For a moment, everything went strangely quiet.
The monstrous arm that had been clawing its way through the floor suddenly stopped moving.
The claws twitched once… twice…
Then the entire limb slowly pulled back.
Concrete scraped loudly as the thick arm slid downward through the jagged hole it had made, disappearing back into the darkness beneath the apartment.
Dust drifted into the opening.
The living room floor was now nothing more than a shattered ring of broken wood and cracked concrete surrounding a deep black pit.
Seung-hoo stared at it.
"…Why did it—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Zi Yue and Joon-seok were just as confused.
The creature had forced its way up here with so much strength… only to suddenly retreat.
For a brief second, the only sounds were the faint crackle of the emergency broadcast still playing on the television and the distant rumbling of something moving far below the building.
Zi Yue swallowed nervously.
"Did it… leave?" she asked quietly.
But Seung-hoo's instincts were already screaming at him.
His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked down into the darkness.
"No," he said under his breath.
And then—
The ground beneath them gave way.
The cracked floor suddenly split open with a violent CRASH, the remaining supports finally snapping under the damage the monster had caused.
The apartment floor collapsed entirely.
Wood splintered.
Concrete shattered.
Everything beneath their feet vanished at once.
Joon-seok and Zi Yue felt the sudden drop and immediately screamed.
"AHHHH!"
"AHHHHHHH!"
Their voices echoed loudly through the collapsing structure as they fell.
Chunks of debris tumbled around them—pieces of broken furniture, shards of wood, bits of ceiling plaster spinning wildly through the air.
Zi Yue flailed instinctively, her arms reaching for anything she could grab as panic took over.
Joon-seok tried to twist his body, instinctively attempting to land on his feet the way someone might brace for a fall, but his injured body refused to cooperate.
Pain shot through his side.
Seung-hoo fell with them.
But unlike the others, his expression barely changed.
The wind rushed past his ears as the floor above them collapsed inward.
He could hear both of them screaming.
Zi Yue's voice was the loudest.
Pure terror.
He glanced briefly at the walls rushing past as they dropped through the ruined interior of the building.
Then he exhaled calmly.
"…Alright."
Lightning flickered across his back.
"Lightning God's Hand."
A burst of crackling energy exploded behind him.
Two enormous hands made of pure lightning shot outward from his back like glowing limbs, their fingers stretching across the collapsing space around them.
The hands moved faster than the falling debris.
One of them slammed into an intact concrete support beam on the side of the building.
BOOM.
The lightning fingers wrapped tightly around it, gripping the structure like a giant anchor.
The force of the grab jolted Seung-hoo's body violently as the fall suddenly stopped.
The second lightning hand swung outward, brushing past falling debris as it steadied their position in midair.
For a moment, everything swung.
Broken chunks of the apartment floor continued crashing down past them, disappearing into the darkness below.
Zi Yue's scream cut off mid-breath as she realized they were no longer falling.
Her eyes slowly opened.
They were suspended in the air.
Seung-hoo hung there, one arm still supporting Joon-seok while the massive lightning hand behind him gripped the building's remaining structure.
The electric fingers crackled loudly against the concrete beam.
Joon-seok blinked in shock, his breathing ragged as he tried to process what had just happened.
Zi Yue clutched Seung-hoo's sleeve tightly, her whole body shaking as she looked down into the massive hole beneath them.
"…We're… alive?" she whispered.
Seung-hoo didn't answer right away.
His eyes were focused downward into the darkness below.
The hole stretched several floors deep now, the collapsed apartments forming a jagged tunnel through the building.
Somewhere far beneath them, the creature that had burst through the floor earlier was still moving.
The deep rumble of its body scraping against the structure echoed upward through the ruined shaft as Seung-hoo tightened his grip on the lightning hand holding them in place.
For a brief moment, everything held.
Seung-hoo hung suspended in the ruined shaft of the apartment building, the massive lightning hand gripping the concrete support like a glowing anchor. Electricity crackled and popped along its fingers as bits of dust and debris drifted through the air.
Zi Yue clung tightly to Seung-hoo's sleeve, her knuckles white from how hard she was holding on.
Joon-seok leaned heavily against him, still breathing unevenly from his injuries. His head spun as he tried to understand what had just happened.
"…We stopped?" he murmured weakly.
Below them, darkness stretched down through several collapsed floors. Broken furniture, shattered walls, and twisted metal beams created a jagged tunnel through the building.
For a second, it seemed like they had escaped the fall.
Then—
A sharp cracking sound echoed above them.
Seung-hoo's eyes snapped upward.
The concrete beam the lightning hand was gripping had begun to fracture.
Tiny cracks spread across it like spiderwebs under the pressure.
"…Ah," Seung-hoo muttered quietly.
The structure had already been weakened by the explosion and the monster's attack.
