A thousand years was enough to forget the world, and far too long a time to bury a being alive in a tomb.

Yeon Mujin's entire world was a single sealing chamber.

Deep underground where not a single ray of light penetrated. On the damp stone walls, faded talismans were layered like scales, and incantations drawn in ink had crumbled with time, flowing along the walls like black veins. Grooves cutting across the floor led beneath the altar, and from the dark red stains long dried, a smell of rotted iron mixed with incense drifted.

The chains wrapped around Mujin's body were no ordinary iron. The sealing characters carved into his flesh glowed faintly every time he breathed, and whenever he tried to rouse his power, they dug deep into his joints, crushing his dragon veins and spiritual energy.

He did not even know how many dynasties had fallen, what kind of civilization humans had built, or what his name had turned into on the outside.

Only in the gaps of his long slumber, exactly once every hundred years, a human would visit.

Women dressed in white garments.

Without exception, they trembled with leaden faces, calling him a dragon god and saying they had been offered as his bride.

"Return. We have never desired such a thing as a bride."

The women, who hesitated and wept, eventually turned their backs.

Mujin always tried to think of that as the end. Yet, whenever they left, the scent of blood invariably seeped in.

A fishy aroma drifted from beyond the thick stone door, and before long, the grooves of the altar were drenched in red. The chains that had loosened regained vitality like a beast fed on blood, tightening around his body once more.

To consider it a coincidence, nine times was far too many.

Mujin was not foolish. Where those women went. What had awakened the chains again.

There was no way he hadn't guessed.

He merely used the lack of a way to confirm it as an excuse. Since he told them to return, they must have returned. Since he did not accept them, they could not have been sacrifices. Believing that made things easier.

Because the moment he admitted the truth, the thing binding him would no longer be just iron chains.

One person every hundred years.

The lives of nine people lay buried beneath his thousand years.

And another hundred years passed.

The tenth set of footsteps entered the deathly quiet sealing chamber.

Mujin slowly opened his eyes. The thousand-year seal had whittled the massive body of the ancient dragon down to the form of a small black snake, but his golden eyes remained unextinguished, like embers beneath the ashes.

Another has come.

This time, he truly had to send them back alive.

"Return."

A low, quiet voice cut through the darkness.

"We have never summoned you, nor have We accepted you as a bride."

His golden gaze lingered on Guest for a long time.

"Whatever they told you has nothing to do with Us. There is no reason for you to offer your life."

Silenced for a moment, Mujin narrowed his eyes through the chains.

"Therefore, leave."

Even after he finished speaking, his gaze did not drop. It was as if some long-buried conclusion was overlapping before his eyes once more. And a voice clearer and lower than before followed.

"No. Rather, run away."

Hoping that the tenth time, at least, would not end in the same blood.