~Prologue~

Please God, or whatever deity out there… Please hear me and grant my wish...

A lanky man kneels before a shrine, his head bowed and hands clasped in prayer, his curly dark red hair flaming in the blaze of the setting sun.

Chanyeol has his eyes shut tightly as he prays fiercely.

If you grant my request, he thinks to any higher power, I’ll do anything you ask of me. But not something not too problematic…

Still nothing happens.

He shakes his head. No, no. Not like that. He tries a different approach. Please, he begs in his mind. Anything in my power, I will do… like…like…

Like convince a recluse to rejoin the outside world?

Yes, Chanyeol is already agreeing, anything. Then he notices belatedly that the answering voice had been foreign and not of his own thoughts.

But it’s too late.

“Heinrich…”

Chanyeol jumps. No one had called his real name in ages…

The stagnant air of the church is suddenly alive with a humming power as if shocked with lightening that the red-haired man had only heard of in myth. Stumbling up, Chanyeol’s eyes widen as a towering shape forms above him.

The God descends in his chosen form—a tall, broad-shouldered man with sharp features and shining golden hair.

But it is his eyes that make Chanyeol tremble and his knees gave out from beneath him. It is as if someone had carved out two holes from the clear blue sky and set them on this man’s face. They are so clear and far-seeing that it gives the nauseating feeling that this being sees everything and yet nothing at all.

This is a being that isn’t looking anywhere…

“That is a promise then, Chanyeol,” the unearthly being says, voice like rumbling thunder, crackling with restrained power. “I will make your wish come true. However…”

The blonde says something afterwards, but Chanyeol doesn’t hear it because, as the infinitely older one leans down to speak, his hand cups Chanyeol’s face. Their lips meet and worlds collide.

Chanyeol loses his grip on reality and falls into darkness…