EMPYREAN: THE HIDDEN HEAVEN

It is said that when a dying person’s final wish remains unfulfilled, their soul can never truly find peace. Perhaps that is because human desire itself has no end. People spend their entire lives chasing one thing after another, believing that the next achievement, the next possession, or the next victory will finally make them happy. Yet satisfaction rarely lasts, and in a world where cruelty often seems stronger than honesty, people sometimes become cruel simply to survive. Ven had crossed that line long ago, though no one who knew his name would ever have imagined it.

Ven was a successful artist, admired by people who knew his work but never truly knew the man behind it. To the world, he was talented, disciplined, respectable, and refined. His paintings had earned him recognition, wealth, and a reputation that many artists could only dream of. Behind that clean image, however, was another life filled with secrets, violence, and sins carefully buried beneath years of success. His story had begun long before fame ever found him.

Ven was only seven years old when he witnessed something no child should ever have seen. Arguments between his parents were common, and their home had never been peaceful. Shouting had become such a familiar sound that whenever his mother and father fought, Ven would usually keep his distance and wait for their anger to pass. But one evening, their argument became different. While his mother was eating, his father suddenly lost control and stabbed her.

Everything happened too quickly for Ven to understand. He stood at a distance, frozen in fear, unable to move or speak as his mother collapsed to the floor. The sight of her blood remained inside him long after that night ended. At seven years old, Ven had watched his mother die at the hands of his own father, and although he was far too young to understand what that moment would eventually turn him into, something inside him had already begun to change.

Fear slowly became anger, anger turned into hatred, and hatred eventually became a desire for revenge. From that point onward, Ven began living two different lives. There was the Ven the world could see—the quiet, intelligent, talented boy who performed well in school and rarely caused trouble—and then there was the Ven no one knew, the one who carried memories of blood, resentment, and helplessness deep inside himself.

After his mother’s death, his father barely paid attention to him. Ven had carried anger toward the man since childhood, but as a child he had no strength, no influence, and no way to fight back. Instead, he found another escape. He painted. Art became the only place where he felt completely in control, and whether he was at school or at home, he spent most of his time drawing and painting.

Ven dreamed of becoming famous one day, but he did not want his name to rise because of his father. His father was already a successful artist whose paintings were known throughout the world, and Ven wanted something different. He wanted people to know him for his own work. More than that, he wanted to become greater than the man he had hated since childhood.

He was equally gifted in his studies. Ven consistently ranked at the top of his class and eventually became class president. His teachers saw him as disciplined, intelligent, and harmless, the kind of student a school would proudly present to others. No one suspected what was growing behind that image, and by the time Ven reached the twelfth grade, the darkness inside him had already become much stronger.

That was when Eun-woo became part of his life. Eun-woo was a troublemaker who seemed to take pleasure in tormenting him. He would find Ven wherever he went, beat him, take his money, and sometimes lock him inside washrooms. Ven endured everything quietly. He never fought back, never reported him, and never revealed how much anger he was holding inside.

One day, however, Eun-woo touched the one thing Ven cared about most—his art. Ven had been painting when Eun-woo approached him and tore the painting apart. He threw Ven’s colours onto the ground and destroyed everything he had been working on. Ven watched the pieces of the painting fall, and something inside him seemed to break along with them.

The humiliation he had endured for so long suddenly became impossible to ignore. The same desire for revenge that had been growing inside him since childhood rose again, stronger than before. For the first time, Ven decided that he would no longer remain silent. An idea entered his mind, and although it was terrible, to Ven it felt like the only way to finally calm the fire burning inside him.

The following day, the students had Physical Education before lunch, and everyone went to the playground as usual. After spending some time there, Eun-woo and his group disappeared toward the washroom. It was something they often did. They would leave in the middle of the period, use drugs inside the washroom, and return before anyone paid much attention.

But that day, they never returned. At first, no one considered it unusual. Most of the students simply assumed that Eun-woo and his friends had skipped the rest of the school day and gone somewhere else. During lunch, however, one student entered the washroom and noticed a foot sticking out from the shower room. Someone was lying on the floor. The student screamed, and within minutes teachers and students had gathered outside.

