The First Sanctuary was a monument to the vanity of man. Its spires, carved from white ether-stone, clawed at the bruised purple sky like the skeletal fingers of a dying giant. Below them, the rain didn't just fall; it crashed against the marble courtyards of the Kang Estate with a relentless, rhythmic thud—a sound like thousands of small stones being dropped onto a drum. It was a cold, clinical downpour that carried the stinging scent of ozone and the heavy, metallic tang of artificial mana. In this city, even the weather was a privilege, a curated atmosphere designed to remind those at the bottom that their lives were lived at the mercy of the Ranks.
***Kang-Min*** was intimately familiar with that mercy. Or rather, the lack of it.
He was nineteen years old, and he was currently kneeling in the mud that had begun to pool over the pristine white stone. The marble beneath his knees was slick, drawing the heat directly out of his bones until his joints felt like they were filled with crushed glass. Around him, the elders of the clan stood in a silent, suffocating semi-circle. Their robes, woven from spirit-silk, didn't just glow; they seemed to pulse with an inner life, a stark, mocking contrast to the soaked, filth-stained tunic clinging to ***Kang-Min's*** shivering frame.
The silence was heavier than the rain. It was the kind of silence that precedes an execution.
"The results of the Akashic Awakening are immutable," the High Elder finally spoke. His voice didn't carry the heat of anger. It was worse. It carried the absolute, hollow boredom of a man discarding a piece of broken furniture. "The Codex has scanned the soul-circuits of both brothers. The verdict is final."
***Kang-Min*** tried to swallow, but his throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. He forced his head up, his neck muscles straining against the sheer weight of the spiritual pressure saturating the air. He looked at his twin brother, Kang-Jae, who stood only a few feet away.
Jae looked like a god carved from sunlight. A soft, golden luminescence thrummed beneath his skin, turning the raindrops that touched him into tiny, hissing puffs of steam. He was already radiating a heat that made the surrounding air ripple and distort. Jae didn't look back at his brother. He stared straight ahead, his jaw set in a line of arrogant triumph. The connection they had shared in the womb—the bond that had seen them through nineteen years of shared meals and whispered dreams—had been severed the moment the System's blue light hit their brows.
"Kang-Jae," the Elder continued, his eyes gleaming with a rare, predatory pride. "You have awakened the SSS-Rank Class: [Sun-God's Apostle]. You are the dawn of our lineage. The sun that will burn away our enemies."
A low, rhythmic hum of approval rose from the crowd. It wasn't a cheer; it was a prayer. In a world where your Class was your destiny, a Sun-God was a ticket to immortality for the entire clan.
"And then," the Elder's tone shifted, the warmth vanishing as if a candle had been snuffed out. "There is the other one. ***Kang-Min***. A Null. A void. A biological error born with a dead mana-circuit. To keep such a hollow vessel within these walls is an insult to the Codex itself. A Null is not a person. He is a debt—one that must be collected to balance the scales."
***Kang-Min*** tried to speak, to scream that he had spent his entire life in the clan's forbidden archives, that he knew the anatomical weaknesses of every beast in the three outer zones better than any warrior present. But the Elder's pressure slammed into him like a physical fist. His teeth cracked against each other as his face hit the wet marble. The iron taste of blood flooded his mouth, hot and thick.
"Mina..." he wheezed, his eyes searching the shadows of the stone pillars.
The girl who had promised to stand by him, the girl who had spent a thousand nights helping him study the very system that was now rejecting him, stepped into the flickering torchlight. She looked like a dream—her hair braided with pearls, her eyes wide and clear. But as her gaze landed on ***Kang-Min***, there was no pity. There was no grief. There was only a cold, clinical distance. She stepped past him, her silk dress brushing against his muddy hands, and took her place at Kang-Jae's side. She didn't look back. To her, ***Kang-Min*** was already a ghost.
"The Apostle's heart is too powerful for a mortal frame," the Elder whispered, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial rasp. "It burns with a fire that will incinerate the boy from the inside out before the month is over. He needs a stabilizer. A blank foundation to absorb the friction of godhood. A heat-sink."
Jae turned to look at ***Kang-Min*** then. For the first time that night, he smiled. It was a slow, terrifying expression that didn't reach his golden eyes.
