Jack had always believed the system was fair.
Not kind. Not merciful. But fair in the way a storm was fair. A storm didn't hate you—if you stood out in it, you drowned. If you respected it, prepared for it, ran when you had to run, you lived.
That's what being a hunter was. Measure your rank, know your limits, don't be greedy.
Tonight, fairness was a lie.
The dungeon corridor was too narrow for the thing chasing them, but it didn't matter—its presence alone distorted the stone, bulging the walls like they were soft clay. The red glow of the gate's core, usually a steady pulse in the deep, had turned frantic. The light stuttered as if the dungeon itself was panicking.
"Left!" Mira shouted, voice cracking.
Jack turned with the others, boots slipping in blood and wet dust. His lungs burned. His heart felt like it was trying to tear out of his chest.
They were D-Ranks.
They weren't supposed to be here.
A mission like this was supposed to be clean: clear a low-tier gate near a construction site, secure the core, get paid. Jack had done it a dozen times. He could do it in his sleep—if he could ever afford sleep.
But the moment they crossed the threshold, the air changed. The silence wasn't natural. The mana pressure was wrong—too thick, too heavy, like walking underwater.
And then they found the bodies.
Other hunters. Torn open. Armor peeled back like paper. Eyes staring at nothing.
That was when Kade, their leader, said the words that made Jack's stomach drop.
"Gate's been tampered with."
Another team had forced their way in, stolen something, stirred something up… and left the mess for the next poor fools to stumble into.
"Run!" Kade had yelled.
So they ran.
Now they were paying for being slow.
The corridor opened into a chamber that should've been a relief—space, visibility, options—but it was worse. The ceiling was high and cracked, the pillars twisted with veins of glowing red. The floor was carved with old circular patterns, runes half-buried under rubble like bones beneath skin.
And in the center…
A thing knelt over a corpse, feeding.
Jack's eyes locked on the corpse first.
It was Theo.
Theo, who had made jokes in the van about buying a motorcycle when they got paid. Theo, who'd been late to every meeting. Theo, who'd called Jack "brother" even when Jack didn't deserve it.
Now Theo's ribs were spread like a broken cage. His head lolled to the side, mouth open, as if he'd been about to scream and never got the chance.
Mira made a sound—half sob, half gag.
Kade raised his blade. "Don't freeze. Formation—"
The creature slowly lifted its head.
It had been human once. Jack knew it the way you know something is poison before you taste it.
Its face was wrong—not rotted, not decayed—rearranged. Bone pushed through skin in sharp ridges. Its jaw unhinged too wide, teeth layered in jagged rows, and its eyes…
Its eyes were not eyes.
They were pits filled with a crawling red light.
The dungeon pulsed, as if reacting to the creature's attention.
"Back," Kade whispered. "Back, slowly."
They tried.
The creature stood.
It unfolded like a tower. Muscles stretched and snapped into place, too long, too thick, too heavy for the shape it wore. Its torso split down the middle and opened like a blooming wound, revealing a hollow cavity lined with blinking eyes.
Every eye turned to Jack.
Jack's legs went numb.
Because the creature wasn't staring at Kade, the leader.
It wasn't staring at Mira, the fastest.
It wasn't staring at Sera, the healer.
It was staring at him.
Like it recognized him.
The creature smiled.
And then it moved.
Not a step.
A blink.
It crossed the chamber in less than a second.
Kade reacted on instinct, blade coming up, aura flaring pale blue—his D-Rank boost, everything he had.
The creature's claw went through Kade's chest.
Jack heard the sound. A wet, dull thump like punching a bag of water.
Kade's eyes widened.
He tried to speak.
Blood poured from his mouth.
The claw withdrew, and Kade collapsed like his strings had been cut.
"Kade!" Mira screamed, rushing forward.
Jack grabbed her arm. "Don't—!"
Too late.
The creature's other hand snapped out and caught Mira by the hair, yanking her head back. She gasped, clawing at its wrist, feet kicking as it lifted her off the ground with effortless strength.
"S-STOP!" Jack shouted, voice breaking.
Sera threw a burst of healing light at Mira's throat where the creature's nails were digging in—desperate, useless. Healing didn't stop a wound that hadn't been made yet.
The creature tilted its head, studying Mira like she was a toy.
Then it looked at Jack again.
And tightened its grip.
Mira's face turned purple. Her eyes bulged. She reached out—reaching for Jack, reaching for anything.
Jack moved without thinking, snatching up his sword from the floor where he'd dropped it earlier. He surged forward, rage and fear mixing into something hot and wild.
He swung.
The blade struck the creature's wrist.
It didn't even cut.
It didn't even scratch.
The impact rang through Jack's arms like he'd hit steel.
The creature stared at the sword, then at Jack, as if amused by the attempt.
Jack swung again.
Again.
Again.
His lungs screamed. His arms burned.
Nothing.
The creature's eyes narrowed.
And it backhanded him.
Jack flew across the chamber and slammed into a pillar hard enough to crack stone.
Pain exploded through his ribs. Something snapped. His sword clattered away.
He slid down the pillar, coughing blood, vision tunneling.
