The air over Seoul, South Korea, was still.
For the first time in a generation, it was a peaceful, mundane stillness. The vibrant, terrifying maelstroms of blue and red known as Gates were gone. The grotesque menagerie of monsters they had spewed forth were now nothing more than a memory, a grim fairytale told to children to make them behave.
And at the apex of this hard-won peace stood a single figure, Sung Jin-woo, the Shadow Monarch.
He stood atop the N Seoul Tower, a silent sentinel garbed in a simple black coat that fluttered in a wind only he could feel. Below him, the sprawling metropolis hummed with the vibrant, innocent pulse of life—a life he had single-handedly shielded, a world he had bled to rebuild.
Yet, despite the tranquility, a profound and unnerving silence echoed in the deepest chamber of his soul. The System, the blue-paneled, omniscient guide that had been his constant companion, his ladder from the weakest E-Rank to a being of absolute power, was dormant. It had bestowed upon him its final, ultimate reward—the Black Heart, the throne of the Shadow Monarch—and then, it had fallen silent. The daily quests, the alerts, the status windows... all gone. His victory felt absolute, yet hollow.
A flicker.
It was almost imperceptible. A flash of violet light in his peripheral vision.
Not in the sky. Not on the ground. It was a flicker in the very fabric of reality. A tiny, hairline crack in the world, as if the flawless crystal of existence had just sustained a microscopic fracture.
Sung Jin-woo's eyes, pools of calm, ethereal light, narrowed. His senses, which could span the globe and touch the minds of his millions of soldiers, rushed towards the anomaly. They hit a wall of absolute nothingness.
Then, for the first time in two long years, a message window materialized before his eyes. But it wasn't the familiar, crisp blue he knew. The panel glitched, its borders fizzing like corrupted data.
[… … …]
A single, ominous word, composed of broken, overlapping characters, screamed into his consciousness.
[W̸̻̊A̴̧͊R̶̤̍N̴̡̓Ỉ̸̥N̷̺̾G̸͔͑]
Before he could process the broken alert, the air above Gwanghwamun Plaza tore open.
It was not a Gate. Gates were swirling vortices of energy, gateways to another place. This was a wound. A jagged, pitch-black fissure that radiated a chilling, profound emptiness. It didn't pull air in; it deleted it. The very concept of atmosphere ceased to exist around its razor-sharp edges. The brilliant blue sky around the tear seemed to lose its color, the clouds smearing into a dull, lifeless grey as if a cosmic artist were erasing his work.
From the streets below, a symphony of screams erupted. Phones fell from slack hands. People pointed, their faces masks of a primal terror they thought they had forgotten. This was a new kind of fear, an alien dread that their post-Gate world was unprepared for.
The urgent, vibrating buzz in Jin-woo's pocket was almost quaint. He answered. The voice on the other end was tight with disciplined panic. It was Woo Jin-chul, the former Chief Inspector, now the head of the newly unified Korean Hunter's Association.
"Monarch-nim! What is that thing? All our mana sensors are dead! Every satellite, every scanner pointed at it—they're outputting zero data. It's a total information blackout!"
Jin-woo didn't answer. His entire being was focused on the tear. For the first time since becoming the Monarch, he was blind. He could sense the edge of the tear, but beyond it was a void his perception could not penetrate. It was like looking at a hole in his own godhood.
"Beru."
Jin-woo's voice was a low, resonant rumble, echoing not in the air, but in the shadowed minds of every loyal soldier in his vast, interdimensional domain.
"Igris. Bellion. All generals. To me. Now."
The world darkened for a fraction of a second. An intangible pressure descended upon Seoul as shadows everywhere stretched and deepened. In his ethereal domain, an army that could drown galaxies in darkness stirred. Millions of glowing purple eyes snapped open in unison, a silent chorus of absolute loyalty.
In the physical world, only his three marshals materialized behind him, kneeling. The monstrous, ant-like form of Beru, shivering not with fear, but with a predator's ecstatic fury. The noble knight Igris, his iconic crimson plume a stark, bloody slash against the encroaching grey of the sky. And finally, the Grand-Marshal Bellion, his centaur-like body and vast, mechanical wings folded, his gaze as grim and resolute as his master's.
