The sky had been the color of a rotten plum for twenty years. No stars, no sun, just a thick purple haze that felt like it was pressing down on your shoulders every second of the day. I was finally dying under it, and honestly? It was about time.
I was slumped against a pile of broken bricks in an alleyway in Seoul. My lungs felt like they were filled with wet sand. Every breath I took came out as a pathetic, bubbly wheeze. I was thirty-eight years old, but looking at my shaky, bone-thin hands, I looked eighty. That's what being a "Zero" got you.
In the world of 2046, you were either a "Player" or you were trash. The Players had the systems, the fireballs, and the glowing swords. Me? I was the guy who followed them into the dungeons to pick up the monster teeth they didn't want so I could trade them for a bowl of watery soup. I was a scavenger. A rat.
Thump-thump.
The black stone in my chest gave a heavy, cold pulse. It wasn't a heart. It was a jagged piece of obsidian that had slammed into my sternum twenty years ago when the rifts first opened. For two decades, it did nothing but ache when it rained and make my heart skip beats. It was a useless piece of space junk that wouldn't let me die, but wouldn't let me live either.
A shadow blocked the purple light at the end of the alley. It smelled like a dumpster in the middle of summer—sour and rotting.
I looked up. A Horned Crawler was squeezing its way between the buildings. It was a giant, armored bug, maybe twenty feet tall. Its legs made a horrible skritch-skritch sound against the brick walls, carving deep grooves in the stone. Its red eyes locked onto me, and it opened its mandibles, dripping thick, yellow slime that sizzled when it hit my shoes.
"Come on then," I coughed, a bit of blood hitting my chin. "I'm tired of the view."
The bug shrieked—a sound like metal scraping metal—and lunged.
I didn't feel the teeth. I felt an explosion.
It started in the center of my chest. The black stone, which had been cold for twenty years, suddenly turned white-hot. It felt like someone had shoved a live power line into my heart.
[ SYSTEM OVERDRIVE: 100% ] [ EMERGENCY RESET INITIATED ] [ GOING BACK... ]
A voice that sounded like a thousand broken radios screamed in my skull. My vision went white. My bones felt like they were melting into liquid. The alley, the bug, and the purple sky didn't just disappear—they shattered.
"Min-ho? Kang Min-ho! Are you actually sleeping while I'm explaining the final exam?"
CRACK!
The sound of a ruler hitting my desk was like a physical punch. I jolted upright, my chair screeching against the floor. My hand instinctively went to my waist for the rusted knife I always carried, but my fingers hit nothing but soft fabric.
"Whoa! Look at him go!" someone snorted from the back of the room. "Min-ho looks like he just saw a ghost."
I wasn't in the dirt. I wasn't dying.
I was sitting in a room that smelled intensely of chalk dust and cheap floor cleaner. The air was thick, but not with smoke—it was humid with the breath of thirty teenagers. Sunlight—real, golden, beautiful sunlight—was pouring through the window, hitting the dust motes dancing in the air.
I looked at my hands. They were small. My skin was pale and unscarred. No dirt under the fingernails. No chemical burns from scavenging in the "Bleed" zones. I was wearing a stiff white shirt and a blue tie that felt like it was choking me.
"Min-ho? Do you need to go to the nurse?" Mr. Park asked.
I stared at him. He was alive. I remembered him being torn in half by a rift-hound while trying to hold the classroom door shut. Seeing his face—annoyed, healthy, and completely normal—made my stomach do a slow roll.
I didn't say a word. I gripped the edges of my desk, my knuckles turning white. I slowly reached up and unbuttoned my shirt, ignoring the gasps and whispers from the girls nearby.
The stone was there.
But it wasn't a dead piece of rock anymore. It was embedded in my chest, smooth and dark, but it was pulsing with a faint silver light. Tiny silver veins, thin as spider silk, were crawling outward from the stone, disappearing under my skin. It felt warm. It was humming. I could feel the vibration in my teeth.
It was awake. And it had brought me back.
I looked at the digital clock on the wall.
APRIL 12, 2026. 09:15 AM.
"Five days," I whispered. My voice sounded weird—too high, too smooth. I sounded like a kid.
"Five days until what? You finally get a girlfriend?"
That was Lee Jin-soo. I didn't even have to turn around to know it was him. The rich kid who would later become a "Hero" and spend his time executing "Zeros" for fun. In this room, he was just a bully. In five days, he'd be a monster.
The class laughed. It was a normal, stupid sound. They had no idea that the world they lived in—the world of bus schedules, exams, and lunch breaks—was about to be deleted.
I stood up. My chair made a jagged, ugly sound on the tile.
"Sit down, Min-ho," Mr. Park said, his voice getting firmer. "I'm not going to tell you again."
I didn't listen. I grabbed my backpack, slung it over one shoulder, and walked toward the door. Every step felt heavy. My legs felt like they were made of jelly. This body was so incredibly weak. I felt like a toothless puppy compared to the man I used to be.
"Min-ho! Get back here!"
I walked out. I didn't run—I couldn't run yet—but I moved with a purpose that made the kids in the hallway step aside. I burst through the front doors of the school and the smell of the outside world hit me. It was overwhelming. No smoke. No rotting meat. Just grass and car exhaust and life.
I walked to the edge of the schoolyard and leaned against a tree, gasping. My heart was thumping against the stone in my chest.
"One hundred and twenty hours," I muttered, wiping sweat from my forehead.
A blue screen flickered in the corner of my eye. It was shaky, like a bad TV signal.
[ SYNC RATE: 0.1% ] [ WARNING: HOST IS PHYSICALLY PATHETIC ] [ SYSTEM LOADING... ]
"Yeah, I know," I growled at the empty air.
In my old life, I was a scavenger. I survived because I was small and quiet. I spent twenty years listening. I knew things the big-shot Heroes didn't. I knew that before the purple sky arrived, the earth started to "leak."
There was a forest about five miles from here. Gwangmu Woods. Everyone thought it was just a park, but I knew that tomorrow, a Golden Rift would open there. It wouldn't stay open long, and it was hidden deep in the brush. Inside was a fruit that could turn a "Zero" into something... more.
I looked at my thin, weak arms. I had five days to turn this soft kid into a killer.
In my old life, the Heroes called me a "Rat." They laughed when I dug through their trash. They thought I didn't matter because I didn't have a flashy power.
But a rat knows where the holes are. A rat knows how to get into the pantry when the lights are off.
I looked up at the blue sky. It looked fake to me now. I knew the purple was coming to swallow it whole. I wasn't going to be the guy dying in the alley this time.
"I'm going to eat the world before it eats me," I said.
I turned away from the school and started the long walk toward the woods. My feet ached already, but for the first time in twenty years, the stone in my chest didn't feel like a weight. It felt like a promise.
The countdown was on. And I had a lot of work to do.