Prologue
It was a fragment of a dying world.
The ground bled, and the sky collapsed. The air hardened like resin, and the celestial sphere came crashing down. Flickering stars lost their light, and the microcosm twisted upon itself. Like an inexperienced painter spilling pigment across a sketch and smearing it with a brush—chaos was patched over chaos, stitched into a mess of a world. A world blanketed in countless corpses. A world where only the two of them existed.
A child of five. A boy in his teens. A man in his twenties and thirties.
A man with the same face as the blood-drenched corpses slowly approached.
“Si…baek hyung.”
Smiling brightly, his expression was grotesquely twisted as he stepped over corpses with his own face.
“It’s time to choose.”
The man whispered, parting his arms gracefully like a maestro.
“If you choose me, your precious little brothers will die and this world will fall. But if you choose this world instead, then everyone will survive. Everyone.”
Everyone.
When he uttered that word, his voice curved cheerfully. And Kim Sibaek knew. He knew that the man would be the only one excluded from that ‘everyone’ who survives.
The man knew too. He knew that Kim Sibaek knew.
As if already certain of the answer Kim Sibaek would give—having grasped everything, having understood everything—the man asked with a radiant smile.
“What will you choose, hyung?”
***
1)
It was a memory of a summer day when a heat more intense than the summer itself filled the alleys and overflowed from the stadium.
After a night shift, he’d come home in the morning and slept until the afternoon. Yawning, he finally left his studio apartment. Since chicken shops always got slammed with orders during nighttime soccer matches, he’d gone early—but even then, the queue was long.
With arms full of chicken and cola, he visited the orphanage, where the kids ran to him, screaming with joy. Whether they were cheering for him or for the chicken, he couldn’t tell, but he roughly tousled their hair either way.
He’d played with them a bit and was gathering the laundry on the rooftop when that kid came up to help.
Touched that someone who still looked like a child in his eyes had come to assist, he patted the boy’s head. His face flushed instantly.
Worried, he asked what was wrong, and the boy hesitated for a long time before his voice, as red as his face, finally came out.
“Hyung.”
The youthful voice that burst from those immature lips burned hotter than the summer heat saturating the world.
“I know I’m still a kid. But I’m already in middle school now.”
Apparently, he didn’t like being treated like a child. Sibaek had laughed and promised not to do it again, but the boy’s youthful voice grew even thicker.
So thick with yearning that it could no longer be ignored.
“In just a few more years, I’ll be an adult—just like you, hyung. So, I… I…”
The flood of emotions overflowing from that young heart turned into trembling sobs. His wet, wavering voice clung to him desperately.
The heat was so intense it blurred his vision. He blinked several times to clear the sweat from his lashes, but his senses, wrapped in the boy’s heat, refused to clear.
Only one thing was vivid: the boy’s desperate black eyes, and the fractures in the world that distorted around him. Fractures that seemed ready to swallow him whole.
Without hesitation, he reached out to the boy. Just like he had nine years ago.
When he grabbed and shoved the boy away, the fracture instead began to devour him.
The boy’s eyes widened, lips parting as if to say something—but the sound of the world no longer reached him.
Then came the sensation of the world itself rapidly pulling away. As the boy’s small hand stretched toward him one last time, he smiled.
That was his final memory of Earth.
***
The hand of the boy—still small even in middle school, the one he saw last—now felt large and firm, as if grabbing hold of him. Kim Sibaek’s eyes shot open. He blinked slowly, dazed, until realization trickled in.
A dream.
He let out a drowsy sigh and absentmindedly fiddled with the ring on his left middle finger. He must have been more exhausted than he thought. Dosing off in the middle of a battlefield, with a full-scale war just ahead.
Rubbing the stiffness from his nape, text appeared in the air before him.
[Death and Beauty gaze worriedly upon their apostle.]
Maybe because of the dream he’d just had, Kim Sibaek stared at the floating text with a brief sense of estrangement.
Divine Words—messages delivered to mortals, shielding them from the raw presence of a god, which would otherwise obliterate mind, soul, and flesh.
It was a phenomenon he’d never experienced on Earth—proof, above all else, that this was a different world.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just nodded off for a second.”
