0: (INTRODUCTION)

Detective Yang Seungbae had spent his life chasing shadows, but none had ever gripped his sanity like this.

Oh Sangwoo was dead. Burned. Reduced to nothing but ashes. Seungbae had seen the reports, had watched the flames consume that cursed house. The case was closed. The nightmare was over.

Until Yoonbum ran into the street, wild-eyed, desperate—chasing something. Someone.

Until the crash, the blood, the way Bum's fingers clutched onto a ring that should have never left his grasp.

Until Seungbae watched the black box footage.

A man crossing the street. A face eerily familiar. A pair of eyes that glinted at the camera, as if they knew.

Until Seungbae stood in the ruins of Sangwoo's house and heard that voice—his voice.

"Detective… are you still chasing ghosts?"

And then—just as suddenly as he appeared—he was gone.

Seungbae told himself it wasn't real. That it had to be stress, exhaustion, trauma.

But when he reached the hospital, when he stood over Yoonbum's trembling, bandaged body, when Bum finally turned to look at him—

Tears in his eyes. Lips barely moving. Voice shattered.

"…He's back."

Seungbae's blood turned to ice.

And in that moment, a question clawed its way into his mind—one so terrifying, so impossible, that it nearly sent him to his knees.

Had Oh Sangwoo ever truly died?