Eun-woo and his group were dead. All nine of them had been electrocuted in the water. The school quickly treated the deaths as a tragic accident, compensated the families, and did everything possible to prevent the incident from damaging its reputation. Eventually, the case was closed, and as the years passed, no one questioned what had really happened.

But it had never been an accident. Ven had killed them.

Before the Physical Education period, his homeroom teacher had called him away. During that time, Ven had deliberately cut the wires connected to the water heaters inside the shower room. Several students entered the washroom afterward, but none used the shower area. Eun-woo and his group were the first. When they discovered that the water was cold, they turned on the heater, and that was all it took.

Ven had planned everything carefully because he had already decided that they did not deserve an easy death. When it was over, he felt no guilt. In his mind, he had not simply taken nine lives—he had removed the people responsible for spreading fear throughout the school. Because he was the top student and the class president, suspicion never came near him. His reputation protected him better than any lie could have.

After that incident, Ven began to believe something dangerous. Destroying evil itself was difficult, but destroying the people who carried that evil within them was far easier. As far as he was concerned, that was exactly what he had done. Once Eun-woo and his group were gone, no one troubled him anymore, and the school itself seemed quieter.

Ven continued his life as though nothing had happened. After completing the twelfth grade, he graduated in Art and Modern Design and later took several courses related to painting, art, and design. His talent continued to grow, but so did his ambition. His father was still a famous artist, and for years Ven had dreamed of surpassing him.

Eventually, Ven reached a conclusion he could not ignore. As long as his father remained alive, he believed he would always exist in his shadow. He had already learned once that people standing in his way could be removed, and so he made the same choice again. Ven hired an S-Ranked assassin, and his father was killed during his own success party.

Once again, Ven remained untouched. The world mourned the famous artist, while Ven received enormous sympathy from the public. He quickly learned how useful sympathy could be. In interviews and conversations, he spoke about how deeply he missed his father and how painting made him feel connected to him. People believed every word. His grief made his story more powerful, and his paintings became even more famous and valuable.

For a time, Ven had everything he wanted. His name grew larger, his reputation spread, and the success he had chased for years finally became his. But success has a way of creating enemies. The higher he climbed, the more people began watching him. Some envied him, some competed with him, and others tried to damage his reputation or stand in his way.

Ven dealt with every threat the same way he always had. Sometimes he frightened people, sometimes he threatened them, and sometimes he killed them. Every action was calculated, every trace was removed, and every secret remained hidden. To the outside world, Ven continued to appear respectable, successful, and untouchable. Only he knew how much blood existed beneath that clean image.

Then, one night, everything changed. Ven was driving home when a truck suddenly crashed into his car. The impact was violent enough to twist the vehicle and throw him out onto the road. For a few moments, he remained conscious, though barely. He could still breathe, but each breath became weaker than the last as his body refused to respond and the sounds around him slowly faded.

As his consciousness began slipping away, memories started surfacing one after another. He saw his mother, his father, Eun-woo, the boys in the shower room, and everyone whose life he had threatened or destroyed. Every good deed and every sin seemed to return at once, as though someone had opened every hidden page of his life before him.

Then his breathing stopped. For anyone watching, that should have been the end of Ven’s story. But something happened after his death, something impossible that would completely change everything he believed about life, death, and the world around him.

Ven opened his eyes inside a hospital. He was alive, but the world no longer felt like the one he remembered. No one knew who he was. His name meant nothing, his identity had disappeared, and it was as though Ven had never existed at all. While he lay there trying to understand what had happened, he heard something strange—a voice that did not come from anywhere inside the room.

It came from inside him. Ven remained still, listening carefully. Along with the voice came an even stranger feeling, almost as though another presence was breathing inside his body, sharing the same space as his own soul. Ven had spent his entire life hiding the truth from the world. Now the world had forgotten him completely, and somewhere deep inside him, something else had awakened.

To be continued…