Dawn.
A brief, fleeting dream. A dream of space, where Saturn and its moons lined up in perfect succession—Titan, Enceladus, Mimas, Dione, Iapetus, Tethys, Hyperion, Epimetheus… Kwon Jae-jin scanned the 82 moons with an awkward gaze, their long-absent presence suddenly returning to him.
Why this dream again…?
A vast, magnificent upper world. A world without Espers or Guides. A world untouched by Gate Impacts, Creatures, or the wars of humankind. A space that existed solely as an escape, completely detached from all of Kwon Jae-jin’s worries and concerns.
He only ever dreamed of this place when he wanted to run away from reality.
So why now…?
Why this time…?
He couldn’t find an answer.
I was just starting to want to live again.
He had no intention of running. Kwon Jae-jin would live in reality, together with Seo Eui-woo. He wanted to. He was imagining that future, picturing it clearly.
At that moment, the vague shimmer in front of him took shape. Light gathered, forming the outline of a person.
Seo Eui-woo.
Not the twenty-year-old Eui-woo he knew now—but the twenty-four-year-old Seo Eui-woo from before. A little taller, a little more mature…
That Seo Eui-woo stood before him, smiling gently.
He did nothing else—just stood still and smiled at Jae-jin.
Slowly, Jae-jin’s mind settled. His thoughts, once frothing like rising bubbles, began to quiet and sink into calm stillness.
…Why? What do you want?
…
What are you trying to tell me? Why now, after all this time?
Kwon Jae-jin had died and returned. He had parted ways with the twenty-four-year-old Seo Eui-woo he once knew.
That Eui-woo would never exist for him again. It was unavoidable. That was why Jae-jin had accepted his loss, embraced the pain of separation, and chosen to take the twenty-year-old Seo Eui-woo’s hand instead.
He had to.
He didn’t want to regret anything anymore. No one could blame him for that choice.
Are you saying I should still miss you?
You, who erased all of my memories?
A bitter, self-deprecating thought curled into another. A sharp resentment followed.
You even went as far as hiding it from me…
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand why the twenty-four-year-old Seo Eui-woo had done it.
He understood.
At least, in his mind, he did.
Back then, there had been no other choice.
The Kwon Jae-jin of the past had resisted Seo Eui-woo with everything he had, fought him as if they were at war, and even when they had wanted to be kinder to each other, their relationship had made it impossible.
He knew that the tumultuous four years he had spent with the twenty-four-year-old Seo Eui-woo were the very reason he could now envision a bright future with the twenty-year-old version. The time they had shared, the experiences, the emotions—they had been the foundation, the soil from which an entirely unexpected path had sprouted, leading him somewhere new.
Now, he had no doubts.
He could build something strong, something whole, something unshaken with this Seo Eui-woo.
So no—he wasn’t ungrateful.
And no—he wasn’t without regret.
But no matter how much that was true, no matter what he had once felt, he could not waver now. Not for the Seo Eui-woo of twenty-four.
That man was his past.
He could never be his present, nor his future.
No.
Seo Eui-woo, who had done nothing but stand there smiling, suddenly shook his head.
As if to say that wasn’t the answer.
As if to say that Jae-jin wasn’t meant to be looking at him.
Then, slowly, the twenty-four-year-old Eui-woo raised one arm. He extended his index finger, folding the rest of his fingers inward, and pointed toward the distance.
“Look, Jae-jin. Over there.”
“…There?”
“Yes, there.”
Like a signpost at a crossroads, he directed Jae-jin’s gaze toward something far away.
Jae-jin followed the gesture, turning slowly.
At the edge of the pitch-black universe, where nothing but darkness stretched infinitely, something was moving. Something sinister and undefined, twisting in the void.
Holding his breath, Jae-jin narrowed his eyes. He focused, straining his vision, brows furrowing deeply as he stared.
And then, finally, he saw.
A horde of monsters.
Millions of creatures, surging forward in a writhing mass.
Even at the farthest reaches of the unseen universe, gates were opening, and the creatures poured through.
Their sickening stench of death seeped through the air as they advanced, their very presence threatening to devour the peace of humanity, to turn the land barren, to consume everything in their path.
“Now do you see…?”
A voice whispered behind him.
A voice he knew all too well.
Low, gentle—yet it raked against his spine like claws, leaving behind a chilling impact.
“You can’t run, Jae-jin.”
“…Seo Eui-woo.”
