The mountain drew breath three times.
With its first breath, the beasts beneath the earth fled.
With its second breath, the water in the wells boiled up.
With its third breath, the sky split apart.
Late autumn, 946 CE.
Dallae looked north from the mountain ridge.
In the darkness, Baekdu Mountain glowed red. The white snow that had covered the summit was already gone. In its place, a dark-red pillar of fire shot into the sky.
A moment later, the world cried out.
Krrr-boom—!
It wasn't thunder.
It wasn't a sound falling from the sky, but one surging up from beneath the earth. The ground shook up and down, as if a massive drum were being beaten beneath the mountain.
“Run!”
At Dallae's cry, the people ran down the slope.
There were forty-three of them, including the elderly and children. They were the displaced southerners who had lost their homeland long ago and come south. No country had accepted them as its own people.
They had no village to return to and no soldiers to protect them.
Dallae untied the rope around her waist and threw it to the elderly man at the back of the line.
“Tie it around your waist! Keep linking yourselves to the person in front!”
“What are you going to do?”
“I'll follow from behind.”
It was a lie.
Dallae looked up at the sky.
A red cloud was rolling down the mountainside. It was too fast and too heavy to be called a cloud. It was a massive wall of fire, rock, and ash.
If that reached them, no one would survive.
All forty-three of them knew it.
The children's cries grew louder. The adults carried the children on their backs, and the elderly supported one another. But the fire cloud was descending much faster than they could run.
Dallae gritted her teeth.
*We need a way through.*
A narrow ravine lay ahead. If they entered it, there would be nowhere to escape. But if they followed the ridge, the fire cloud would sweep them away.
That was when it happened.
Thud.
Dallae's heart pounded.
Thud.
This time, something beneath the earth answered.
Thud.
A sight Dallae had never seen before unfolded before her eyes.
The mountain and the fire cloud vanished. In their place, she saw a man sleeping inside a transparent wall. His body was far larger than a human's. Covered in wounds, the man was surrounded by thousands of strands of light.
Light streamed from the man's chest.
Twelve beams of light.
One of them entered Dallae's heart.
—Do you want to protect them?
The voice reached her not through her ears, but inside her head.
Dallae swallowed.
*Who are you?*
—You don't need to know.
*Are we your people, too?*
The sleeping being did not answer.
Dallae let out a dry laugh.
So even gods refused to answer people without power.
The fire cloud drew closer. Hot wind struck her back. Ash rained down over the people's hair and clothes.
—Protect one, lose one.
The voice spoke again.
—Even so, will you protect them?
Dallae looked at the people running ahead.
Not one of them was related to her by blood. They weren't even of the same tribe. Some she had met on the road only days ago. There were even some whose names she didn't know.
That was why the answer was easy.
“If I had time to worry about that, I would've run away already.”
Dallae stopped running.
Then she turned to face the fire cloud.
“Keep going!”
One of the children running ahead turned around.
“Noona!”
“Don't look back!”
Dallae spread both arms wide.
A faint light appeared beneath her feet. It traced a circle around the entrance to the ravine. Instinctively, Dallae knew what she had to do.
Choose the people she had to protect, then stand between them and danger.
That was all the power she had been given.
“This is the gate.”
Dallae spoke the words.
A transparent barrier rose from empty space.
“As long as I stand here, no one will cross this gate.”
The fire cloud crashed down.
BOOOOM—!
The world turned red.
Rock melted, and trees were ripped out by their roots. Every time scorching boulders hammered the barrier, Dallae's flesh split open.
Her bones broke.
Blood filled her mouth.
And yet Dallae did not fall.
As long as the people inside the barrier were alive, she could not collapse.
Every time she was shoved back a step, she saw someone's face.
A mother holding her child.
An old man dragging one lame leg.
A brother and sister who had lost their parents.
People who had no connection to her at all.
That was why she had to protect them.
How much time had passed?
The red world slowly cooled into black.
Nothing remained where the fire cloud had passed. The mountain, the forest, and the road were all gone. Only the narrow space Dallae had protected remained, an island amid the black ash.