"My King," Beru screeched, his sharp claws clenching and unclenching, carving grooves into the tower's steel floor. "This aura… Kiiieeeek! It feels… empty! Disgusting! It has no story, no life! Allow me to tear it asunder!"
"Patience, Beru," Jin-woo commanded, his voice calm but edged with absolute authority. He took a single step forward, floating off the tower's edge. His own aura, a crushing, silent pressure of pure death and sovereign authority, rolled outwards. It slammed against the encroaching null-field of the Fracture, creating a visible shimmer in the air where two opposing voids met. "This is not a foe we know."
He began his ascent towards the Fracture, a lone black figure against a dying sky. He was the Monarch. He was the world's shield. This was his duty.
Meanwhile, in a dimension blissfully unaware of "Systems" and "Hunters"...
Cid Kagenou was having a perfectly sculpted day.
He had just successfully, and flawlessly, played the part of "Pathetic Mob Character #3." He'd been "mugged" by some third-rate thugs in a grimy alley. He had groveled, he had pleaded, he had even allowed one of them to land a sloppy punch on his cheek, all for a small pouch of coins he had intentionally filled with lead weights. The look of sheer, pants-wetting terror in their eyes when he had "accidentally" let a sliver of his real, monstrous aura leak out as they ran away was simply… exquisite. It was the perfect appetizer for the day's main course: doing absolutely nothing of consequence.
He was now strolling through the back streets of the Midgar Royal Capital, dabbing a bit of blood from his lip with a theatrical wince.
"Yes, this is it," he murmured to himself, striking a dramatic pose the moment he was sure he was alone. "The unassuming mob, forgotten by the world, a mere footnote in the grand annals of history. But little do they know… it is he who is the true Eminence in Shadow! The one who secretly… MOVES THE STRINGS OF FATE!"
He was so deeply engrossed in his private monologue, relishing the sheer genius of his own hidden narrative, that he almost missed it.
The magic in the air didn't just ripple; it curdled.
It was as if a single drop of spoiled, colorless ink had fallen into a pristine glass of pure water. A wave of nauseating energy, devoid of mana, life, or even purpose, washed over the entire capital. It was an energy of pure anti-climax. An energy that sought to unwrite stories, to silence drama, to end the performance.
Cid's eyes, usually lazy and unfocused to maintain his cover, sharpened to diamond points. His goofy, self-satisfied grin vanished, instantly replaced by the cold, calculating, predatory smirk of Shadow.
"What… is this amateurish production?" he whispered, his voice dropping several octaves.
On the main boulevard, chaos erupted. A tear in reality, identical in every way to the one in Seoul, had ripped itself open above the grand central plaza. But here, in a world steeped in magic, the reaction was different. Knights of the Crimson Order, on patrol, drew their gleaming blades, their faces pale but resolute. Royal Mages began chanting, their hands glowing with the foundational energies of fire, ice, and lightning.
Hidden amongst the panicked crowds, members of the Cult of Diablos saw the Fracture not as a threat, but as a sign. A gift from their demon lord.
"The hour of Diablos is at hand!" one of the robed and masked cultists roared, unable to contain his fanaticism. He leaped atop a fountain, his hands crackling with raw, unstable purple magic. "Brothers! Witness the dawn of our new world! We shall harness this divine power!"
He thrust his hands towards the silent, black fissure. The moment his crackling mana touched the edge of the tear, it didn't dissipate or get absorbed. It was erased. The cultist's face went from zealous glee to hollow shock as the effect of this erasure traveled up his mana stream like a lit fuse. It touched his hands, which turned to grey, featureless dust. In less than a second, his entire body, his magic, his very existence, was unwritten from the world, his story finished with a whisper of falling ash.
From a high rooftop overlooking the plaza, Alpha, the impossibly beautiful and brilliant elven leader of Shadow Garden, watched in utter disbelief. Her analytical mind, which could deconstruct the most complex magical phenomena in an instant, was a complete blank.
"This energy..." she whispered, a bead of cold sweat tracing a path down her flawless cheek. "It's not magic. It's... the end of magic."
