While the sun was up, it was yet to wipe away the dew. It was a fine spring morning; even since yesterday, the grass looks a little greener. The trees looked a little fuller. The air looked a little thicker. Above, the sky was forget-me-not blue and empty, save for a single fluffy, white cloud on the far horizon. At a courtesy glance, it was a fine morning. No, considering all the rain that had come and was forecasted for later, it was an exceptional morning. But something was wrong. All one had to do was listen, unlike yesterday there was no birdsong, no animals moving through the brush, no insects. If one were to watch, they would see all the creatures who called this place home fleeing down the lane towards town. After this much time, though, only the slowest animals remained. Probably there were only snails left by then. Beehives and anthills lay abandoned, their eggs left unguarded. The trees were all leaning the same way, and probably would have run too, if given the chance.
It was obvious to everyone who heard that spring quiet what it meant. While humans did not feel the same dread that Gates caused in animals, the hardships of the previous few years had carved a fear of silence into every heart. If anyone had the misfortune of walking down this path then, they would have run away screaming. No one wanted to be the unfortunate soul to first notice a gate, especially in a place where it could have had several hours to exist unnoticed. Well, at least any sane person would have run away.
However, as it happens, the first person to travel down that path did not run away. It was a young man with pale skin and raven black hair. He was not quite handsome, he was relatively small with wide eyes and a round face. People described him as being cute. His name was Jung Ha-neul, and while he did not look it, he was already nineteen years old and had seen active combat. He was wearing a wrinkled black suit. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his eyes half closed. He had earbuds buds in, listening to his favorite band. He seemed so unbothered by the presence of a Gate that it was as if he hadn't noticed it existed at all. In fact he was smiling.
Somewhere behind him, a woman stepped out of her front door. She gave a wide yawn. Then she put the watering can she was holding under the faucet on the side of her house. As it filled she did a slow scan of the world. It was nice to see how much greener it was than the day before. Jung Ha-neul, was almost at the bottom of the hill. He had been away in the war for over a year before quietly returning. He was always alone and mysterious, and even though they were roughly the same age and had lived in the same small town, she didn't know much about him. It was then that she noticed that while birds were singing behind her, down the hill it was dead quiet. She froze in place, not even noticing the watering can overflowing. She watched, as Jung Ha-neul, without missing a beat, walked directly into the Gate., and plummeted straight down. Her mind reeled, it was common knowledge that while monsters could come out of the gate, nothing could enter them. The monsters needed to be killed for it to disappear, so what the hell had just happened?
Ha-neul was asking the same question. He had just made the biggest mistake of his lousy career. While it was common sense to always be listening for gates, it was also true that his favorite band had just dropped a new single. He had figured, 'what the hell, what are the odds of a gate opening near me today?' and put his headphones in for his daily commute. There was an extensive network of sensors that detected most Gates and alerted the populace long before they opened, and even then, there had been barely any Gates on the small island that was his hometown. Yet somehow, he was now pinwheeling straight down at terminal velocity.
He was in shock for several seconds before he realized that what he had stepped onto was a Gate. Actually, somehow, he had stepped into it. It was then that he started screaming. His internet connection had been lost the second he had entered the gate, but it took a moment longer for the music to cut out. Then all he could hear was the sound of wind rushing past him as he plunged down into the abyss.
Ha-neul's mind was reeling. He couldn't even begin to grasp what was happening. He had closed his eyes tightly because the world was an incomprehensible blur as he spun out of control. The gears in his mind slowly ground against each other, rattling and shaking until it landed on a single, clear thought. 'I am shockingly, earth shatteringly stupid!' In the big 29, it took the most incompetent, bumbling fool to walk into a Gate of the Sovereign Mind! Ha-neul had managed to scrap by for four years of the apocalypse, just to walk straight into a murderous death hole?
Although, there had to be more than stupidity involved in this. His luck had been shockingly bad throughout his life, and honestly this was just the latest thing. He smiled a little, 'same old, same old.'
His troubles had started long before the Gates began appearing. Actually the series of unfortunate events that were his life began before he was born. But, as much as he would have liked to go through and tally this new event, which was honestly so absurd he could just summarize it down to 'died to young', he was bound to hit the ground at some point. He'd been falling for quite a bit now.
