The first thing Shin noticed wasn't the silence. It was the motion: the air moved—not randomly or aimlessly, but with a measured rhythm and purpose. A current that swept through the strange realm like a slow heartbeat.
He stood on a floating stone slab, eyes wide open. The supermarket was gone, but whether destroyed or not, he couldn't tell. The only thing he knew was that he was no longer there.
Above him stretched an endless ceiling of clouds shaped like shattered glass—endless as the depths below. The place was a spiraling void of shifting light and shadow, currents flickering like reflections in water. The very architecture looked like it was designed by something that didn't believe in gravity—or rules.
Something was wrong with the sky. It was not blue. Not even gray. Maybe it's not even a sky, he thought. But something different, older. It reminded him of legends he'd heard as a child—of Olympus, the residence of the gods.
There were others—scattered across nearby platforms. A few lay sprawled, screaming or trembling. One woman crouched with her arms over her head. Another clutched a phone, staring at static. An older man in a suit murmured a prayer, while a couple argued whether to jump or stay put.
He didn't call out. There was no value in approaching them yet. So instead, he listened. The wind whispered—perhaps not in words, but in something else: tone, vibration, a pressure in the lungs. It wasn't just air—it was presence. Alive.
A pulse echoed faintly through the floating stones. Some shifted subtly beneath his feet, like they were adjusting to his balance. This place wasn't trying to kill them, he thought. It was trying to understand them.
"Hey! You! You saw that, right?!" A man in a blue tracksuit stumbled toward Shin, waving his arms. "The store just disappeared! This is some experiment—an illusion—right?" Shin chose not to answer, and the man stepped closer, his voice getting louder. "Hey! What's wrong with you?! You look way too calm for this to be normal!"
Shin ignored him.
"Everyone stay together," a broad-shouldered man said from behind, forcing his voice into leadership. "We'll find an exit."
He pointed along a line of slabs close enough to jump—a path of sorts. A few people moved toward it, glad for instruction. The man glanced at Shin, inviting agreement. Shin gave him a neutral look and said nothing.
A young guy in a gray hoodie laughed too loudly in the corner. "This is a prank," he said, swinging his foot into the edge of something that seemed like a cloud. His shoe hit something solid—soft at first, then strangely sticky. He yelped and stumbled back, more startled than hurt. The sky stayed indifferent.
The group frayed apart. "I say we stay put," the business-suited man muttered, kneeling to pray. "Help will come. It always does."
"Fool! No one's coming!" yelled a younger woman. "Look around you! This isn't our world anymore!"
"I saw a path open over there," the tracksuit man added. "I think it wants us to go deeper. Maybe it's a test."
"Or a trap," someone muttered.
Shin remained silent. The division became clearer. One group huddled together, trying to keep calm and looking for safety. The other, restless, eyed the platforms stretching forward, curiosity—or desperation—glinting in their eyes.
A young woman with a scraped cheek approached Shin hesitantly. "You haven't said a word since we got here. You… are you not afraid?"
Shin turned his gaze toward the spiraling platforms. "No."
"…Why?" she asked.
He shrugged. He wasn't sure himself. "Would fear change anything? Besides, this place feels just…" He stopped, his eyes brimming with an unfamiliar glint.
The girl stepped back slowly. Her group pulled her back with wary glances.
Shin scanned the platform one more time. The man in the tracksuit was measuring distances in the air. The praying one stayed on the ground, refusing to move any further. Someone sat with her back to a floating wall, rocking gently, as if waiting would make it go away.
And then—as if an unseen will had given a sign—a path was formed. Floating stone steps spiraling inward like the bones of a titan's ribcage. Without a thought, as if something was urging him, he walked forward. There was no point in pondering when there was no other path anyway.
A woman behind him—one of the bolder ones—rushed forward to follow. "Wait—! I'm coming too—!" The wind responded like a curtain made of air, a single, quiet wall of pressure formed at the end of the path. He pushed forward. The woman raced after him—but he didn't stop.
As soon as he crossed the threshold, sound faded. He turned around. But they were all gone. No people. No shouting. Not even echoes. Just emptiness.
He stood in a corridor made of compressed air, translucent and humming. The walls weren't solid, but they didn't yield. The path extended forward, winding and narrow. He kept walking. The floor pulsed under his steps, the way a bridge creaks when it remembers weight.
