Dae-ho woke to the sound of his phone vibrating across the floor. It was not the gentle buzz of a notification. It was a continuous, angry rattle, the kind that meant someone had been calling for a while and was not planning to stop.
He reached out blindly, his hand slapping the concrete twice before finding the device. The screen was crowded with missed calls. Seventeen of them. His landlord, three unknown numbers, and one from a prefix he did not recognize. The phone buzzed again in his palm. The caller ID read "Hunter Management Agency."
He answered before he could think about it.
"Kang Dae-ho?"
His voice came out rough. "Speaking."
"This is Agent Choi from the HMA. You are required to report to the Seoul Gate Command Center within two hours. A vehicle will arrive at your location in thirty minutes."
He sat up too fast. His ribs reminded him of last night's fight with a sharp, stabbing pain that made him gasp.
"What? Why?"
"The situation will be explained upon your arrival. Please be prepared for extended deployment. Bring your hunter registration and any personal equipment you deem necessary."
The line went dead.
Dae-ho stared at the phone, then at the cracked ceiling of his apartment, then at the wilting plant on the windowsill. Extended deployment. Those were words they used when something big happened. Something that required all hands, even the ones at the bottom.
He opened his streaming app out of habit. The number on his channel made him blink.
Thirty-two thousand followers.
He had gone to sleep with five thousand. In the seven hours he had been unconscious, another twenty-seven thousand people had found his channel. The clip Min-ji edited was now at two million views. His last stream, the one where he sat on a subway bench and said almost nothing, had been watched by forty thousand people.
His phone buzzed again. A message from Min-ji.
"Turn on the news."
He fumbled for the small television he kept in the corner, the one that only got three channels and required hitting the side to make the picture stop flickering. He hit it twice, and the screen resolved into a scene that did not make sense at first.
It was Gwanghwamun Square. He recognized the statues, the wide pedestrian area, the administrative buildings in the background. But something was wrong. The sky above the square was not the pale grey of a Seoul morning. It was black, a perfect circle of absolute darkness hanging in the air like a wound.
The camera zoomed in. The black circle was a gate. Gates were common enough, but this one was different. It was huge, spanning the width of the square, and its edges were not the usual jagged tear in reality. They were smooth, almost polished, like the rim of a hole that had been cut with precision.
A reporter's voice overlayed the image, tense and hurried.
"…confirmed to be an S-rank gate, the first to appear in Seoul in over two years. The Hunter Management Agency has declared a level five emergency. All hunters within the metropolitan area are ordered to report for duty. We are receiving reports that the gate has unusual properties…"
Dae-ho watched the black circle pulse, a slow rhythm that made his teeth ache even through the television screen. S-rank. The last S-rank gate had appeared in Busan and killed three hundred people before it was closed. That had taken an S-rank hunter, a full guild, and two weeks of constant combat.
He looked at his knife, still stained with goblin blood, lying on the floor next to his mattress. Then he looked at the gate on the screen, that perfect black circle that seemed to swallow light itself.
His phone buzzed again. Another message from Min-ji.
"Don't go. You're E-rank. You'll die."
He typed back: "They're sending a car."
"Run. Go to your mother's. Pretend you didn't see the news."
He wanted to. The thought was there, a sharp and immediate instinct that screamed at him to pack a bag and disappear. He was E-rank. He had no business near an S-rank gate. The rules of the world said so. His ranking, his skill, his entire existence as a hunter was built on the understanding that he stayed in the shallow end while the real hunters handled the deep water.
But he had never been good at following rules.
He pulled on the same hoodie from yesterday. It smelled like goblin and sweat, but it was the only one he had that was not torn. He strapped on his tactical vest, the one with duct tape holding the left pocket shut, and checked his gear. One knife, sharpened three weeks ago. Two health potions, both diluted because that was all he could afford. One flash grenade. He had used the last one last night.
His hand paused over the empty slot where the grenade should have been. He had not bought a replacement. He had not thought he would need one for months.
A horn blared outside, three short bursts. He looked out the window. A black sedan waited at the curb, its windows tinted so dark he could not see inside. An HMA insignia was stamped on the door.
He grabbed his phone, his knife, the potions, and the camera. The camera was instinct now, a reflex he did not question. He clipped it to his vest, pressed record, and walked out the door.
The chat populated immediately. A few hundred people, then a thousand, then two thousand, drawn by the notification that he was live. He did not look at the numbers. He kept his eyes on the stairs, on the door at the bottom, on the black sedan waiting outside.
He climbed into the back seat without waiting for permission. The interior was sterile, smelling of leather and air freshener. A man in a grey suit sat in the front passenger seat, his face turned toward the window.
"You're Kang Dae-ho," the man said. It was not a question.
"That's what my ID says."
The car pulled away from the curb. The man in the grey suit did not look at him.
"You've been assigned to the S-rank gate as a special correspondent. You will enter with the first wave. Your role is to provide livestream coverage for public transparency."
Dae-ho's mouth went dry. "I'm E-rank."
"We are aware."
"E-rank hunters don't go into S-rank gates. That's not a rule. That's common sense."
The man turned. His face was bland, forgettable, the kind of face that belonged on a bureaucrat who spent his life saying no to people. But his eyes were sharp, and they studied Dae-ho with an intensity that made him want to shrink into the seat.
"The gate has a unique property," the man said. "Only hunters currently livestreaming can enter. We tested it. Eight hunters attempted to cross the threshold without an active stream. All eight were repelled. One sustained injuries consistent with a fall from significant height."