'Well, I guess it doesn't matter. I think I of all people deserve to spend the rest of my life airing my grievances' Strike one: dad going to prison. Strike two: mother dying in childbirth with little sister. Strike three: little sister being adopted and losing contact. Strike four: couch surfing for ten years. Strike five: getting beat within an inch of his life, twice! Strike six: a Gate opening near him during The Great Dying. Strike seven: his unit being pinned down for three months and almost all starving to death. And now, strike eight: dying too young.
Honestly, he was just glad to get it all out before splattering! Nothing had changed, but he had made his peace …in some twisted way. His mind went blank and he waited. He waited a while longer, then he began to hum the chorus of the song that had gotten him killed. He didn't even remember half of the words.
And then something strange happened.
There was a sound like a bell ringing in the back of his mind and then he realized something. The current of air he was flowing though suddenly made sense to him. It wasn't that he understood its true nature, it was that he had the innate ability to predict what the current was going to do next. It felt like he had dozens of years of experience falling, like it was more natural to fall for him than to stand.
He opened his eyes and saw a blur as he tumbled end over end. Then, with a single graceful twist, he stopped all his rotational momentum. It just felt natural to make that movement.
Now he could finally comprehend the world. He was definitely on the ground when he had fallen into the gate, yet, somehow he was now incredibly high up in the sky. He must have been a great deal higher when he started. For some reason, after just a moment of watching the world get closer, he noted that it would take 7 minutes and 43 seconds for him to reach the ground. He had no idea how he knew that. There was no way humans had the instinctive ability to know how long it took for them to fall, right? This was his first time plummeting from orbit though, so what did he know?
Well, he still had a little time left before he died. He already made his piece, so he didn't have much to think about. And honestly he wasn't a very bitter person, he had just been complaining to distract himself from how dumb and stupid he was in his final moments.
Now he had a little more time, and also had the ability to fall with incredible skill. First he went in and out of flips with a grace only achievable by birds and, of course, monsters. Although, monsters probably didn't end their dive by splattering. Actually, thinking about it, that wasn't quite true. Gates did not seem to care what type of monsters it brought to what area. He read somewhere that most gates opened on the ocean floor. Although it was unclear how many monsters could survive the crushing depth. Just this morning he had watched a video of a tier 3 Gate opening in South America in the middle of a crowded street with no Noticed around. A fearsome cohort of fish people had marched out in a wave of sea water. They were humanoid except for that they had steel scales for skin and their jaws were twice as wide as they should have been and filled with brown and sharp teeth. They were armed with long harpoons with barbed tips. The crowd had rushed back in fear, only to stop a moment later when the legion of near indestructible fish men collapsed onto the floor gasping for breath and then died.
He now had five minutes and 22 seconds. For his next trick, Ha-neul let go of his phone, wallet, and military ID, before going into a steep dive to collect them. Then he began cartwheeling through the air, juggling the three items. Then he dived again, this time with his eyes closed. He was easily able to collect the items by feeling the turbulence they left behind. Then he juggled again, behind his back, with his eyes closed, and spinning with three axes of rotation. Even that felt comfortable to him.
Ha-neul tucked his stuff back in his pocket, and then fell in a pose fit for a movie poster while thinking up his next stunt. He would have tried to do the trick with more stuff. But other than the three things he juggled before, all he had was his clothes. They would fall much slower than him, and he wouldn't be able to catch them no matter what. Besides, he needed them for his new plan to not die …and had only 76 seconds to pull it off.
A moment later he passed though a thin layer of clouds and could see the ground clearly. Below him was a vast range of snow capped mountains. He smiled, it was exactly what he needed to land. But what he saw next filled his heart with joy.
He saw a castle! Below him, nestled in the mountains, was a human building. There were humans on the other side of the Gate! He assumed he would have ended up in a world with only monsters. He went into a steep dive so that he was angled to collide with the side of the mountain next to the castle. Then he slowly pulled himself out of the dive and made himself as wide as he could. He put his elbows out and grabbed on to his coat tails to act as a makeshift parachute.
For a moment he was gliding at an angle parallel to the mountain face. For a fraction of a second he saw his shadow in the snow. And then he crashed feet first into a deep snow bank, instantly breaking his legs. Much worse than that, he was now irrevocably stuck beneath the snow. And somehow he instantly knew he only had ten minutes before he suffocated to death, twenty before he bled to death, and forty minutes before he froze to death.
'Uh-oh'