Chapter 1: The Weight of Empty Hours (1)

The rejection email arrived at 6:47 AM, precisely timed to ruin Seo-yeon's sleep and what remained of her coffee budget for the month.

We regret to inform you that after careful consideration, we have decided to pursue other candidates for the Assistant Professor position in Medieval Studies. We wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Seo-yeon stared at her laptop screen in the pre-dawn darkness of her studio apartment, the blue light casting shadows across stacks of research papers and empty instant noodle cups. Her bank account balance glowed in another tab: ₩847,000. Three weeks until rent came due. Four months since her dissertation defense. Seventeen rejection letters, if she counted this one.

She didn't want to count this one.

Her phone buzzed with a text from her mother: Your cousin Ji-won just made partner at her law firm. When are you getting a real job?

Seo-yeon closed her eyes and pressed her palms against them until she saw stars. A real job. As if seven years of graduate school and a PhD in History meant nothing. As if her dissertation on the Kingdom of Astra's collapse—the one Dr. Min-jun Ryan had called "brilliant, groundbreaking work"—was just an expensive hobby.

Dr. Ryan would have fought for her. Would have written recommendation letters with his characteristic passion, would have made phone calls to colleagues at every university in Seoul. But Dr. Ryan had died in that lab explosion eighteen months ago, taking his strange fusion of physics and historical research with him.

Seo-yeon reached for the worn leather notebook on her desk—Ryan's notebook, salvaged from his office before the university cleared it out. His handwriting filled the margins of her own research notes, questions scribbled in a hurried scrawl: What if time isn't linear? What if history can be accessed like locations on a map?

She'd thought he was being metaphorical. Theoretical. Now, staring at his notes about "temporal anchors" and "artifacts as bridges," she wondered if her late professor had been losing his mind in those final months, or finding something impossible.

The page fell open to her own notes about King Theodore VII of Astra, the last ruler of a kingdom that had vanished five hundred years ago. She'd memorized every detail: crowned at age twenty, dead at twenty-seven, his reign lasting exactly seven years before some unrecorded catastrophe swallowed his entire kingdom. The historical records were maddeningly vague—just scattered references in neighboring kingdoms' archives about "the cursed king" and "the time of endless night."

Eleven months into his seventh regnal year, King Theodore VII ceased to appear in all records. The Kingdom of Astra fell silent. No survivors. No explanation.

Seo-yeon had built her entire academic career trying to explain that silence.

And now she couldn't even get a teaching position at a third-tier university.

She slammed the laptop shut and stood, her joints protesting after hours hunched in the cheap desk chair. The studio apartment felt smaller than usual, the walls pressing in with the weight of unfulfilled potential. Outside, Seoul was waking up—the distant rumble of subway trains, the beep of crosswalk signals, the modern world moving forward while she remained stuck in the past.

Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she needed to let the dead stay dead.

But first, she needed to eat. And to eat, she needed money. And to get money, she needed to sell something.

The freelance history website had posted a call for articles about "mysterious medieval kingdoms." They paid ₩200,000 for 3,000 words—barely enough for a week's groceries, but better than nothing. If she could find some authentic artifacts to photograph, maybe a primary source document she'd missed...

Seo-yeon grabbed her laptop bag and stuffed it with Ryan's notebook and her research materials. The antique shops on Jongno Street sometimes had items from the medieval period. Probably nothing related to Astra—the kingdom had been too thoroughly erased from history—but worth checking.

The subway ride to Jongno district took forty minutes. Seo-yeon spent it reviewing her notes, ignoring the pressed bodies of morning commuters around her. Theodore's face stared up at her from a photocopied illuminated manuscript—the only known portrait of the king. Even in faded medieval ink, his features were striking: sharp cheekbones, silver-grey eyes, an expression of such profound loneliness it made her chest ache.

What happened to you? she wondered, not for the first time. What could destroy an entire kingdom so thoroughly that even its ending was forgotten?

The modern streets of Jongno gleamed with glass and steel, but Seo-yeon knew the old heart still beat beneath the surface. She turned down a narrow alley between a coffee franchise and a cosmetics shop, following the path she'd discovered during her graduate research. The city changed as she walked—new construction giving way to traditional wooden shopfronts, pavement becoming worn stone.

Jongno Antique Street emerged from the morning mist like something from another era. Paper lanterns hung between buildings despite the daylight. The smell of incense drifted from doorways. Old men sat outside shops playing janggi, their board games as ancient as the artifacts they sold.