chapter 5

A cold knot of fear tightened in Seo Jun's stomach, but it was eclipsed by a fierce, undeniable curiosity. The ring on his finger pulsed with a life of its own, an insistent hum that seemed to mock his carefully constructed logic. He had lived his life by the numbers, by forecasts and calculations. But here, in this echoing darkness, the only equation that mattered was the one Kaito had laid bare: the ring, the observatory, and the promise of a truth so profound it had been buried for centuries.

He took a step forward, the sound of his footsteps swallowed by the room's silence. He knelt, his gaze locked on the circular indentation in the grimy baseplate. Kaito watched him, a stillness in his posture that radiated an absolute certainty. With a steady hand, Seo Jun slid the jade ring from his finger. The warmth lingered for a moment, then seemed to concentrate entirely in the small stone. He placed it precisely in the indentation.

A low, resonant hum reverberated through the floorboards. It was not a mechanical sound, but a deep, harmonic thrum that felt like a frequency had shifted. The patterns on the baseplate began to glow with a faint, silvery light, tracing the outlines of a celestial map. The gears of the great telescope above them groaned to life, turning with the slow, deliberate grace of a waking giant. Dust motes swirled in the beam of light from the high window as the dome of the observatory began to split and roll back, revealing the vast, star-strewn canvas of the Seoul night sky.

Seo Jun looked up, speechless, as a single, powerful beam of light erupted from the telescope. It wasn't the kind of light that illuminated, but one that projected. It struck the inside of the domed ceiling, which had now become a perfect screen, and from it bloomed an intricate, living star chart. Not of the present sky, but of constellations in an impossible configuration. Lines connected stars that were a thousand light-years apart, forming geometric patterns and symbols that had no place in any known astronomical chart.

Kaito stepped to Seo Jun's side, his eyes shining with a mixture of awe and vindication. "This isn't just a map," he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. "It's a celestial ledger. The Guardians didn't just hide a secret; they charted its location among the stars. Every star, every line, is a piece of a puzzle. A puzzle left for us to solve."

The projection shifted, focusing on a single, brilliant cluster of stars. A series of ancient symbols, vaguely resembling Korean and Japanese script, scrolled beneath it.

"This is the first step," Kaito said, a new intensity in his voice. "The ring is the key. The observatory is the lock. And what it has shown us... is the path to the beginning. The location of the first gate." He pointed to a symbol on the projection. "There's a reason my family was born and raised here, Seo Jun. The Echoes always return to the origin."

The projection began to fade, the constellations slowly dissolving into the darkness of the ceiling. The hum of the observatory's mechanisms wound down, and the jade ring's glow subsided. The dome slid silently back into place, once again hiding the night sky.

Seo Jun was left kneeling in the dim light, the mundane reality of the old observatory slowly returning, but his world had been irrevocably altered. He had been a man who built empires of steel and glass, but now, he was a seeker. He reached out and retrieved the ring, the warmth returning as it settled back onto his finger. He looked at Kaito, the enigma who had stolen a trinket and, in doing so, had stolen his life.

"Where is it?" Seo Jun asked, the words a low, guttural demand. "Where does the map lead?"

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***