Dallae lowered her arms.
The transparent barrier shattered, scattering motes of light.
“We survived….”
Someone whispered the words.
The people embraced one another. They cried and laughed, confirming that they were alive.
Dallae tried to smile, too.
But the child who had called her noona approached her with a strange expression.
“Are you all right?”
Dallae moved her bloodstained lips.
“I'm fine. You aren't hurt, are you?”
The child tilted his head.
“But… who are you?”
Dallae's smile froze.
It wasn't just the child.
Everyone was looking at her as if she were a stranger.
“Did she come with us?”
“I don't know.”
“I've never seen her before.”
“Was she here the whole time?”
Dallae looked down at her hands.
Light was leaking from the backs of them. Every time the light vanished, the people forgot the time they had spent with her.
The roads they had walked together.
The food they had shared.
The moment she had protected them from the fire cloud.
Protect one, lose one.
Only now did she understand what the sleeping being's words meant.
What Dallae had to pay was not her life.
It was her name.
“That woman's name is Dallae.”
A low, steady voice rang out.
An old woman with white hair walked out from among the people. She wore a bear hide over her shoulders. The people called her Old Mora.
Mora took Dallae's hand.
“I remember you.”
Dallae's eyes trembled.
“How…?”
“We were never given power. Instead, we were entrusted with remembering those who used it.”
Mora pulled a black shard of stone from her robes.
It was far too smooth to be called a stone. Though the night held not a single light, a faint silver glow flowed across its surface.
Mora used a small knife to carve letters into the stone.
Dallae.
But the moment she drew the final stroke, the letters vanished.
Mora carved them again.
The second inscription vanished, too.
“Even the stone is forgetting you.”
Dallae gave a weak smile.
“Then it's all right.”
“What do you mean, it's all right?”
“People survived.”
Dallae looked at the black road stretching south.
“A name wasn't what saved them.”
Mora did not answer.
After a moment, she pressed the stone shard against her chest. Its sharp edge cut into her flesh. Mora's blood spread across the stone.
“If the stone forgets, people will remember. If people forget, blood will remember.”
Mora looked straight at Dallae.
“Until the drum of Heaven sounds again, we will protect your name.”
From that day on, Mora was the only person who remembered Dallae.
History recorded only the eruption of Baekdu Mountain.
The roar that tore through the sky and the white ash that flew for miles.
The name of the woman who saved the forty-three refugees was written in no record.
Only one short sentence was passed down through a family that worshiped bears.
When the drum of Heaven sounds, the gate opens for thirty years.
The twelve powers awaken, and the Thirteenth Seat remembers the name.
And more than a thousand years passed.
November 3, 2030, 3:17 a.m.
Yoon Seo-ha set down the coffee in her hand as she watched the waveform appear on the monitor.
“It started again.”
Baekdu Mountain International Joint Observatory, South Analysis Center.
The screens covering the walls displayed live data from seismographs and satellite observations around Heaven Lake.
A red waveform repeated at regular intervals.
Thud.
Twelve seconds.
Thud.
Another twelve seconds.
It was far too regular to be a natural earthquake. But the hypocenter was too deep for it to be an artificial blast.
4.7 kilometers beneath the surface of Heaven Lake.
Between the magma chamber and the bedrock layer.
“Dr. Yoon, you're still here?”
Park Do-yoon, a researcher finishing his overnight shift, approached her.
Yoon Seo-ha did not take her eyes off the screen.
“Have you seen this waveform?”
“That heartbeat again?”
“The hypocenter has risen three hundred meters.”
The smile disappeared from Do-yoon's face.
“In one day?”
“Six hours, to be exact.”
He hurriedly checked the monitor beside them.
The underground temperature, volcanic gases, and rate of surface inflation had not reached dangerous levels. If not for the seismic waves, they would have judged Baekdu Mountain to be calm.
Do-yoon scratched his head.
“Could it be equipment failure?”
“Twelve monitoring stations around Heaven Lake picked up the same waveform.”