“You mustn’t run.”
Jae-jin spun around.
The twenty-four-year-old Seo Eui-woo met his eyes one last time—before he began to fade.
His entire body grew translucent, shifting into nothing but a dim glow, and then, in an instant, he was gone.
Jae-jin sucked in a ragged breath. Cold sweat dripped down his back.
His expression twisted into a scowl as he clenched his fists tightly, nails digging into his palms.
Planting his feet firmly beneath him, he stood straight, unmoving, and surveyed the illusory expanse of space that his own mind had conjured.
By the time his thoughts settled, nothing remained.
Just like the twenty-four-year-old Seo Eui-woo had vanished without a trace, so too did the universe, Saturn, its moons, and the swarming horde of creatures.
As if they had never been there in the first place.
A nightmare… No, an ominous dream.
***
“You’ve come all the way out to the field yourself, Lieutenant Colonel Jang.”
“That’s right, Major Mateo. What’s the status of the search?”
Braving the biting cold, the two men exchanged a brief conversation. Beneath the shattered rock, piles of dirt had accumulated. The search unit had reached the landslide-damaged terrain, working in teams of three, each employing tracking abilities.
“There’s nothing significant to report. Since the First Special Task Force joined in and cleared out the remaining creatures, I’d say the real search starts now.”
“I see. Even so, the situation doesn’t seem particularly promising.”
“No, sir. We plan to re-search the entire area, and if we still find nothing, we’ll expand the perimeter. If, after that, we still come up empty… we’ll have no choice but to search the entirety of the Special Residential District.”
“Hm… Is that so? You intend to see this through to the very end.”
“Yes, sir. Unless he fell from the sky, there must be some trace of him somewhere.”
“You’re that desperate, are you?”
“…Sir?”
“Guiding.”
Major Mateo stiffened, pulling his chin back slightly. Lieutenant Colonel Jang Tae-san’s gaze weighed heavily on him—piercing, as if drilling straight through his skull and reading every thought inside.
“…I’m not sure I follow, sir.”
“Your eyes. You should be more careful. That’s not the look of someone merely following orders.”
“…….”
“No matter how well one hides their claws, the eyes always betray defiance in the end. Tell me, Major—are you truly dedicating yourself to this search for duty, or are you simply pursuing your own desires?”
With a practiced ease, the seasoned lieutenant colonel read the tension in Major Mateo’s frozen expression. Jang Tae-san had an uncanny intuition, a perception honed to perfection.
Mateo was a soldier through and through—a loyal military dog who had never once disobeyed an order in his life. Which was precisely why Jang Tae-san could see right through him. Mateo had never lied during a mission before. Had probably never even considered it.
“I won’t ask for an answer. That alone tells me how extraordinary an S-Class Guide must be.”
A man who had grown up rigid, unyielding as steel—once bent, the change was glaringly obvious.
But it wasn’t men like Mateo who were difficult to read.
It was men like Captain Seo.
Jang Tae-san recalled Captain Seo Eui-woo, who had outright defied orders and vanished on an extended leave. When given the directive to eliminate the S-Class mutant Guide, Kwon Jae-jin, and return with his body, Captain Seo had instead submitted a leave request and disappeared without a trace.
An ill premonition settled over him.
<Captain Seo. Is there a problem?>
<No, Lieutenant Colonel. The transmission was just unstable.>
<Healing Factor, 80 packs?>
<In case you’re concerned—I have no intention of smuggling them.>
There was always an unpleasant aftertaste lingering at the tip of his tongue.
He could only hope his concerns would prove unfounded.
“…Lieutenant Colonel Jang. Do you have a moment?”
“Hm?”
Major Mateo, who had been lost in contemplation, lowered his voice and spoke.
“I haven’t had the chance to report to Brigadier General Oh yet…”
But before he could finish, a loud shout erupted from the search team scouring the landslide debris below.
“Found something! Over here! We’ve found something!”
Search personnel waved their arms, signaling frantically.
It was an area where rock and earth had completely buried the ground, a place they had assumed was empty, devoid of any trace. On the first pass, they had found nothing. But on the second sweep, an A-rank tracker had managed to detect the faintest, flickering pulse deep within the ground—so weak it was on the verge of vanishing.
“There’s something buried here!”
Was it the body of the mutant?
Or… something else?
Major Mateo and Lieutenant Colonel Jang Tae-san locked eyes simultaneously.
