
"Yes," he said flatly.
"But—honestly—it's a strong design.
Quietly threatening. You've given him weight."
Seo Joon nodded once, dragging the skill tree window into view.
Each skill node flickered with a blood-red glyph:
[Investigation: Sect-Level Violations]
[Autopsy under Qi Distortion]
[Memory Seal Permissions: Tier III]
"Still, not gonna lie, the scene is gorgeous.
That opening sequence you rendered—the guy in white with the swords? Cold."
Seo Joon nodded quietly.
"This is him in the first image you see. The Moonless Blossom."
"It's detailed. Too detailed..."
Minjae said, raising an eyebrow.
"No one even plays the bureaucracy p characters.
Everyone picks dual sword Martial Artists with tragic pasts."
"We're not making a fantasy simulator..."
Seo Joon murmured.
"This is supposed to be a horror game.
And horror needs systems that break."
Minjae leaned back and crossed his arms.
"You really think this Murim-horror hybrid will land?"
"…I hope so."
Seo Joon said after a pause.
"No one's done it properly.
Murim games are always romance-adventure or wuxia power fantasies.
We're doing something different.
That's either a death sentence or something that finally sticks."
They sat in silence for a while.
Only the quiet hum of the servers in the background.
"Anyway..."
Minjae stood.
"It's nearly 10.
Gyuri and the others are heading out for drinks.
You should come.
It's Friday. Might be our last weekend before marketing starts breathing down our necks."
"I'll stay..."
Seo Joon said, eyes back on the screen.
"I need to clean up the mechanic tags and finalize the AI pathing for forbidden zones."
Minjae made a small noise of disapproval.
"You've been here since morning."
"So have you."
"Yes, but I'm smart enough to leave."
Minjae replied.
"I've got patch work to clean up."
Seo Joon muttered.
"Still need to balance the qi-hunger mechanic and clean the log database.
Also haven't finished his third route."
"Third route?"
Minjae blinked.
"You gave the civil servant routes?"
Seo Joon smiled faintly.
"He doesn't live. Only dies differently. That's the fun of it."
"…You know what? You're scary."
Minjae said, backing toward the door.
"Try not to die from dehydration before Monday, yeah?"
Seo Joon nodded slightly.
Minjae lingered a moment, as if wanting to say more, then turned and left.
The lights in the office dimmed to a low blue as night mode kicked in.
---
Hours passed.
"Auto-degrade mental stability after cannibal incident flag trigger: TRUE."
"Special title unlock: 'Internal Affairs Ghost'."
Lines of code.
Parameter adjustments.
Light recalibrations.
Seo Joon worked quietly, muttering thoughts aloud.
"Penalty for unauthorized qi harvesting… 15% drop in morale… if karma falls below 30, unlock Memory Leak event…"
Then it happened.
A soft whine from his monitor.
Then flicker.
Then—pure white.
"…What the—?"
He tapped the side. No response.
He moved the mouse. The cursor had vanished.
He sighed.
"Not tonight..."
Seo Joon stood and bent over the desk to check the cables behind the monitor.
Nothing looked out of place.
No sparks, no flickering power strips.
He crouched, reaching beneath the desk—
—and then hissed.
A sharp, stinging pain shot up from his thumb.
He pulled his hand back.
Blood.
A thin slice, almost surgical.
"…Glass?"
He looked under the desk again.
Something shimmered.
A small sliver—black, edged like obsidian—was embedded in the side of the power unit casing.
His computer fan whirred loudly, suddenly out of sync. Almost like a struggling breath.
He reached for the power switch—
—and froze.
The monitor wasn't white anymore.
It was glowing—pulsing with light like a heartbeat.
A faint symbol appeared in the center.
Not code.
Just a single, circular glyph.
Foreign. Familiar.
The fans screamed.
Smoke burst from under the desk.
Sparks. Then—
Click.
Everything went black.
Then came a sound—wet, deep, wrong.
From inside his ears.
Seo Joon staggered backward, hand to his face.
Blood began dripping from his nose.
No. From his eyes.
The floor tilted.
No—it was him.
He reached for the desk to steady himself.
Something beneath the skin was crawling.
His vision stuttered—jittering frames of light and shadow, now faintly filled with text he couldn't read.
And then came the heat—internal, suffocating.
Like his bones were burning first.
He collapsed.
Body convulsing once. Twice.
He saw the monitor's reflection on the floor.
Still pulsing.
Like a countdown.
And then—
Silence.
---
"Registry Entry 0A: External Designation Reached. Transfer Initialized."
The office lights flickered once.
Then everything shut down.
And Seo Joon was gone.
***
---
The wind swept gently across the ridges of the Southern Fang Mountains, stirring the red paper lanterns that hung like faded spirits along the outer walls of the pavilion.
It was built into the cliffside.
Five stories of lacquered blackwood and green-tiled roofs, rising like a crooked fang above the valley fog.
Rusted bells swayed at the corners, and faded talismans clung to the wind-beaten railings.
Inside, the scent was ancient: ink, old wood, dried blood, and powdered cinnabar.
Scrolls lined the walls in towering cases, stacked in obsessive order.
Books of forgotten sects and forbidden treatises were bound with red thread and black wax.
At the heart of the room stood a wide darkwood desk.
On it, a half-burnt incense stick still smoldered, beside a rusted knife used for blood-signatures.
Several thin brushes were scattered near open files, and a pot of black ink sat cracked at the edge.
Among them, dozens of coins lay loosely—square-holed, tarnished gold discs.
A man sat behind the desk.
He wore white robes, crisp but faded at the hems, their threadwork depicting faint plum blossoms blooming in winter.
His black hair was tied up neatly with a jade pin.
The kind reserved for mid-tier officials who had outlived three superiors.
His expression was unreadable—too young for his seat, too quiet for the stories behind his title.
His eyes were a clear, icy blue.
---
I sat still, listening.
The office was cold.
They stood before me—four petitioners, all different, all wearing the same expression.
Grief barely restrained behind clenched teeth and trembling fists.
I could tell none had eaten in days.
One smelled of grave soil.
Another still had dried blood on his sleeves.
"Moonless Blossom..."
One muttered, voice brittle.
"It's the pill. Fast power. But after forty-five days, they eat their own.
My daughter... chewed her brother's throat...Smiling."
Another stepped forward, bowing deeply before speaking.
"Night Commissioner—they fed my brother to pigs, then blamed the livestock.
Please... investigate it before they butcher the rest of us too."
A third man, older, voice hollow.
"Scribe of Irregular Verdicts—my wife was declared dead yesterday.
But she came home whispering the names of our children. In reverse."
The last petitioner was a woman with a broken kneecap, still standing.
"Internal Affairs Ghost... there's a village that pays tribute with bones.
And somehow, it's all been cleared by the Heavenly Registry."
They all spoke at once.
They all reeked of blood and desperation.
I didn't say much.
I stamped their petitions.
And that's how my life as a Civil Servant of the Demonic Faction began.
---