Seoul, three days after the Han River incident.
The world still had no official name for what had happened.
The government called it "a localized electromagnetic anomaly."
The military quietly classified it as "Event Zero."
The internet called the blurry CCTV silhouette "the Black Phantom."
Aariz Kael called it Tuesday.
He sat cross-legged on the floor of a new safe-house (a condemned love motel in Mapo-gu whose owner had died of a heart attack last year). Cash from Ji-Hoon's safe paid six months in advance, no questions. The room smelled of mildew and old cigarettes, but the walls were thick and the windows faced an alley no drone bothered to scan.
On the cracked coffee table lay his new life:
- Mind-Fang Dagger, now drinking ambient mana like a starving thing, its blade already one shade darker.
- A burner phone running custom packet sniffers he'd written in another lifetime.
- A paper map of Seoul covered in red pins: every micro-rift, every future gate, every traitor's childhood home.
Current stats glowed in the corner of his vision:
**Level: 10**
**Strength: 38 Agility: 67 Mana: 142 Vitality: 44**
**Active Skills:**
- Phantom Step Lv.3
- Void Blink Lv.2
- Shadow Extraction Lv.2 (current legion: 11 shades, 3 hound wraiths)
- Mana Fang (passive evolution: +27% growth rate)
He had spent the last seventy-two hours farming the tiny rifts that normal humans couldn't even see. Each kill fed the dagger, fed the shades, fed the black hunger coiled behind his ribs. The Fallen System no longer gave polite notifications; it simply whispered, a lover's voice directly into bone:
**More. Take. Grow.**
Aariz ignored it for now and opened the burner phone.
First headline, Chosun Ilbo (state-approved):
"Han River Event Declared Non-Hostile. No Casualties. Investigation Closed."
Second, a private Hunter forum he'd already infiltrated using future credentials:
Thread title: "Who the fuck solo-cleared Event Zero before the army even arrived?"
Replies: 4,127 and climbing.
User "IronVanguard_Recruiter":
"Impossible. No Awakened registry exists yet. Unless someone's hiding a pre-System artifact."
User "Oracle-7" (Architect sock-puppet, he recognized the typing pattern):
"Monitoring all known anomaly zones. Subject demonstrates non-standard mana signature. Priority containment."
User "R.Voss" (account created two hours ago):
"Interesting. Very interesting."
Aariz's finger froze over the last one.
Ravian Voss.
In the old timeline, Ravian had Awakened six months from now, during the Busan outbreak. Yet here he was, already online, already hunting.
So the bastard remembered fragments after all.
Aariz closed the phone and exhaled slowly. The game board had tilted earlier than expected.
His shades stirred in the corner like smoke given will, waiting for orders.
Time to move.
He stood, slung a black duffel over his shoulder, and walked out into the rain.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Same day, 19:42
Blue House underground briefing room
President Park listened to the briefing with the expression of a woman who had just been told the apocalypse had a schedule.
General Kwon finished his slide: a freeze-frame of Aariz's silhouette vanishing off the bridge.
"One individual. No support. No registered mana trace we can lock onto. Gate collapsed in under nine minutes. Zero civilian losses."
"And you're telling me," the President said quietly, "that every camera, satellite, and drone we had pointed at that bridge went blind for exactly eight minutes and forty-one seconds?"
"Yes, ma'am."
National Intelligence Service Director Choi leaned forward. "We're not the only ones looking. The Americans want a joint task force. The Chinese are already moving 'research teams' into Incheon. And domestic guilds (companies that don't even exist yet) are forming private militias overnight."
President Park rubbed her temples. "We need a controlled narrative. We need a face. We need him on a leash before someone else puts a bullet in him."
General Kwon hesitated. "Ma'am… there may be another way."
He clicked the remote. A second silhouette appeared: taller, broader, standing on the roof of the closed-off bridge observation deck thirty seconds after Aariz vanished.
White armor. Crimson cape. A sword longer than most men were tall.
"Second unidentified metahuman," Kwon said. "Appeared after the gate closed. Observed the site for twelve seconds, then left at speeds exceeding 300 km/h. Facial recognition hit a private school in Gangnam: Ravian Voss, age 24, heir to Voss Heavy Industries."
The room went very quiet.
Director Choi broke it. "Two anomalies in one week. Either we're the luckiest nation on Earth… or the most cursed."
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
22:11
Gangnam, rooftop of Voss Tower
Ravian Voss stood at the edge, wind whipping his cape. In his hand he held a single black feather that definitely had not existed in the world three days ago.
He remembered dying.
Not all of it. Just flashes: a battlefield of ash, a blade in Aariz Kael's back, his own hand on the hilt. Regret thick as tar.
And then a voice (not the Emperor's, something older) offering him a bargain.
He had accepted.
Now the world was wrong. Timelines out of sync. Someone else was moving the pieces.
Ravian crushed the feather. Black particles scattered into the night.
"I know you're watching, Ghostblade," he said aloud.
Far across the city, in the condemned love motel, every single one of Aariz's shades turned their eyeless heads toward the east at the exact same second.
Aariz smiled, slow and sharp.
"Come find me, old friend."
He pulled the mask over his face.
The hunt was mutual now.
**[End of Chapter 3]**
Chapter 4 will open with the first public gate (the one that cannot be hidden) erupting in Myeongdong in exactly eleven days, and Aariz deciding which betrayers to ruin first.