Prologue : The Day the Sky Burned
The sky bled fire.
Above Seoul, a wound tore open, wider than the horizon, a rift of flame and shadow swallowing the night. From its heart emerged a figure out of ancient madness—skin like molten rock, eyes blazing suns, and a sword forged from the core of the world.
Surtr.
The Fire Giant.
The end of all things.
His roar shattered the clouds. His steps cracked mountains. Every Awakened hunter who dared charge him dissolved under the heat of his blade, their bodies nothing but sparks in a storm.
But Surtr was not alone.
The gates had fallen apart, breaking the borders between realms. One by one, fissures spilled their armies into the Earth. Elves with silver blades, dwarves clad in rune-etched steel, beastkin with fangs dripping blood, even demons with wings of shadow—all poured out, screaming, killing, burning.
It should have been awe-inspiring. A fantasy painted into reality.
But it wasn't.
It was war.
The last war.
And humanity?
We weren't even participants. Just collateral damage.
The Observer
"Why are they fighting each other?" a man cried, his voice breaking, watching an elven mage burn under a dwarven axe.
"They're not after us... then what is this?"
I clenched my fists, breath catching in my throat.
Because I knew.
Because I had studied this very scene long before I became a hunter. In a classroom, surrounded by laughing friends who didn't care about myths, I had buried myself in books. Norse tales, prophecies, songs of gods and giants.
At the time, I thought it was just obsession.
But now—watching realms clash before me, watching Surtr's blade rise to unmake the sky—I realized what this was.
Ragnarok.
The final battle of the Nine Realms.
The doom of gods, the slaughter of worlds.
And this time, Earth was caught in its path.
The End
A roar split the heavens as Surtr raised his sword. It wasn't fire anymore—it was the sun itself, condensed into a weapon.
I knew what came next.
I had seen it before.
The blade would fall, and all of existence would end in fire.
Around me, hunters screamed and ran. Nations collapsed in flames. The Nine Realms tore into each other, gods and giants spilling their blood across a battlefield woven into Earth's bones.
And me?
I laughed.
A bitter, broken laugh.
"Seven years," I whispered. "All those years fighting, bleeding... for this?"
My knees buckled, heat searing my skin even before the blade fell.
The end was absolute.
Memories of the First Gate
Fifteen years ago, the first Gate appeared. I was still a boy then. Just sixteen, ordinary, powerless.
The Gate opened in Busan. No one knew what it was. People crowded around to film it on their phones, laughing nervously at the glowing crack in reality. Then came the monsters. Wolves the size of cars. Birds with talons like knives.
And in the chaos... my parents died.
That was the first lesson the Gates taught me.
The world didn't care.
As a minor, I inherited nothing. Relatives stripped away our wealth like vultures picking clean a corpse. All I had left was debt and grief.
But I refused to die.
I entered the gates, sold my blood, risked my bones. I fought with dull blades and broken shields, scrounging scraps from dungeons others had cleared. And somehow, somehow, I awakened.
From F-rank trash to an Awakened.
From nothing to a ranker with the power to stand against monsters.
But no matter how high I climbed, no matter how many dungeons I cleared or how many guilds feared me, none of it mattered.
Because in the end, we all died here.
Under this burning sky.
Under Surtr's blade.
Regression
Darkness swallowed me.
And then—
I opened my eyes to the sound of a humming fan.
The suffocating heat was gone. No screams, no flames, no shaking earth. Just a room. Small, cramped, walls stained with peeling wallpaper.
My apartment.
I stumbled toward the cracked mirror on the wall, my heartbeat deafening in my ears.
And froze.
The face staring back at me wasn't the scarred twenty-six-year-old hunter who had seen the end of the world.
It was mine—
but younger.
Smooth skin. Leaner frame. Eyes not yet hardened by years of battle.
Nineteen.
I was nineteen again.
Realization
I staggered back, my breath ragged. The date on the calendar hanging crookedly on the wall confirmed it.
Seven years before Ragnarok.
Seven years before Surtr's blade.
A laugh tore from my throat—half disbelief, half madness.
Fate had given me another chance.
Not fifteen years back to a helpless child.
But to nineteen, when I was already awakened.
When I already had strength.
Seven years.
Seven years to prepare for Ragnarok.
Seven years to stop the end of all things.
I clenched my fists, staring at my reflection until my knuckles turned white.
This time, I wouldn't crawl.
I wouldn't be powerless.
I wouldn't just survive.
This time...
I would kill a giant.[ SURTR]