He rested like that for a moment, bent over his desk with his eyes closed. He threaded his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath.

“It’s okay, just stop making it sound like an infomercial,” he said, and then winced.

And stop talking to yourself while you’re at it.

This deadline was going to drive him insane and he knew it. It’s not like he didn’t have a clue that people were waiting on the next chapter of Revenge of the Thousand Year Destruction God—his next new popular webnovel that had been serialized just last year. He had to get the next chapter out in order to get the commission, and without that, he wasn’t going to be able to pay the rent for this month, and he definitely didn’t want the electricity shut off again, but the words just weren’t coming.

He needed to write. It was either that or go back to working at the grocery store, and he would almost rather take the loss of electricity over that whole mess. He was lucky to have had not just one popular novel go viral, but two, so he couldn’t afford to wait.

He set his hands back on the keyboard.

Caelurus—

A knock at the door.

Jae-Seong groaned, whirling around in his chair to glare at the door to his apartment and whoever had the audacity to interrupt him when he was about to get back to writing. He had to do it before the motivation died out. He knew from experience that it would be ten times harder then and the quality twice as bad.

He went to look through the peephole in the door to see who could be bothering him, but there was no one there. Confused, he opened the door, only to have a person nearly topple him.

Jae-Seong cried out in surprise and pushed the person away, who yelped in pain and collapsed in a jumble of limbs. Apparently the man had been resting against the door and had fallen inward when Jae-Seong opened it, but Jae-Seong had no idea why anyone would be here. Jae-Seong didn’t pay much attention to the man, figuring the most logical reason was that the man was drunk and just happened to choose his door specifically to fall asleep on. Of course. That was just typical, wasn’t it.

Jae-Seong nudged the man with his foot. “Hey, go drink somewhere else.”

“Nngh!” the man cried out, curling in on himself and putting a hand to his ribs where Jae-Seong’s foot had touched him.

Jae-Seong put a hand on his forehead. “Hey, I didn’t hit you that hard—”

And that was when he noticed the blood. The bruises. The various other lacerations. The man’s eyes were closed, his face was twisted in pain and he was clearly in enough of it to react to a light poke even when barely conscious.

Idiot. Idiot idiot idiot.

Jae-Seong chided himself for not noticing this earlier. It was so obvious. The blood was everywhere. It covered the poor man, staining his clothes and sticking them to his skin. He was only wearing a tattered pair of grey pants, no shirt or shoes. The numerous wounds littered what Jae-Seong could see of his exposed skin and bruises covered the rest.

He wasn’t drunk—well, maybe he was, and honestly that would be a mercy considering all the injuries—he had collapsed due to blood loss.

The man’s face was gentle and smooth, but smeared with blood and bruises. He had a split lip and a line across the bridge of his nose—likely broken—and not to mention the black eye. Around his neck appeared to be a thick band of scarring, and Jae-Seong saw similar marks around the man’s wrists and ankles as well. His back had the worst of it. It was marred flesh rather than anything else, torn to scraps. Jae-Seong thought he might be sick just looking at it.

He redirected his gaze to the man’s front, away from the vicious remains of his back. Were those burns? he wondered, but there was no way anyone could shape burns into images that precise…right?

Jae-Seong puffed some air out and steeled himself. He bent over and put his hands under the man’s arms and dragged him into the apartment before unceremoniously depositing him on the floor. Panting, he thought about what to do.

Call the police? The hospital? What would they even say about all this?

He shouldn’t have brought this person into the house. Who would get this injured if they weren’t involved in some sort of shady activity? All those wounds were definitely intentional. This man was beaten, severely, and by someone who clearly had a grudge. Maybe he was in the mob. But no, the hair…he looked like a cosplayer with that long white wig on.

First thing, he should probably get the wig off since it got in the way of the injuries. The long strands stuck to the cuts on the man’s back and had to be uncomfortable. Not that being uncomfortable was the biggest thing to worry about right now—there were so many wounds—but Jae-Seong wanted to do just the one thing. He grabbed a handful of white hair and tugged.

The man made an awful screech before spinning around and had Jae-Seong pinned against the floor of his apartment before he could even blink. The danger wasn’t the first thing to register in his mind, but instead those piercing golden eyes that stared back at him. Shining, luminescent gold, that of which not even the sun could rival. The line came to him unbidden, something he had thought of months ago when drafting his character designs.

It was just like Jae-Seong had written in his webnovel.

“I…escaped?” the man said, holding his forearm to Jae-Seong’s throat, his other hand supporting his body, albeit shakily. He gave a cursory glance around the apartment. “It granted my wish? I’m free?”

Jae-Seong blinked at him. “What?”

The golden-eyed man pressed his arm into Jae-Seong’s throat, making Jae-Seong hit the back of his head on the floor.

“I asked you a question, mortal. I am not so weak that you can look down on me!” the man shouted, teeth bared in a snarl.

His eyes shone with a fierce light, unstable and deranged. Jae-Seong’s thoughts caught up with his survival instinct and he finally realized the position he was in, pinned to the floor by a madman.

“I’m not!” Jae-Seong blurted out. “I’m not looking down on you, in fact, you’re looking down on me, ya know, since you’re the one on top—” oh god what was he saying, the man was going to kill him—

The man’s brow furrowed and Jae-Seong couldn’t help but think of how closely he resembled the protagonist from his webnovel. More than resembled, Jae-Seong would say this man was the exact image he had of Caelurus Nox…a man with long white hair and golden eyes and who was tortured for a thousand years. That sort of thing could leave injuries like this.

No, that’s impossible.

“Are you…safe?” the man asked. He’d maintained the same rough edge to his voice, but there was an undercurrent of fear and desperation hidden in there. “I asked it to bring me somewhere safe…”

The System. Jae-Seong thought back to his novel and how he’d written in, as a sort of cosmic cruel joke, that a “System” appeared to Caelurus on the final day of his thousandth year of torture and offered him a single wish as a “reward” for enduring so long. It was a cliché trope, but System novels were popular, a type of deus ex machina that went accepted as long as it was funny. Jae-Seong thought it was a good bit of dark humor for the System to offer a “reward” to Caelurus after a thousand years of torture. What cold comfort that was—but it served as a way for him to advance the plot with Caelurus wishing to escape and become stronger so he could take his revenge on all who betrayed him.

Jae-Seong didn’t see it as funny or convenient now.

“You’re safe,” Jae-Seong whispered.

He didn’t know why he had worried. The golden-eyed man was severely injured, so even if he did have Jae-Seong pinned, he could have easily toppled the man over with a single hit. It didn’t even take that much. Just those two little words and the man had released him, his arms going shaky. He bent double on the floor, putting his hands to his face, trembling all the while. A sob escaped him.

It was pitiful, really.

Jae-Seong sat up and rubbed his throat as he watched the man shiver and break. He was crying now, his breath hitching with every passing moment, and Jae-Seong didn’t know what he was even supposed to do in this situation. Did he still call the hospital?

That certainly wouldn’t work if this person was who Jae-Seong suspected he was.

“Hey, you, what’s your name?” he asked.

He didn’t expect to get a response from the man currently mid-breakdown, but he turned his head to look at Jae-Seong and meet his eyes. The man’s own were red and wet, making the golden hue stand out that much more.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of the god of destruction? My name is Caelurus Nox.”