Hyun-Jae shuffled forward with the rest of the recruits, but something above drew his gaze. The ceiling of the building… no, not a ceiling at all. His breath caught.
The sky stretched overhead, vast and endless, painted in soft blues and streaks of drifting clouds. A faint breeze even seemed to stir through the chamber, carrying with it the scent of grass after rain. For a moment, it was as if they were back on Earth, standing beneath a familiar sky.
He wasn't the only one staring. Conversations faltered, footsteps slowed, and nearly every head tilted upward. The silence that followed was thick with disbelief.
An attendant, slender and pale, noticed the way their eyes lingered above. She offered a small, practiced smile, her tone calm and almost kind. "The atmosphere has been altered to reflect that of your home world. It is done so you may feel at ease, and perform to your fullest potential when the time comes."
Her words rippled through the crowd. Some seemed comforted, others unsettled. To Hyun-Jae, the sight left a bitter taste. It wasn't the real sky, just another layer of control, a reminder that even here, in this false paradise, they were still trapped.
Even the air we breathe isn't ours anymore.
Still, he couldn't deny it, something about the warmth of that artificial sun loosened his chest. For just a fleeting moment, he could almost pretend he was back home.
When the line finally inched forward enough, Hyun-Jae stepped up to the desk. A male attendant, dressed in a crisp uniform with a faint insignia across the chest, looked up at him with a practiced smile. His features were sharp, almost too symmetrical, as though someone had carved him with precision.
"Name?" the attendant asked, his voice smooth but detached.
"Seo Hyun-Jae," he answered quietly.
The attendant nodded, fingers gliding across a translucent screen. A small camera shimmered into place, capturing Hyun-Jae's image before vanishing again in a flash of light. Moments later, a sleek keycard slid out from the console, which the attendant handed over.
"This will be your room for tonight," he explained. "It may change depending on the circumstances."
Hyun-Jae frowned, turning the card over in his hand. "Circumstances? What do you mean?"
The attendant's smile lingered, but it didn't reach his eyes. "That will be revealed tomorrow."
There was something unsettling in the way he said it, like a secret dangled just out of reach. Hyun-Jae pressed his lips together, unwilling to push further.
Instead, he asked, "What about the others from this realm? Where are they supposed to be?"
The attendant shifted his gaze briefly toward the crowd still moving through the lines. "They are arriving around the same time as you. You'll see them soon enough."
Hyun-Jae nodded slowly, clutching the card tighter. Something about the way the attendant spoke made his skin prickle. It was as though all of this had been rehearsed long before they ever set foot here.
Hyun-Jae stepped aside from the line, turning the sleek keycard over in his hand. It looked ordinary enough, thin, silver-edged, with a faint glow at the center, until, without warning, it flickered once and dissolved into light. The glow sank into his palm before he could even react.
His eyes widened. "Wh—what the?!"
He patted his clothes, his bag, the floor, even checking the air around him like maybe it had slipped somewhere. His pulse spiked, panic rising in his chest.
The attendant leaned forward, utterly calm. "It's fine," he said smoothly. "That's supposed to happen. The keycard has integrated with your body."
Hyun-Jae froze, staring at his palm as if something might crawl out of it. "Integrated?!"
"Yes," the attendant continued, tone flat, as though explaining the weather. "From now on, it will track your movements during the tournament. Your identity, your access, your progress and all of it is bound to you directly. No need to worry about losing it."
Hyun-Jae's face tightened. He lowered his voice and leaned closer. "That's… not what I asked."
The attendant tilted his head slightly, eyes glinting with the faintest amusement.
"I asked," Hyun-Jae pressed, "how did that just happen? It disappeared into me."
For a moment, the attendant only looked at him, the smile never faltering. Then, with a deliberately calm tone, he said, "You'll find out tomorrow."
Hyun-Jae's chest tightened. Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Like every answer was sitting behind a locked door he wasn't allowed to touch.
The attendant, still smiling, extended an open hand toward the rightmost corridor. "Follow that path. You'll find the rest of what you need there."
Hyun-Jae hesitated, then gave one last uneasy glance at his palm before heading in the direction pointed out. He enter a corridor which transported him into a wide plaza like area, and the sight of it made him falter mid-step.
People around him were staring upward, mouths open, their faces glowing with disbelief. Hyun-Jae followed their gaze. The sky—if it could even be called that—had shifted even more. The hazy, alien colors that filled the atmosphere before were gone, replaced by a flawless blue vault, streaked with gentle white clouds that drifted lazily like on a summer day. Sunlight spilled over polished marble streets and shimmering glass buildings. The air was crisp, clean, richer than anything he had breathed on Earth.
It was Earth, but better. A version without cracks, without smog, without imperfection. Too perfect. Too curated.