[Death and Beauty manifest in physical form before you.]
Before the message even finished displaying, a fluffy baby crow appeared.
With stubby wings fluttering, it landed on Kim Sibaek’s head, clicking its beak.
But instead of a bird’s chirp, it spoke in human language.
“My apostle. Your god worries, for sorrow shrouds your form.”
“Just a dream, that’s all, Lord Biendeoé.”
Kim Sibaek raised a hand to the top of his head and gently patted the incarnation of the god of Death and Beauty, Biendeoé, with his palm.
“Dreaming of Earth again?”
“Sharp as always.”
“Who would know my apostle better than I?”
Smiling faintly, Kim Sibaek sank deeper into his chair. The baby crow shifted slightly as the balance tilted.
“Was it that child again? From what your god has seen, my apostle always sinks deeper into sorrow whenever he recalls that little runt.”
“Is that so?”
He rubbed his face absentmindedly with one hand.
“Well, it was a long time ago.”
It had already been sixty-eight years since he was swept up in some unknowable rupture and crash-landed in Mak Slechth. In the fantasy novels he used to read from PC networks or rental shops, protagonists would always find some way to return to Earth, but reality hadn’t been so kind.
At first, he missed home. It was hard. But sixty-eight years was long enough for mountains to erode and rise again seven times over. His homeland had long since ceased to be Earth—it was Mak Slechth now. It had been over twenty years since the thought of returning had even crossed his mind.
Time in this new world was more vivid, and memories of Earth had dulled with the years. Still, there was a longing that never fully wore away.
Kim Sibaek channeled holy energy into the ring on his left middle finger. A hologram flickered to life, projecting scanned photos. They were the only two pictures he’d had in his wallet when he fell into Mak Slechth.
One was taken at the orphanage with his younger brothers. The other was of just the two of them, on the day that child graduated from elementary school. Though his earthly belongings had worn down over the years, he had kept those photos. They became the embodiment of his endless longing.
“You still can’t forget your brothers, can you?”
“I’ve given up on returning, but that doesn’t mean I can erase the yearning too.”
The brothers frozen in his mind, preserved in childhood, must have grown up by now. Imagining how they might look today was both a joy and a torment for Kim Sibaek.
As time passed, that longing turned into a gentle ache—one that surfaced occasionally as a fond memory, bringing a soft smile to his lips. But there was one memory that never failed to tighten his chest every time he looked back.
Hyung.
Those black eyes that always followed him.
If anything on Earth still held a grip on him, it was that child. The only true regret he’d carried from that world.
Kim Sibaek ran a hand through his hair, brushing away the thoughts. A child he would never see again. He had no choice but to believe the kid was living well, even without him. He deliberately changed the subject in a light tone.
“So, once this war’s over, I’m definitely organizing a World Cup here in Mak Slechth, you know?”
[Death and Beauty groan that they’re sick to death of hearing about the damn World Cup and making it to the Round of 16.]
Biendeoé complained via Divine Words this time, not even bothering to open the crow’s beak. But the bitterness of a Korean who’d been yanked into another world just before witnessing his country’s first-ever advance to the Round of 16 hadn’t faded—not even after sixty-eight years. With the advantage of being the host nation, wasn’t there still a chance they might’ve pulled off a miracle and won?
“No, but seriously. Do you know what that Round of 16 really meant to us?”
[Death and Beauty are utterly fed up.]
After all these years of clinging to the World Cup as a distraction from the boy’s ever-pursuing heat, the obsession had become real. Once the war was over, Kim Sibaek fully intended to persuade the Emperor to host an international football tournament.
“A friendly match between nations instead of war—how peaceful is that?”
“Fine. So after this ‘international match’ or whatever, what do you plan to do?”
“Then… I’ll just take a break. No thinking, no planning.”
After landing in this world with nothing but the clothes on his back and surviving decades of hardship, he was due for some peace. Just the thought of a life without bloodshed made Kim Sibaek smile. It was a comforting thought.
Not long after, a holy knight arrived. Biendeoé, sensing the approach of one of his chosen warriors, clicked his beak.
“My Lord Apostle, it is time. Shall I ready your weapon?”
