“How did you even know who I was?” Kisa demands, and Seokga cannot tell the raindrops apart from the tears coursing down her face. “Where to find me?”

Jang sighs and glances at Seokga. Her expression is almost…pitying. Something plummets in Seokga’s stomach. Something breaks within him, irreversible in its damage. “Seokga called me,” she says.

Kisa lurches back as if she’s been struck, her shock and pain flaring down the bond, hurtling like bullets into his chest. Seokga struggles to remain standing, even as every part of him longs to sink to his knees and atone. The final betrayal slices him down to the core in one of the most exquisite, terrible agonies the immortal god has ever known. It had been Jang that he’d dialed with shaking hands as he raced through New Sinsi, following the red thread to Kisa—who’d still been alive, at that point, still living and breathing in the world above. Seoul, he’d gasped out to the therapist. I think—it’s leading me to Seoul.

“When I first started treating him, Seokga told me that Hani’s reincarnation would have distinctly unique eyes. That always came up, almost every single session, for thirty-three years. Wine-brown eyes, this. Wine-brown eyes, that. He’d go on and on about them, sometimes for forty-five minutes at a time, describing the color down to each individual hue. So when he called me on the day that the Red Thread of Fate appeared…”

“Kisa,” Seokga rasps. “Kisa—”

She shakes her head, a tear spilling down her cheek as she holds his gaze.

—it’s not—your fault—didn’t—know—how could—you—know?—