Rain came before dawn.
Cold, colorless rain that erased the city's glow and left only its bones.
Jin Hyeon sat beneath the awning of an abandoned shop, his soaked uniform clinging to his skin. He hadn't slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the field again, the runes dying, the light collapsing, the world itself folding in.
He held his hand out to the drizzle. Droplets should have shimmered faintly with mana, every living thing carried traces of it, but around him, they fell dull and lifeless. The rain lost its glow before touching him.
"…It's really happening," he murmured.
He flexed his fingers, but no warmth returned. The void he felt last night still coiled under his skin like a second pulse, silent and cold. It wasn't power in the way people described it. It didn't surge. It consumed.
He wrapped his hand in his sleeve and stood. He needed to move before daylight brought questions.
Inside the Bureau of Arcane Regulation — Central Hanseong
"An anti-mana disturbance at Sector 12 confirmed," a technician said. "Mana flow dropped by seventy-eight percent within a two-hundred-meter radius. The residual field shows complete annihilation."
At the center of the room, Director Seo Ji-Eun, the masked woman from before, stood perfectly still. Behind her, holographic maps projected fluctuating mana currents across the city, one area pulsing black where the disturbance had occurred.
"Pull the surveillance feed," she ordered.
A screen lit up: a dark training field, faint after-images of light collapsing inward. No visible perpetrator, just a void expanding, devouring illumination like a wound in the air.
One of the senior mages swallowed. "That shouldn't exist. Anti-mana was only theoretical—"
"Then stop thinking theoretically," Seo cut in. "We're past that."
She turned toward her agents, cloaked individuals with silver insignias shaped like rings. "Find whoever was there. If this power spreads unchecked, it won't just kill mages. It'll collapse the network that sustains the city."
Old District, Sector 13
By midmorning, the storm had lightened, leaving a dense fog that curled around the empty streets. Jin moved quietly, keeping his hood up. Without mana, the district's public barriers didn't recognize him, no glow in his identification sigil, no registered aura pattern. To the system, he was a shadow.
He passed a mirror-pane window and paused.
The reflection staring back wasn't entirely his.
His eyes, normally brown, now glinted faintly violet when light hit them, as though something beneath the surface was watching back. A whisper brushed the edge of his hearing.
"Return it."
He spun around. Nothing. Only the whisper of rain against metal.
He pressed a hand to his chest. His heartbeat was steady, but the world around him felt… wrong. Muted. The usual hum of mana, the faint vibration that all living things shared—it was absent. Even the air seemed hollow.
When he moved, he left no echo. No trace.
At the edge of the district, he found a shuttered convenience store. Inside, dust blanketed the shelves; the power grid had long since been cut off. He scavenged what he could, bottled water, instant noodles, a lighter, and sat against the wall, lighting a small flame.
The flame flickered. Then bent away from him.
He frowned, holding it closer. The heat receded, curling back like a frightened creature. After a moment, the lighter clicked out, its fuel spent faster than it should've.
"…It's not just me that's different," he said quietly. "The world's reacting to me."
He remembered the words from years of mana theory lectures:
Mana seeks harmony. Mana repels the void.
But what if the void wasn't absence? What if it was something deeper, something that undoes?
He exhaled and shut his eyes. "I didn't ask for this."
No one ever does.
The voice again, clearer this time, deep, resonant. It wasn't from outside. It came from within.
Jin's eyes snapped open. The world froze for half a heartbeat. Drops of water mid-fall hung in the air, unmoving. His surroundings drained of color until only his breath showed, pale against the dark.
A figure stood at the far end of the aisle, human-shaped, but hollow, as if carved from shadow and starlight.
"Who—"
You pulled from the edge. You broke the order that binds mana to form. And now, it remembers you.
"I don't understand," Jin said. "What are you?"
The remnant of what your kind erased.
The shadow took a step closer, and the shelves around it warped, labels curling to ash. They built this world on power stolen from silence. You've merely given silence its voice again.
Jin's fists clenched. "If this is a curse, take it back."
It isn't a curse, the voice replied, fading as the world restarted, color bleeding slowly back. It's a return.
Then the figure was gone.
The lighter lay dead on the floor.
Elsewhere — On the Hunt
Three Bureau agents approached the old district checkpoint. Their sensors flickered erratically as they neared the perimeter. The senior operative, a tall man in gray armor, frowned. "Mana readings collapse as we enter the radius. Instruments go blind."
"Director said to bring back the subject alive," another muttered. "Alive might not be possible if this null field keeps eating everything."
"Then adapt."
They pressed forward, cloaked spells flickering, weapons drawn.
Back to Jin
He'd barely stepped outside when the air shifted. The faint hum of mana—gone for hours—suddenly reappeared in thin pulses, like sonar.
They were searching for him.
Jin's pulse quickened. He ducked behind a wrecked car, scanning the mist. Three figures moved with precision—Bureau insignias glinting faintly.
He didn't know how he knew, but his instincts screamed danger.
"Target detected," one of them said, voice calm through the static of a comm-link. "Minimal aura signature, but field distortion confirmed."
He had seconds.
Jin turned and ran. Boots splashed through puddles as spells ignited behind him, threads of blue fire that should've engulfed him. But when the flames neared, they died. Not fizzled, ceased. The mana within them snuffed out like breath on glass.
The agents hesitated. "Negative response. Fire constructs collapsing!"
"What? That's impossible!"
Jin ducked into an alley, chest burning, mind blank with adrenaline. He pressed his hand against a wall for balance, and watched the enchanted sigil painted there dissolve under his palm, like ink in water.
He didn't mean to do it.
But he couldn't stop.
The world trembled, a faint hum vibrating through the ground. Light from every nearby rune cracked, the color draining out until only darkness remained. The agents stumbled, their spells flickering uselessly.
And then, silence.
When Jin looked up, the fog itself seemed to recoil from him. The air had turned weightless, hollow. In that instant, he understood one thing:
Whatever this power was, it didn't belong here.
It wasn't something you wielded. It was something that erased.
The lead agent recovered first, eyes wide with fear. "By the Council… he's nullifying the weave! This whole sector could—"
The ground ruptured. Not from impact, but from absence—matter dissolving, colors bleeding away like water through paper. The agent's words cut off as Jin staggered backward, terrified of himself.
"Stop!" Jin shouted. "I don't want this!"
But the void didn't listen.
The world folded inward, light bending until only black remained. Then, as suddenly as it began, the pressure vanished.
Jin opened his eyes. The street was still. The agents were gone, only their metallic insignias remained, half-melted, floating in the air before turning to dust.
He fell to his knees. The silence pressed against him like a weight.
"What… am I?" he whispered.
Far above, in the Bureau tower, Director Seo felt the surge. Her console flared red.
"Containment failed," an assistant shouted. "Sector 13—collapsed! He's
still alive!"
Seo's gaze hardened. "Then he's more than an anomaly."
She turned to the window, watching lightning ripple across the horizon. "He's evolution's betrayal."