“No need. This is not a battlefield where a cleric like me needs to draw a blade.”
Rising from his seat, Kim Sibaek exited the temporary structure, flanked by a towering knight whose head nearly brushed the doorframe. Beyond the horizon, soldiers stood in perfect formation—rows and columns stretching to the end of sight. The allied army, with the Atrebathum Empire at its core.
The Emperor’s rallying cry echoed through the camp, stirring the soldiers’ spirits. Then came the apostles of the various temples, offering up prayers with the aid of their high priests to bestow blessings effective in battle.
A divine radiance spread across the army. Blessings layered over their ranks—undaunted valor infused their weapons with killing intent, pure faith bolstered their morale, and overflowing vitality amplified their healing.
Now it was Kim Sibaek’s turn, apostle of Biendeoé, god of Death and Beauty.
Unlike the other apostles, who needed their high priests to assist them, Kim Sibaek stood alone. There were apostles who had served their gods longer than he had, but none possessed purer divine energy.
“Fear death, but do not yield to it.”
[Death and Beauty gaze down upon the Allied Forces.]
The god responded to his apostle’s prayer, bestowing their blessing. Sacred power surged forth—an aura of death swept across the army. Not reckless disregard for life, but righteous courage settled deep in every soldier’s heart.
It was the beginning of the final holy war of the era—to eliminate Edokers, the chaos-bringer who sought to plunge the world into ruin.
That day, the core of Edokers was destroyed—and along with it, one apostle vanished from Mak Slechth.
***
October, 202X — Zone 0, Daejeon, the provisional capital of South Korea.
“Hold the line! If this breaks, you’re all fucking dead too!”
“Feels like we’re gonna die from these bastards before you even get the chance to kill us, Chief!”
“Why the hell are these monsters suddenly swarming like crazy?!”
Zone 0-C was in chaos, filled with a cacophony of furious shouts and the howls of magical beasts. Gwak Yoonsang, section chief of the Paranormal Phenomena Response Agency’s support division, ran frantically across the battlefield, barking orders at the hunters as they fought to hold the defensive wall.
“Hey! Where the hell are the reinforcements?! Didn’t the Seven Guild leader return to Korea this morning?!”
— That crazy dog still isn’t responding! Anyway, the guild master’s not here, but the Seven Guild is on its way to you… what the fuck.
The comms officer on the other end suddenly bit back a curse. To curse mid-transmission while speaking to a superior meant something had gone very wrong. Gwak Yoonsang felt a chill crawl up his spine. What could be worse than monsters abandoning their habitats and suddenly launching a coordinated assault on the barrier?
— Chief. Another Eid Portal just opened in Jungni-dong.
“…Fuck.”
And just like that, the world reminded him that there’s always room for things to get worse.
Jungni-dong was a civilian area. The 7777 Guild, which had been en route to support Zone 0-C, was now redirected there instead. Gwak Yoonsang bit down hard, tasting blood on his lips.
The chaos wasn’t limited to Zone 0-C. Monsters from around Daejeon were going berserk all at once, sending every sub-zone adjacent to the barrier into disarray. Desperate calls for aid crackled non-stop through the comms.
‘Don’t tell me… is the Cataclysm happening again?’
Gwak Yoonsang tried to shake off the ominous thought as he swung his blade—when suddenly, the air twisted.
Different from the warning signs of an Eid Portal, the space itself crumpled like crushed paper. The distortion tore into an obsidian-hued rift, and from within it, a spear of piercing light shot out.
The light stabbed into his eyes like acid, and Gwak instinctively closed them, forgetting the battle for a moment.
When he opened them again, the rift was gone. In its place stood a young man.
“….”
The man swayed slightly, pressing his temple as if dizzy, then glanced around. Too far to make out the face clearly, but he definitely looked shocked.
So was Gwak Yoonsang.
‘What the hell? A mage? But what’s with those clothes?’
He had no idea what that strange distortion had been, but the sudden appearance could be chalked up to some sort of magic. Still, what struck him more than the method of appearance was the man’s outfit.
It wasn’t one of those flashy robes hunters wear after awakening and getting all full of themselves. It was long, draped, elaborate—a bizarre design.