"Don't look so surprised, brother," Jae said, his voice a low, melodic hum that vibrated in ***Kang-Min's*** very marrow. "You always said you'd do anything for me. You were born empty so that I could be filled. You were born a Null so that I could become a King."
Jae moved. It wasn't a walk; it was a blur of golden light. Before ***Kang-Min*** could even blink, Jae's hand was around his throat, hoisting him off the ground as if he weighed nothing more than a scrap of paper. The heat radiating from Jae's skin was blistering. ***Kang-Min*** clawed at his brother's wrist, his fingernails breaking against the radiant, stone-hard flesh, but it was like trying to scratch a mountain.
"Stay still," Jae whispered, leaning close enough that ***Kang-Min*** could smell the scent of ozone coming off him. "I'm going to take what the world forgot to give you."
Jae's free hand ignited. He didn't use a tool. He didn't need one. His fingers formed a jagged blade of condensed solar plasma. With a brutal, clinical thrust, he drove his hand into ***Kang-Min's*** chest.
There was no scream. The heat was so intense it vaporized the air in ***Kang-Min's*** lungs and cauterized his vocal cords in the same heartbeat. He felt the skin melt away, felt the ribs snap like dry twigs under a boot, and then... the terrifying, cold sensation of fingers wrapping around his heart. It wasn't a quick death. He felt every artery being severed, every nerve ending firing one last time in a language of absolute agony.
Jae pulled his hand back, and in his palm lay a small, greyish organ. It was still, mana-less, and perfectly hollow.
"Perfect," Jae breathed, watching the heart twitch with a final, desperate rhythm.
"Dispose of the husk," the Elder commanded, already turning his back on the scene. "The Null is dead. The Apostle is born."
***Kang-Min*** was aware of the guards grabbing him by the ankles. They didn't use a stretcher. They dragged him across the courtyard, his heels bouncing off the marble steps, leaving a jagged, dark trail of red behind him that the rain tried and failed to wash away. He heard the iron gates of the Deep Gut—the clan's private abyss—groaning open.
With a casual heave, they tossed him.
The fall felt like an eternity spent in a vacuum. The wind whistled through the hollow cavity in his chest, a sickening sound of air rushing through a void where his life used to be. He hit the bottom with a muffled thud, landing atop a mountain of rotting flesh, calcified bones, and the discarded chemical waste of a thousand failed experiments.
He lay there, gasping for air that his lungs could no longer hold. He watched the tiny, distant circle of the pit's opening, a purple eye in the darkness that grew smaller and smaller until it vanished into the black.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: USER 'KANG-MIN' HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE REGISTRY.]
[STATUS: DELETED.]
The blue screen flickered in his fading vision, a final insult from the world that had butchered him. But as the darkness closed in, the blue light began to fracture. The air in the pit grew unnaturally cold. The shadows seemed to crawl toward the hole in ***Kang-Min's*** chest.
[ERROR... ERROR...]
[BIOLOGICAL ANOMALY DETECTED.]
[THE VACUUM IN THE SUBJECT'S CHEST REFUSES TO BE FILLED BY DEATH.]
A cold, greasy sensation began to spread from the center of his chest. His fingers, stiffening with the onset of death, brushed against the cold, scaly neck of a mutated Void-Crawler—a beast discarded weeks ago. The hate came then. It wasn't a hot, screaming rage. It was a cold, surgical fury that burned in the center of his brain.
[AWAKENING FORBIDDEN CLASS: THE NULL-SURGEON]
[INITIALIZING SYSTEM OVERRIDE...]
[SCALPEL MODE: ONLINE.]
***Kang-Min's*** right hand didn't glow. It didn't burn. It turned into a terrifying, dark shard of obsidian, a spectral blade made of shadow and broken system-code.
He didn't wait for a miracle. He reached into the carcass of the monster beneath him. His fingers found the Ichor-Gland with an instinctual, terrifying precision. He didn't need a heart to live. He just needed a pump.
"Jae..." he whispered, the sound emerging from his throat not as a human voice, but as a distorted rasp of metal and bone. "Keep my heart warm. I'm coming back for it. And when I do... I won't be using anesthesia."
The Null-Surgeon had begun his first operation.