Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#118Reader Mode

#118

“Ah!”

Seojun jolted awake with a sharp gasp, his chest heaving as though he had just surfaced after being held underwater for far too long. His body convulsed, limbs thrashing wildly against the rough, dusty floor beneath him. Gradually, his senses returned, and with them came the disorienting realization that he had finally escaped the grasp of the past.

— Oz? What’s with the sudden fish-out-of-water routine? Practicing your mermaid moves now? You might want to save that for later. Hate to break it to you, but right now, you look more like a beached dugong than anything graceful.

It was the Wizard’s familiar, sarcastic voice that pulled Seojun fully back into the present. His ally, as indifferent as ever, continued to comment as though Seojun hadn’t just come dangerously close to breaking his nose on the floor. Yet, even with the Wizard’s snide remarks, the lingering echoes of the past still tugged at the edges of Seojun’s mind, threatening to drag him back under.

As always, it was pain that snapped his mind into focus. A sharp, burning throb radiated from his hand, forcing a groan through his clenched teeth. Blinking back the sting of tears, Seojun looked down at his palm. A rusty nail had pierced clean through the burlap sack and embedded itself deep in his skin. His breath hitched, and his face drained of color.

— Oh boy…

Even the Wizard’s voice carried a note of mild surprise, though his concern was, at best, lukewarm. He casually inquired if Seojun was up to date on his tetanus shots, but with the sack muffling his hearing, Seojun barely registered the question. His entire focus had zeroed in on the nail protruding from his hand. He gave his arm a tentative shake, half-hoping the nail would fall out on its own. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t budge. After a few more futile attempts, it was pretty clear that this thing wasn’t coming out without a fight.

In a sudden burst of bravery, Seojun grabbed the nail with his good hand and yanked it out. For a moment, he was stunned that he’d actually gone through with it. But that flash of courage evaporated the instant he saw the angry, reddish mark the rusty metal had left behind.

“Gah!”

He let out a weird croak, like a toad being stepped on, and immediately started muttering under his breath, sounding like a paranoid dark wizard trying to cast a spell in an old-school RPG.

“Tetanus shot… I got my tetanus shot… definitely got it… Tetanus shot…”

The thought of sprinting to the nearest ER the second he escaped this hellhole was permanently seared into his soul. Thankfully, he and his friends had gotten their tetanus shots after that bizarre, mysterious, and frankly disgusting incident at Hamon campground. His relentless nagging back then had finally paid off.

— Oz? Earth to Oz…

But the fear of that rusty nail still clung to him. He’d never actually had tetanus before, which somehow made it even more terrifying. The thought of some unseen disease festering inside him filled him with a impending sense of doom.

— Oz, don’t tell me you’re one of those anti-vaxxer types?

The Wizard’s cold, sarcastic tone snapped Seojun out of his spiral. That infuriatingly calm voice cut through his rising panic, continuing to speak without a hitch.

— If you’re the kind of guy who swears by essential oils and skipped your tetanus shot, I can see why you’d be freaking out over a little nail

It was painfully clear the Wizard didn’t get it at all.

“.…..“

Seojun froze, like a grasshopper caught mid-leap, his racing thoughts coming to a screeching halt. Did the Wizard seriously just accuse him of being some pseudoscience nut? Sure, life had gotten crazy lately, and yeah, he’d played the role of a prophet, spouting cryptic prophecies—which, okay, maybe wasn’t all that different from pseudoscience—but still. That stung. The accusation sliced through the panic in his head, leaving behind a sharp pang of embarrassment.

Right… this isn’t worth losing it over. I just need to get out of here and find the nearest hospital. No need to freak out.

As startling as the situation was, Seojun knew he had to pull himself together if he wanted to have any chance of surviving this. His gaze drifted to the rusty nail he had yanked out, now lying on the burlap sack, smeared with his blood.

Okay, let’s think this through. The reason I just saw the past… it was because that damn nail stabbed me in the hand.