“All twelve?”
“Yes.”
Yoon Seo-ha enlarged the waveform on one side of the screen.
The earthquake always repeated twelve times.
Twelve short vibrations appeared, then stopped for exactly thirty-six minutes. After that, the first vibration began again.
Twelve knocks.
One long silence.
Yoon Seo-ha opened her desk drawer.
Inside lay a palm-sized shard of black stone. Her family, the Yoons, claimed it had been passed down for more than a thousand years.
Her grandmother had never called it a stone.
*“A fragment of memory.”*
Young Seo-ha had not believed her.
She had thought the stories her grandmother told her about the nameless heroes and the gate that opened for thirty years were simply an old family superstition.
That was why she had become a geologist.
Not to believe in myths, but to prove they were wrong.
And yet—946 CE.
1668.
1702.
1903.
Following each recorded eruption of Baekdu Mountain, inexplicable legends had clustered in the roughly thirty years that followed.
An unnamed general who stood against the flames.
A woman on horseback who opened hundreds of miles of road overnight.
A fat man who filled the empty granaries of a starving village.
A shaman who saved every patient in a plague-stricken town, then vanished without a trace.
And at the end of every story, a similar sentence remained.
No one remembered his name.
“Dr. Yoon.”
Do-yoon's voice pulled Yoon Seo-ha back to reality.
“One more waveform just appeared.”
“What?”
Yoon Seo-ha looked at the screen.
After twelve short vibrations repeated, a thirteenth waveform—one that had never appeared before—was emerging.
The vibration was much larger and longer than the first twelve.
At the same time, the black shard of stone on the desk began to tremble.
Bzzzz—
The lights inside the center went out.
Emergency lights flashed red.
“Check the power!”
“The backup power isn't responding either!”
“Satellite communications are down!”
“Heaven Lake's water temperature is rising!”
The researchers' voices tangled together.
Yoon Seo-ha picked up the black shard. Its surface, which should have been cold, was warm like living skin.
Then light burst from the shard.
The light formed unfamiliar characters in the air.
They were definitely letters she had never seen before.
And yet Yoon Seo-ha could read their meaning.
Hwanin authorization signal: none.
Hwanung life signs: confirmed.
Hwanhee connection signal: lost.
Dangun governing system: terminated.
Twelve Seats: emergency access open.
A final sentence appeared.
Thirteenth Seat connection in progress.
“Dr. Yoon, look at Heaven Lake!”
Live footage of Heaven Lake appeared on the main screen.
The entire lake was boiling in the middle of the night.
The center of the surface slowly rose. The water split apart on both sides, as if something enormous were pushing up from beneath the lake.
A black structure emerged.
It was older than the mountain and smoother than any metal made by humans.
An unidentified object… It looked like a spaceship.
Light shot from the black shard and wrapped around Yoon Seo-ha's wrist.
“Wait… not me.”
Yoon Seo-ha instinctively tried to let go.
But the stone would not come loose, as if it were stuck to her palm.
Thirteenth Seat connection complete.
Releasing Hwanung from hibernation.
“No!”
Yoon Seo-ha shouted.
It was too late.
A massive heart beat beneath Baekdu Mountain.
BOOM—!
Seismographs across the Korean Peninsula turned red at the same time.
In the underground subway tunnels of Seoul.
Aboard a container ship in Busan Port.
At an emergency medical center on Jeju Island.
At a guard post near the Demilitarized Zone.
Twelve people who did not even know one another existed clutched their chests at the same moment.
Beneath Heaven Lake, cracks spread across the transparent tube that had been sealed shut for thousands of years.
The fingers of the sleeping man moved.
His eyes slowly opened.
Yoon Seo-ha's figure was reflected in his golden irises.
Then a voice rang out.
It was the exact same voice Dallae had heard a thousand years ago.
—Why has one who is not Hwanhee opened the thirteenth gate?
Yoon Seo-ha could not answer.
The man's second question shook all of Baekdu Mountain.
—Who is the Dangun ruling Joseon now?