Dae-ho processed that. A gate that only let you in if you were broadcasting. It made no sense. Gates did not care about cameras. Gates were wounds in the world, bleeding monsters and mana, not selective bouncers at a club.
"So you need streamers," he said slowly.
"We need anyone who can enter. The gate will not close on its own. If we cannot send hunters in, the monsters will eventually come out. An S-rank breach in central Seoul would be catastrophic."
The car wove through streets that were emptier than they should be. The city was awake, but people were indoors, curtains drawn, faces pressed against windows as they watched the black circle on their screens and in the sky.
"There are hunters with bigger followings than me," Dae-ho said. "The S-rank streamers. The gatefluencers. Why not grab one of them?"
The man's lips pressed into a thin line. "They are refusing to enter. Their guilds are advising them to wait until the situation is assessed. They are concerned about liability."
"So you're sending me because I'm disposable."
The car stopped at a checkpoint. Soldiers in full gear waved them through. The square was ahead now, close enough that Dae-ho could see the gate with his own eyes, not through a screen. It was worse in person. The black circle hung in the air like a held breath, and looking at it made his head feel strange, like the world was tilting slightly to one side.
"We are sending you because you are currently the most viewed hunter in the country," the man said. "Your clip has been seen by over five million people in the last twelve hours. The public knows your face. They will watch you. And if they watch you, the gate will let you in."
Dae-ho stared at the gate. The black surface rippled, a slow undulation that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat.
"And if I die on stream?"
The man did not answer.
The car stopped. The door opened. Dae-ho stepped out into the chaos of the command center. Tents had been erected in the square, filled with screens and maps and people shouting into headsets. Hunters in combat gear moved in tight groups, their faces grim. A woman with a clipboard ran past him, nearly colliding with his shoulder, and did not apologize.
His camera caught all of it. The chat was a wall of text, too fast to read, but he caught fragments. "S-rank gate." "He's really going in." "E-rank in an S-rank dungeon RIP."
A voice cut through the noise.
"Kang Dae-ho."
He turned. A woman was walking toward him, her movements efficient and precise. She wore the uniform of the White Tiger Guild, dark grey with a white tiger emblem on the shoulder. Her black hair was pulled back so tight it looked painful. Her face was all sharp angles and cold assessment.
"Chae Soo-jin," she said. "A-rank. I'll be leading the first team. You're with me."
She did not wait for a response. She turned and walked toward the gate. Dae-ho followed, because he did not know what else to do.
"I didn't agree to this," he said, catching up. "They just put me in a car and told me I was going."
"That's how it works when an S-rank gate opens," she said without looking at him. "You go where they tell you."
"I'm E-rank. I don't go into S-rank gates. That's not a thing that happens."
She stopped. Turned. Her eyes were dark and flat, the eyes of someone who had seen too much to be surprised by anything anymore.
"You're not going in as a hunter. You're going in as a camera. Stay behind me, stay quiet, and point that thing at whatever I tell you to point it at. If something attacks, run. I'll handle it."
She started walking again. Dae-ho watched her back, the confident stride, the way her hand rested on the sword at her hip. This was what a real hunter looked like. This was what A-rank meant.
He looked at his own reflection in a tent's window. A man in a dirty hoodie and a broken vest, holding a knife that cost less than the shoes on Soo-jin's feet.
His phone buzzed. Min-ji.
"I saw you on the news. Please don't do this."
He typed back: "Already here."
"The gate is broadcasting something. The rules are different. Don't trust anything inside."
He pocketed the phone and kept walking. The gate loomed ahead, its black surface swallowing the light from the morning sky. The air around it was cold, colder than it should be, and there was a smell he could not identify. Ozone, maybe. Or something older.
Soo-jin stopped at the edge of the perimeter. Four other hunters waited there, their gear polished and professional. They looked at Dae-ho the way people look at a stray dog that wandered onto a construction site. With confusion, and a little pity.
"This is the streamer," Soo-jin said, her voice flat. "He stays in the back."
One of the hunters, a man with a scar running from his ear to his jaw, raised an eyebrow. "He's E-rank."
"He has a hundred thousand viewers," Soo-jin said. "The gate won't let anyone in without a stream. So we bring the streamer."
She looked at Dae-ho. For a moment, something flickered in her eyes. Not pity, exactly. Something closer to resignation.
"When we cross," she said, "you go first. The gate will only open for you. Once you're inside, we follow. Don't stop moving. Don't look back."
Dae-ho looked at the gate. It was close enough to touch now, a wall of absolute blackness that seemed to hum with a frequency he felt in his bones.
"What's on the other side?" he asked.
Soo-jin's hand tightened on her sword. "No one knows. The hunters who went in before us haven't come back."
She looked at him. "Ready?"
He was not ready. He had a cheap knife, two diluted potions, and a camera that was running low on battery. He had thirty-two thousand followers who thought he was funny, and a mother who was probably watching him on television right now, crying again.
He looked at the gate. The black surface rippled, and for a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw something moving in the darkness. Something that was waiting.
He turned on his camera's front-facing view, so the audience could see his face. His own tired eyes stared back at him from the corner of the screen.
"Hey," he said, his voice steadier than he felt. "If you're watching this, I'm about to walk into an S-rank gate. I'm E-rank. This is probably a terrible idea. But someone has to go first, and apparently that someone is me."
He looked at Soo-jin. She nodded once.
He took a step forward.
The gate swallowed him whole.