A sudden cramp had shot through his leg, sending him sprawling forward. When he hit the floor, the nail stabbed into his palm, accidentally triggering his ability. He’d touched it with his bare hand, and the past had come crashing into him in an instant. Seojun gingerly set the nail aside, treating it like a live grenade, before turning his focus to the floorboard beneath him. His hand throbbed painfully, but the need for answers kept him pushing forward.

With a grunt, Seojun pried the floorboard loose. The aged wood groaned in protest, revealing a narrow, shadowed gap beneath. His breath hitched, muscles coiling with tension. Was this it? Would he find brittle strands of hair clinging to a decaying scalp, or worse, the vacant, glassy eyes of a corpse staring back at him?

“Haa…”

But to his relief, as he half-expected, it was empty. No body. No lifeless gaze from a forgotten victim. The emaciated woman who had once been hidden here was long gone. There was no trace of her, nor of the woman with the prosthetic hand. Could she have been T?

Seojun had a vague impression of T, a figure shrouded in mystery. A terrifying presence who had severed her own hand. The journal entries spoke of S and L, with D trapped in their chaotic orbit. Yet T hovered at the edges, always present but just out of reach, a silhouette lost in the background.

But what Seojun had glimpsed through his ability told a different story. The T he saw was not merely cold or distant—she was unforgettable. It wasn’t just her prosthetic hand or the razor-sharp intensity of her gaze that struck him… It was the silence in her tightly pressed lips, as though every scream was swallowed whole, her anguish locked deep within. Her eyes carried a depth of emotion no words could ever convey.

And then, as her prosthetic hand gently brushed the pallid cheek of the frail woman, understanding struck Seojun like a blade. The desperation in T’s eyes… it wasn’t born of hatred or cruelty. It was love. A silent plea for D’s survival. Whatever had transpired between them, if T had indeed taken D’s life, it couldn’t have been in the way that the journal had suggested.

So that was her… The thought slipped quietly through Seojun’s mind as he stared into the empty darkness beneath the floorboards. He could almost hear T’s voice, though he had never truly heard it. Her sorrowful words echoed faintly in his mind, as real as if she stood beside him.

“I love you. I love you. I love you. Even if we never meet again, Amy, I love you.”

Those final words in the journal… they hadn’t been S’s confession after all. They’d been T’s all along. Seojun’s thoughts flickered back to that conversation between S and L, which now held an entirely different meaning. L had casually mentioned how T had learned to write from S after arriving at the Invisible Man’s mansion. That’s why the handwriting had fooled him. The sharp strokes and elegant curves were nearly identical to S’s own.

— Oz, did you find anything new? Come on, let me in on it. We’re supposed to be a team, right? Let’s figure it out together.

The Wizard’s voice yanked him out of his thoughts, as shameless as ever. Always prying for new information, as if nothing had happened. Typical. The guy had breezed past Seojun’s breakdown earlier, treating it like an afterthought. He never gave you a moment to catch your breath. Not even for a second…

Wow. This bastard watched me unravel, and he still acts like this? What am I to him? Some kind of mini AI vacuum, just zipping around, sucking up info for him? Or maybe a remote-controlled robot he can steer around however he likes?

Seojun scowled, beyond frustrated. The Wizard had brushed aside his panic like it was nothing, not even giving him a chance to explain. But of course, there was no way Seojun was going to tell the truth about his psychometry. He didn’t need his old precognition to know that revealing it would only open a door to trouble.

So, Seojun moseyed over to the window, giving the bars a good rattle just for the heck of it. Next, he meandered over to the pile of burlap sacks, swatting at the dust, killing time. Finally, with a sense of grandeur, Seojun raised his sketchbook high toward the CCTV camera, as if he had just uncovered the greatest discovery of his life.

[If you had a loved one suffering terribly, and you were powerless to help, what would you do? Could you kill them to end their pain?]

Writing hurt like hell with his injured hand, but it beat letting his mind rot from the constant barrage of stress and paranoia. Even though the freshness of his thoughts were starting to feel a little questionable…

— Why would you be powerless? Just get rid of whoever’s causing the suffering.

The Wizard responded with a simplicity that felt almost childlike. With him, there was always an answer. Always a solution. Seojun’s head, still wrapped in that scratchy burlap sack, bobbed in exaggerated agreement.