On top of that, the guy had a big black puffball stuck on his head.
Gwak Yoonsang reached a conclusion: this lunatic was cosplaying in front of a monster swarm.
“Hey, mage! Save the cosplay for later—run this way now!”
The swarm, stunned momentarily by the flash of light, had begun to move again, revealing their vicious nature.
To them, a lone human standing still was the perfect snack.
Yet the young man simply tilted his head and watched the monsters rush toward him.
“You son of a bitch!”
Insane or not, Gwak couldn’t just watch someone die right in front of him. Cursing loudly, he sprinted toward the lunatic cosplayer—
—and then froze.
The man, who had been standing idle until that moment, raised a hand, his fist subtly glowing.
Then, as one of the beasts lunged with jaws wide open, he casually slammed his fist into its head. Barehanded.
Thwack!
The beast dropped dead without so much as a scream.
“….”
Gwak Yoonsang, and all the other hunters nearby, couldn’t believe their eyes.
Even the monsters seemed to falter.
‘Were their skulls always that soft…?’
“Hurk.”
The moment he blinked, the young man who had just been far away was now standing right in front of him.
Gwak couldn’t process how the guy had moved so fast. The man simply smiled, then tapped the back of the sword Gwak was holding.
“Uh, wha… you want my sword?”
Whether he understood or not, the young man just looked at him.
Ordinarily, this would’ve been unthinkable. No hunter would hand over their weapon mid-battle.
Besides, Gwak’s weapon was a sabre—a fencing blade. Most awakened who wield swords in Korea used the curved hwandos rooted in kendo. Would this guy even know how to use it?
But that smile was soft, harmless… and the man had just shattered a monster’s skull with his bare fist.
So Gwak handed him the sabre.
The man swung it a few times to get a feel for its balance, then stepped forward with his right foot and raised the blade in a proper fencing stance.
Gwak’s jaw dropped slightly.
‘He knows fencing?’
Before he could voice the question, the monsters’ hesitation gave way to renewed aggression.
Leading the charge, pounding the earth with each step, was a massive beast known as the Ironhide Grizzly.
As the name implied, its hide was like armor. Even destroying its core was a nightmare.
No matter how strong this guy was, there was no way he could handle that alone.
Just as Gwak Yoonsang drew his backup sabre and prepared to rush in to assist the young man, the latter extended his blade forward.
Before anyone could even admire the astonishingly flawless fente—the classical fencing attack pose—the sword tip reached the onrushing Ironhide Grizzly’s armored hide.
Splat!
Like a water balloon bursting at its seams, the Ironhide Grizzly exploded in a single instant.
That’s right. If destroying the deeply buried core was too difficult… then simply destroy the entire body.
And so began the magical beast dismemberment show.
The hunters, including Gwak Yoonsang, could only gape as they watched the young man—gliding, floating, elegant in every motion—carve through the horde of beasts with exquisite grace.
Kim Sibaek, former detective and current Apostle, had returned for the first time in sixty-eight years.
As he effortlessly slaughtered the monsters, Kim Sibaek glanced upward at Biendeoé, whose beak was clutching onto his hair. He spoke in a voice so low that none of the stunned hunters around them could hear.
“It’s been a long time since I used a sword. But more importantly… this isn’t Mak Slechth, so why are magical beasts appearing here?”
[Death and Beauty is flustered.]
[Death and Beauty cries out—WHERE ARE WE?!]
[Death and Beauty desperately calls upon Death and Rest.]
[Death and Rest does not respond.]
[Death and Beauty sobs—Big sis, please save me.]
“Lord Biendeoé, you’re being distracting.”
While Biendeoé flailed in half-mad confusion, Kim Sibaek remained calm, steadily hunting down the beasts as he examined his surroundings.
Where the hell… was this place?
***
Exactly 7,777 days later—
“Ah.”
Within a boundless, pure darkness, a short breath escaped, and the corners of a man’s lips stretched into a thin, crescent smile.
Found.
Found.
Found.
At last—he had found him.
The darkness rippled as a delirious, ecstatic grin spread, saturated in madness.
“I’m coming for you now, hyung.”