The other Seven Shades, hidden in their own vantage points, felt it too. The oppressive, story-ending silence. This was an enemy they couldn't comprehend. An enemy that wasn't in any of their master's meticulously crafted tales. An enemy beyond his grand plan.
Or so they thought.
Just as raw, unadulterated panic was about to consume the city, the soul-crushing pressure from the Fracture vanished.
Not all of it. Just the area immediately around the plaza. It was instantly and completely overwritten by a different kind of pressure. An aura so dense, so profound, so impossibly, cosmically deep, it felt as though the night sky itself had descended to pass judgment on the crude tear in its domain.
Every knight, every mage, every hidden cultist, and every member of Shadow Garden—including Alpha—froze. Their eyes, as if drawn by an irresistible force, were pulled to a single point.
On the very pinnacle of the great cathedral's central spire, a figure stood, silhouetted against the grey, wounded sky. He had not been there a second ago, and yet he stood with the timeless certainty of a mountain, as if he had been there for all of eternity.
He was cloaked in a coat woven from what appeared to be liquid midnight, a substance that swallowed the light and bent the space around it.
Alpha's breath hitched. Beta, the silver-haired chronicler of his legend, nearly dropped her pen and notebook. Delta, the feral dog-kin powerhouse hiding in a dark alley, began to tremble, not with fear, but with a surge of primal, worshipful awe.
It was their Master. Their God.
Shadow.
He surveyed the scene below—the black Fracture, the terrified crowds, the fading dust of the erased cultist. A slow, knowing, and impossibly cool smirk graced his lips.
In truth, he had absolutely no idea what was going on. But this stage? This inexplicable, world-threatening, reality-tearing phenomenon? This was the kind of backdrop he had only ever dreamed of. It was time for a new, unforgettable performance, one for the history books Beta was writing.
He slowly drew his slime sword. The jet-black blade seemed to drink the remaining light from the air, its presence an answer to the void of the Fracture. His voice, a quiet and lethally calm whisper, carried across the entire plaza, clearer and more impactful than any shout.
"The stage is set. The actors are in place. When a false and noisy darkness threatens to consume the tale... a true shadow will emerge to finish the chapter."
No one understood the words, but the sheer, unadulterated power woven into them made their very souls tremble in submission.
He raised his blade, not pointing it at the Fracture, but holding it parallel to the ground. An orb of abyssal purple energy, so compressed and so dense it appeared as a perfect sphere of black, condensed at its tip. It was the foundation of his most famous technique, yet… it felt different. More refined. Adapted. Evolved for this new, silent enemy.
"I... AM... ABYSSAL... ATOMIC."
Instead of the world-altering explosion they expected, the attack that shot forth was a razor-thin line of pure, conceptual annihilation. It didn't blast the Fracture. It moved with surgical precision and severed its connection to their world, neatly cauterizing the wound in reality itself. The black tear wavered, folded in on itself like a piece of paper being crumpled, and vanished, leaving behind only an unnerving silence and the lingering scent of ozone and divinity.
Shadow stood there for one perfect, dramatic beat, letting the sheer impossibility of what he'd done sink in for his adoring audience. Then, his performance complete, he turned his back, ready to melt into the darkness and seek out a celebratory bowl of ramen.
But as he did, his senses, honed to a degree that bordered on omniscience, felt… something.
A presence.
Through the lingering, fading echoes of the now-sealed Fracture, his consciousness brushed against another. It was vast, cold, and unbelievably powerful. An aura of absolute death and unshakeable sovereignty that mirrored his own in sheer scale, but was entirely different in texture. It was the presence of a true Monarch.
At that exact same moment, as Sung Jin-woo prepared to fly into the Fracture above Seoul, he felt it close. The null-field vanished. But not before his senses, reaching across the dimensional interface, felt the presence that had closed it.
It was not the System. It was not a Monarch he recognized. It was an abyss of pure, untamed, yet perfectly controlled power. A will so absolute it could simply tell reality how to behave, and reality would have no choice but to obey. It was the presence of a true Eminence.
Both men, in their own worlds, separated by a now-sealed dimensional veil, had the exact same, chilling thought, their voices a quiet whisper on the wind.
"Who in the world... was that?"