Hyun-Jae's chest tightened. He could see it in everyone's faces, though, they weren't questioning it. They were captivated. In awe. Like they'd been handed a miracle.
At the far end of the plaza stood a strange machine, a column of steel and light with a glowing platform at its base. A long line had already formed. Hyun-Jae joined the queue, watching nervously as one person after another stepped forward, pressed their hand to a circular panel, and vanished in a flash of pale light.
When his turn came, he swallowed hard, placed his palm against the panel, and the world around him dissolved.
In a blink, he was standing in a sprawling hotel-like facility. The air smelled faintly of lavender, warm and welcoming. The walls shimmered with pale light, as though woven from polished stone and glass, while velvet-lined halls stretched in every direction. To his left, a water feature trickled gently, and attendants in uniform glided effortlessly across the floor, greeting new arrivals with practiced smiles.
It looked like something out of a luxury resort brochure.
Hyun-Jae took one hesitant step forward, still reeling. "This… is supposed to be housing?"
Hyun-Jae wandered down the glowing corridor, clutching the faint tingle in his palm where the keycard had dissolved. Small plaques with numbers ran along the walls until finally, one matched the one now faintly glowing in his mind.
He stopped in front of the door. For a moment, he expected it to slide open on its own like everything else in this strange place but it didn't. Tentatively, he pushed, and the door creaked inward.
The room was… disappointing.
It was far smaller than he imagined barely enough space for a narrow bed, a desk, and a closet pressed tight against the wall. The air was still and heavy, lacking the pristine freshness of the plaza outside. The lighting was dim, almost suffocating, with none of the polish or grandeur he'd seen everywhere else. It felt like a forgotten corner of the facility, hastily put together.
Hyun-Jae dropped onto the bed, which sagged under his weight, and ran a hand over his face. After everything he has seen today, the Celestial, the impossible teleportation, the perfect city outside—this stuffy, cramped room was where he was supposed to "settle in"?
A humorless laugh slipped out of him. "Figures."
He leaned back against the wall, staring at the faint glow of the ceiling. It didn't feel like a place meant for comfort. It felt like a test.
The silence pressed in around him, thick and uncomfortable. Just lying here wasn't going to do him any good, especially not when he knew Soo-Min had to be somewhere in this place.
With a frustrated sigh, he pushed himself up and stepped back out into the corridor. The halls were wider than they seemed from inside the room, polished and gleaming like everything else in this artificial world. Other participants drifted past, some whispering in awe, others wandering aimlessly as if searching for something familiar to cling to.
Hyun-Jae tightened his jaw and kept moving, eyes darting around for any trace of Soo-Min.
But just as he rounded a corner, he collided with something solid, so solid it felt like he'd slammed into a wall. The impact nearly knocked him backward.
He staggered, blinking up and froze.
Towering over him was a massive figure, broad-shouldered and easily twice his size. The man's presence filled the hallway like a boulder lodged in a stream, his shadow stretching over Hyun-Jae.
The stranger's eyes, sharp and steady, locked onto his.
Then his eyes trailed upward, taking in the thick arms, the strange bluish color of his skin, the massive frame that seemed to scrape the ceiling and then it hit him.
This wasn't a man.
"AHHHHH!" Hyun-Jae let out a startled scream, stumbling back so hard he nearly tripped over his own feet. A few other participants down the hall snapped their heads toward the noise, whispering among themselves.
The creature tilted its head slightly, as if confused by the outburst. Its face wasn't grotesque, exactly, but still alien. Its skin shimmered faintly under the artificial lights, and its eyes glowed a faint amber.
"...You're loud," the being rumbled in a deep voice that reverberated through the corridor.
Hyun-Jae froze, his chest heaving. "Y-you can talk?!"
The figure raised a brow ridge. "Of course I can talk. Why wouldn't I?"
Hyun-Jae swallowed hard, his voice shaky as he asked, "A-are you… an attendant?"
The towering figure let out a rumbling laugh. "Attendant? Hardly. Do I look like some servant to you?" His teeth glinted sharp as he grinned.
Hyun-Jae's heart skipped. "Then… what are you?"
The creature spread his broad chest proudly, raising his voice as though the whole corridor needed to hear him. "I am Kharvos of the mighty Veylari! My people are unmatched in strength, feared across a hundred worlds, and envied even more!" He thumped his chest with a heavy thud that echoed against the walls.
Before he could react, Kharvos leaned forward, grin widening. "And now… I am your teammate. Remember this, human when the battles come, they will know the name Kharvos."
As he heard the words Hyun-Jae was half in disbelief and half in dread, as he realized his first other worldly teammate was a mountain of muscle who clearly never missed a chance to sing his own praises.