Then came the whispers—not voices, but impressions. Glimpses in the mist around him: a field of rusted swords; a blurred image of a massive creature with antlers; and then, a storm—one not made of wind. It pulsed like a drumbeat—violent, electric.At its center stood a blurred and unfocused figure, and Shin could almost swear he heard it speak. It seemed surrounded by lightning—or perhaps it was the existence of lightning itself. Its pressure lingered in his bones. Distant but impossible to dismiss.
The corridor grew narrower. The wind sharpened. At first, he thought it was just cold. But then he felt it under his skin—as if the air were peeling away layers of thought. The further he walked, the more the world seemed to fade, and in its place came something older. Deeper.
Memories he didn't recognize flickered at the edge of his vision. A city made of mirrors, a tower of crystal spires, a throne surrounded by floating runes. And at the center of it all… a storm.
Not merely a gust of wind—it was as if the storm was alive. Neither a man nor a beast. The eye of the storm moved, vibrating. Slowly, yes—but with a force that sent shivers through Shin's body.
A dream? Maybe. But the abyss stared back.
He blinked once, and it was gone. He exhaled. The corridor seemed to tell a story, its air shimmering with sound he could not understand. What was it trying to say?The walls shimmered between glass and sky. The path tilted, but his balance never wavered. He felt upside-down without falling. Forward without moving.
The platform beneath his feet was engraved with an ancient symbol: a spiral, with five branches. One glowed faintly—the branch facing him.
Then the wind howled.
From above, a cyclone descended. Inside it, a shape began to form. First came light. Then came pressure. And then—motion. A being of air, humanoid but fluid. Its arms were wings, its legs smoke. It hovered effortlessly, shifting with every breath.
It felt like something out of a video game: a guardian, a boss at the gate. Except this one was real. Its presence pressed against Shin's bones, vibrating his ribs. He didn't back down. Before he could speak, it attacked.
The first strike came low—sharp, fast, and spiraling. Shin jumped back instinctively, barely avoiding a gust that shredded the stone where he'd just been. A fraction slower, and he'd have been sliced in half.
The guardian circled, its movements were unpredictable but not unavoidable. Each step it took altered the pressure in the air. Each motion pulled the wind in a way that gave away its next attack… if one could read it.
Shin realized, very quickly, that he could. His mind reacted too slowly, so his instinct took over. He ducked, pivoted, sidestepped, leapt—slipping past a slicing stream of air—then rolled under a gust that snapped like a whip.
Every motion of the guardian followed a rhythm. Not a combat pattern, but breath—almost a song. Shin had no weapon or armor, but he had instinct—and it screamed at him: Move!
He jumped. Instead of fighting the wind, he moved along with it. The guardian extended both arms, and twin vortexes launched outward in an X-pattern. Shin leapt, twisting midair. He didn't have time to think—only react.
He landed awkwardly, shoulder slamming against the ground. Pain shot through his side. Still, he smiled. He wasn't winning, but he wasn't losing either. And more importantly, he was improving. Slowly but surely, he learned to sense the motions of the wind.
The guardian's body unraveled and reformed, faster now. The guardian shifted tempo. It began to weave attacks through vertical and horizontal planes, as though testing how well Shin had adapted.
He couldn't keep up, so instead he tried to anticipate. When the next strike came from above, he dropped low. Then dashed immediately—not away from the attack, but into a weak pressure zone he'd felt a heartbeat earlier. The attack missed entirely.
That was when the wind changed. The guardian stopped attacking and hovered silently in the air. The air began to calm down.
Shin exhaled again, chest rising and falling in rhythm with the pulsing stone beneath him. The guardian bowed its head and vanished.
Shin waited. One second. Two seconds. Three. But nothing came. All that remained was the sound of the air—no longer slicing, just… watching. The wind stopped screaming. A single tone—long, pure, and low—rang through the air. The sigil at the center of the platform pulsed with light. And from the far side, a new path opened. A stairway of soft light, leading upward.
Shin didn't rush. He didn't cheer. He stood in silence, then looked at his arms. His hands trembled like a tuning fork had been struck inside his bones. He had felt it again—that presence. That feeling he hadn't known how to name. It was the wind. And whatever lived inside it.
He took one step forward. Then another. And the Tower's breath became his own.