Now it was trying to hold the weight of three people and a massive construct of lightning.
It couldn't.
The beam split apart with a loud CRACK.
Chunks of concrete broke loose.
The lightning hand lost its grip.
And suddenly—
They were falling again.
The support collapsed completely, sending them plummeting down the ruined interior of the building.
For a moment, the world became nothing but rushing air and tumbling debris.
The shattered apartments around them blurred together as they dropped past broken walls and hanging cables.
The sounds of the collapsing building—creaking beams, falling rubble, distant crashes—were suddenly drowned out.
Because now there were only two sounds echoing through the hollow structure.
The screams.
"AHHHHHHH!"
"SEUNG-HOO—!"
Joon-seok and Zi Yue screamed at the top of their lungs as they fell tens of feet down the destroyed building.
Zi Yue's voice echoed wildly off the cracked concrete walls, raw with fear as her arms flailed helplessly in the air.
Joon-seok tried to grab onto anything he could reach, but the debris rushing past them offered nothing but sharp edges and splintered wood.
Below them, the darkness of the lower floors rushed closer.
Meanwhile—
Seung-hoo remained strangely calm in the middle of the chaos.
His unzipped jacket whipped violently in the rushing air, his hair blown upward by the speed of the fall.
But his expression barely changed.
While the others screamed, his mind was already calculating.
"Too much debris…"
"Too little stable structure…"
"If I grab another support, it might collapse too"
The broken floors flashed past them as they dropped deeper into the building's hollow interior.
Electric sparks flickered faintly along Seung-hoo's arms again as he prepared to react.
Zi Yue's scream rose even louder beside him, panic taking over completely as the ground below rushed closer and closer.
And somewhere beneath them, far below the collapsing floors, something massive shifted in the darkness.
The air rushed past them as they continued to fall through the broken skeleton of the apartment building.
Pieces of shattered furniture and concrete spun through the air alongside them. A cabinet door tumbled past Zi Yue's shoulder, narrowly missing her head before disappearing into the darkness below.
Zi Yue's scream echoed through the hollow structure.
"AHHHHH—!"
Her hands grabbed blindly at Seung-hoo's arm as panic completely took over.
Joon-seok wasn't much quieter. Injured and dizzy, he struggled to keep his eyes open as the floors above blurred together while they dropped past them.
"W-we're going to—!"
He couldn't even finish the sentence.
But in the middle of the chaos, Seung-hoo's mind stayed clear.
His coat whipped wildly around him in the rushing air, but his eyes were focused downward now, calculating distance, speed, and the unstable debris below.
The ground was coming fast.
Too fast for another mistake.
Upward supports won't hold… he thought.
Everything above is already broken.
If he tried grabbing another beam or wall, the weakened structure might collapse again and bury them all.
So instead—
He changed the direction.
Electric sparks burst across his shoulders again.
"Lightning God's Hand."
The skill activated a second time, but this time the energy didn't shoot upward.
Instead—
Two massive hands made of blazing lightning erupted from behind his back and shot downward.
They stretched far below him like glowing limbs reaching into the darkness.
The fingers spread wide as they descended.
Below them, broken floors, shattered beams, and piles of rubble rushed closer every second.
The lightning hands rotated as they extended, turning their palms toward the ground.
Not to grab.
To land.
The glowing fingers spread outward like enormous feet preparing to catch the fall.
Zi Yue saw the blinding light beneath them and gasped through her scream.
Joon-seok squinted through the rushing air, barely able to focus as the massive constructs formed beneath them.
The lightning hands slammed into the rubble below with a thunderous CRACK.
Dust and broken concrete exploded outward from the impact.
The palms flattened against the debris, their fingers digging into the ground like giant stabilizers as electricity surged across their surface.
The sudden resistance sent a violent jolt through Seung-hoo's body.
Their fall didn't stop instantly—
But it slowed.
Fast.
The lightning hands dragged across the broken floor beneath them, carving glowing streaks through the rubble as friction fought against gravity.
Chunks of debris bounced and skidded away from the impact.
The force of the stop rattled through Seung-hoo's arms and spine, but he held steady, controlling the massive constructs with precise focus.
Above them, more fragments of the collapsed building continued raining down through the shaft.
Zi Yue squeezed her eyes shut as they jerked violently from the sudden deceleration.
Joon-seok groaned in pain from the impact against Seung-hoo's shoulder.
The lightning palms continued sliding across the broken ground beneath them, slowing the fall more and more as sparks crackled across the glowing fingers.
Dust filled the air around them, turning the entire lower floor into a hazy cloud of drifting debris.
And somewhere in that thick dust—
Something large shifted.
A low, grinding sound echoed through the ruined space below as the lightning hands continued bracing against the rubble, holding their weight while Seung-hoo steadied their descent.