He looked up in time to see Mira go limp.
The creature dropped her like trash.
Mira hit the floor with a sound that made Jack's stomach turn to ice.
"Mira…" he whispered.
Sera was crying now, hands shaking as she tried to crawl toward Mira. "Hold on—hold on, I can—"
The creature's torso opened wider.
The eyes inside its chest flickered.
And a sound came from it.
Not a roar.
A whispering chorus, like hundreds of voices speaking at once, crawling into Jack's skull and twisting his thoughts.
Sera froze mid-crawl, hands clamped to her ears. "Make it stop—please—"
Her nose bled.
Then her eyes rolled back.
She collapsed, convulsing.
Jack tried to move. His body refused. His right arm was dead weight. His chest hurt every time he breathed. The dungeon's red veins pulsed faster, and he realized with sick certainty:
The gate was destabilizing.
If they didn't clear the core, the dungeon would collapse.
If the dungeon collapsed while they were inside—
They wouldn't just die.
They'd be erased.
Jack crawled, dragging himself across the floor with his left arm, reaching for his sword. His fingers brushed the hilt—
The creature's shadow fell over him.
Jack looked up.
It stood above him like a god of meat and malice.
It raised its claw, slow, deliberate. Enjoying the moment.
Jack's mind went blank.
He thought of Mira laughing in the van. Of Kade telling him, "You've got heart, kid." Of Sera promising she'd heal his old shoulder injury "for free" if he kept training.
He thought of his mother's face, tired and proud, pretending she wasn't worried every time he left for a gate.
He thought: I can't die here.
His throat tightened.
His eyes burned.
And then—
A voice slid into his mind like silk over a blade.
"You are not supposed to die here."
Jack froze. His breath caught.
The voice didn't echo. It didn't sound like it came from the dungeon.
It was inside him.
"What—" Jack croaked. "Who—"
"I have been watching you."
The creature's claw lowered toward Jack's face.
Jack's heart slammed. "Get out of my head!"
"I can keep you alive."
Jack's eyes flicked to Mira's body. To Kade's broken form. To Sera twitching on the floor.
Alive.
He didn't want power.
He wanted time.
"Why me?" Jack whispered.
The voice paused—as if considering the question.
"Because you are empty enough to hold what is coming."
Jack didn't understand, but terror drowned logic.
The claw was inches away now.
Jack's vision blurred.
"Please," he whispered, not sure if he was begging the creature or the voice. "I don't want to die."
"Then say yes."
Jack's mouth tasted like blood and dust.
He stared into the creature's eyes—those red pits, those hungry voids.
And he made a choice he would spend the rest of his life trying to undo.
"Yes," Jack gasped.
The dungeon went silent.
For half a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the world broke.
Black fire erupted from Jack's body in a violent surge, not like flame but like shadow turned into heat—dense, heavy, wrong. It didn't rise. It fell upward, defying sense. It crawled across the floor like living ink.
The creature jerked back.
For the first time, it looked uncertain.
Jack screamed as something tore through his veins.
Not mana.
Not aura.
Something colder. Older.
His eyes ignited with a red glow so bright it painted the chamber in bloodlight.
The dungeon's veins flickered, then dimmed, as if afraid.
Jack pushed himself to his feet, shaking. His broken ribs still hurt, his arm still hung uselessly—but beneath that pain was another sensation.
A pressure behind his skin.
Like something pressing from the inside, trying to unfold.
The creature lunged again, desperate now.
Jack lifted his left hand.
Between his fingers, space split.
A thin, jagged line of nothingness appeared—like a crack in glass, except it wasn't glass.
It was reality.
The crack surged forward.
It touched the creature.
And the creature… came apart.
No blood.
No explosion.
It was simply severed, divided into pieces that shouldn't exist, falling to the floor like meat that had forgotten it used to be whole.
Jack stared, breath hitching.
"What… did I do?" he whispered.
"You survived," the voice replied softly.
"You did what you had to."
Jack looked at the pieces of the monster. At Mira. At Kade. At Sera.
His stomach twisted.
"I… I didn't want this."
"You wanted to live."
Jack swallowed hard. "What are you?"
The voice seemed to smile without showing teeth.
"A friend."
The dungeon began to tremble harder. The red veins faded, replaced by darkness. The gate's core was collapsing.
Jack turned, panic rising again. "How do I get out?!"
"Run," the voice said simply.
"And do not look back."
Jack limped toward the exit, dragging his broken body through the collapsing corridor. Stones fell from the ceiling. Dust choked him. The red light died behind him as if the dungeon was closing its eyes forever.
He burst through the gate—
And hit the ground outside, gasping in cold night air.
The world above looked normal. Streetlights. Concrete. The distant sound of traffic.
Too normal.
As if what had happened below could never touch reality.
Jack lay on the pavement, staring up at the sky, shaking.
His eyes still glowed faintly red.
Inside him, the voice was quiet now.
Patient.
Waiting.
And far beyond the world—beyond gates, beyond mana, beyond reality itself—
Something smiled.
Not because Jack had gained power.
But because Jack had opened the first door.