When Jinhyuk woke up, It was to the sound of rain.
Not the soft, steady kind that lulled you back to sleep.
This was sharp, uneven, like glass tapping against the window.
His apartment ceiling was the first thing he saw.
Except… It wasn't his familiar ceiling.
The paint here was an off-white shade that leaned too far into yellow, like old paper. The corners curved slightly, as though the room were subtly warped.
His bed felt softer, the sheets smoother, and there was a faint smell in the air.
Not dust, but something metallic, almost like blood that had been washed away but never truly gone.
He sat up slowly.
His phone was on the nightstand.
Same phone brand, same damaged red case. Same slightly cracked screen. Same handmade charms his mom made for him.
He reached for it, but his thumb froze before it touched the screen.
The wallpaper was the same photo he remembered, a blurry picture of Seoul's skyline at night yet the lights were… wrong.
The towers were taller. The Han River bent at an angle it shouldn't.
Entire districts he knew by heart were replaced with clusters of unfamiliar shapes.
A notification blinked.
[12:07] Emergency Broadcast: Citizens are advised to stay indoors until further notice. Remain calm. Do not-
The message cut off. Replaced by loud static. Jinhyuk instinctively covered his ears, dropping the phone onto the bed.
The phone vibrated once, then went black.
A faint hum filled the silence.
He turned toward the window.
The city stretched far below, gray and washed out in the rain.
The skyline wasn't Seoul's.
It was familiar enough to pass at a glance, yet every street was off by a block, every building taller or narrower than it should be.
Billboards advertised brands he'd never heard of.
The traffic lights were wrong. Glowing in shades of pale blue and orange instead of red and green.
People moved along the sidewalks far below, but their pace was strange.
Too slow. Too in sync. As though they all shared the same rhythm.
Jinhyuk's heartbeat quickened.
This wasn't his apartment.
This wasn't his Seoul.
And yet… it felt like it should be.
He grabbed his jacket and stepped into the hallway.
The building's interior looked almost identical to the one he remembered.
Same peeling wallpaper, same flickering light near the elevator.
The elevator doors were… different. Taller. Narrower. The control panel had symbols he didn't recognize.
The air tasted stale, like it hadn't been replaced in years.
He pressed the down button. It lit up in deep blue instead of orange.
The elevator arrived without sound.
He stepped inside.
The floor numbers were all wrong.
B1, B2, 1, 3, 4, 6... There were no 2 or 5. In their place, strange triangular icons glowed faintly.
He didn't press anything. The doors closed on their own, and the elevator began to descend.
By the time it opened, the hum outside had grown louder. The smell of rain was gone.
Instead, the air was sharp and cold, heavy with something that made his skin prickle.
The lobby was filled with people standing in complete silence.
Dozens of them. All facing the glass doors that led outside.
Their expressions were blank, their eyes fixed on the rain beyond.
No one moved. No one spoke.
Jinhyuk stepped past them, his shoes echoing unnaturally loud against the tiled floor.
Outside, the street was… wrong.
The asphalt on the road seemed darker. wet not just with rain but with something thicker that clung to the cracks.
The sky wasn't gray anymore.
It was a swirling mass of black and violet clouds, pulsing faintly as though something enormous moved behind them.
And then… he saw it.
Far in the distance, over the horizon, a colossal shadow loomed.
Its outline was indistinct, shifting between the form of a tower and something alive.
The ground trembled.
From somewhere far away came the sound of metal tearing, followed by a deep, resonant roar that seemed to rattle the air itself.
The people around him finally moved, all at once.
They turned toward the sound, their heads tilting unnaturally in perfect unison.
Jinhyuk's breath caught.
He knew this scene.
Not from real life… but from the very pages he once wrote on.
The Regressor Who Defied the End.
This was the first day of the Apocalypse.
The first Arc in his novel. He remembers the words he wrote.
The day the very sky shattered. The day everything changed. The peaceful days of Seoul were gone... Beasts came and the streets were dyed in red.
The Sky Bastion descended.
And if that was true, then…
Somewhere out there...
The dangers. The villains. The catastrophes. The companions. Everything he's ever wrote in his novel... was his reality now. And his protagonist...
Yoon Hyunseong was alive.