[I shouldn’t have asked you that.]

— Ahahaha, no worries. You’ve figured something out, haven’t you? Come on, let’s think it through together. Give me more details.

Seojun hesitated, weighing the balance of trust and necessity. Could he trust him? Probably not. But what other option did he have? So, he shared a little more, carefully choosing his words. For once, the Wizard didn’t sound smug. His voice softened, carrying an unexpected gravity. Serious, even.

— If I really had no way to help, and killing the ones causing the pain wasn’t an option… I guess I’d have to find someone else who could do something about it.

[Someone else?]

— Yeah. If I couldn’t handle it myself, I’d get someone else involved, whatever it took. Maybe bribery, or… I don’t know, even blackmail if necessary.

[Blackmail?]

Seojun knew he sounded like a parrot, but he couldn’t stop himself. He needed clarification.

— Blackmail’s easy enough. You just hold a knife to someone’s throat, and that’s it. Although, it doesn’t have to be a blade, exactly.

What kind of twisted logic is that…

Seojun, who had once threatened poor Bobby with an axe, couldn’t help but click his tongue in shameless disapproval.

[But in a facility where all the test subjects were confined, would that even be possible? Surely they’d have gone to great lengths to keep anything dangerous out of reach.]

His skepticism must have come across through the screen, because the Wizard’s next response sounded more thoughtful.

— Hmm, you think so? Or maybe… maybe they had more freedom than we realize.

[?]

— I’ve been thinking about it while looking at these monitors. Oz, I’m talking about the lab when S, L, and T were there. Was the surveillance really that strict? I mean, could S and L have secretly exchanged a journal if they were being watched so closely? Some of the screens are out now, but… with all these monitors…They couldn’t have done anything secretive under such heavy surveillance. What if our kidnapper installed these cameras later? It would make sense. He’s quite the control freak, after all.

The Wizard kept rambling on about the dangers of modern surveillance, his voice an irritating buzz that made Seojun’s head throb. He glared at the speaker, the sharp ache behind his eye flaring up. The Wizard’s words seemed to burrow into his skull, impossible to ignore.

But as much as he hated to admit it, the Wizard’s ramblings were starting to make sense. Seojun flexed his aching hand, licking his dry lips as he turned the idea over in his mind.

There was that line in the journal… about being watched from above.

And S’s endless complaints about the Wild Mutt that followed them around. If there had been cameras back then, S wouldn’t have just griped about the man’s stare. Someone like S, who hated being watched, would’ve lost it over being monitored all the time. But in the journal, the only thing S mentioned was the Mutt’s crazed gaze.

Seojun sighed, the weight of his misconception settling heavily on him. He had been wrong. He’d assumed that S, L, and the others were always being watched, but now it was obvious. The way they had secretly passed around the journal, slipping in and out of the storage room undetected—it all pointed to gaps in the system, like the loose weave of the burlap sack that now scratched at his skin. If they had truly been under constant surveillance, none of that would’ve been possible.

His gaze drifted to the blinking red light of the CCTV camera, glowing like an ever-watching eye. These cameras weren’t subtle. They were always there, always watching. And if they had been around back then, neither S, with his sharp instincts, nor L, with his worldly experience, would’ve missed them.

Then, slowly, the truth dawned on him, like the first rays of morning light. The Wizard’s offhand comment had unlocked something in his mind, bringing all the pieces together.

This level of surveillance hadn’t existed when S, L, T, and D were trapped at the Invisible Man’s mansion. The cameras must have been added later by the man who had kidnapped him and the Wizard.

Seojun’s eyes snapped open, his thoughts piercing through the haze like a blade. He saw the room for what it truly was, as though the burlap sack couldn’t cloud his vision anymore. He had been wrong about more than just the cameras. This wasn’t the same place where S, L, T, and D had been imprisoned.

This place… wasn’t the original lab at all.

It was a stage. A replica, meticulously reconstructed. A hollow imitation of the original, created by the real Wizard. And like all copies, no matter how perfect, could never truly capture the essence of the original.