I opened my eyes.
Silence greeted me — heavy, unnatural, too clean to belong to anywhere familiar. Pale sunlight spilled through a narrow window, dust drifting lazily in its glow like suspended flecks of gold. A single desk with a chair tucked precisely beneath it. A neatly made bed. Smooth walls stripped of personality.
Normal.
Almost aggressively normal.
Yet my heartbeat wouldn't slow.
I sat upright, rubbing my temples. Nothing in the room screamed danger, but my instincts buzzed like they had been waiting for me to wake up.
Then I saw it.
A photograph lay on the desk.
Me.
My face. My hair. My expression. Perfect. Too perfect.
The instant I picked it up, a chill crawled along my spine. Something was wrong. The man in the picture looked like me, but he wasn't me. There was a coldness in his eyes — in my eyes — as if he'd lived a life I couldn't remember.
Beneath it, the nameplate read:
Nyx Arden.
I didn't know that name.
I didn't know this version of myself.
My gaze dropped to the papers spread beside the photograph — identification documents, performance sheets, statistics, and ranking reports. Comprehensive. Official. All pointing to a life I had never lived.
Official Hunter ID: Nyx Arden
Rank: C+
Pulse Capacity: Pending Activation
Affiliation: Unassigned
I swallowed hard.
Pending activation. Right. Sure. That explained absolutely nothing.
I didn't remember signing up to be a hunter. I didn't remember stepping into this world at all.
And yet… the name, the face, the credentials — they existed.
Pulse Capacity.
The term hit me like a shock.
I knew those words.
Not from memory.
From fiction.
From the novel I had been reading.
Ten years ago, glowing cracks ruptured the sky, and Gates fell across the world. Monsters spilled out — feral beasts, intelligent horrors, creatures strong enough to flatten city blocks. Humanity survived only because a portion of people awakened mysterious internal power called Pulse.
Pulse manifested as a personal interface granting:
Stats
Ranks from F → Apex
Skills
And a unique Pulse Echo, an awakened ability tied to their soul
Gates ranged from harmless gray fissures to catastrophic golden ruptures — each holding their own ecosystems and Breakers, the monstrous bosses that ruled them. Towering above all threats were the Sovereigns, kings of entire regions.
And the protagonist of the novel — Eren Vale — began as a weak Rank F hunter, scraping by until he awakened a rare time-related ability and slowly uncovered the truth behind the Gates: they weren't natural. The Sovereigns were preparing a global Descent.
So then… where exactly had I been thrown?
If I already had a Hunter ID, if the ranking system was established, then the timeline pointed to—
Arc 3 or 4.
My blood ran cold.
Arc 1: Survival.
Arc 2: Stabilization.
Arc 3: The Rise of Gates — when Gates spawned rapidly and hunters died by the thousands.
Arc 4: The Sovereigns' Proxies — when monsters started thinking, coordinating.
If I landed in 3 or 4…
Then I was screwed.
Before I could think further, a faint hum filled the air — low, resonant, almost mechanical. My eyes darted toward the empty space above the desk.
And then it appeared.
A translucent panel floated midair, glowing faintly. Lines of data scrolled across its surface, flickering like old neon. It wasn't just a notification — it was alive. Shivering. Shuddering. As though the system itself were breathing.
> "Well, well, Nyx.
We will meet again.
Become stronger.
You know how to…"
Static tore the message apart. Letters fractured and recombined like a broken mirror.
> "And I will leave you a gift."
The panel shimmered violently, glitches rippling across its edges. Numbers, icons, and fragments of sentences spiraled and fell, dissolving into empty space.
System:
Anomaly detected. Removing progression. Beginning…
Then the panel collapsed into darkness.
I stared blankly.
Who was that voice?
Why did it talk to me like it knew me?
Before I could even ask, the system flickered back online — brighter this time, sharper, almost tangible, like a heartbeat syncing with my own.
Anomaly removal successful.
Name: Nyx
Race: ???
Rank: C+
Pulse Echo: ???
Pulse Capacity: Apex
"Apex…?" My breath caught.
Apex Capacity — the highest possible potential. The rarest.
Only the protagonist.
And the seven Sovereigns.
No one else.
Did that mean… I was the eighth?
But then why was my Rank still C+? Why was my Echo blank? What the hell even was my Echo supposed to be?
I leaned back in the chair, staring at the ID card still caught between my fingers.
Pulse Capacity: Not Identified.
A blatant lie.
The system had already whispered the truth: Apex.
But the rest?
A blank Echo.
A glitching voice calling me by name.
None of it made sense.
And staring at the card wasn't going to magically produce any answers.
My eyes wandered around the room again — the desk, the stiffly made bed, the untouched wardrobe standing guard in the corner.
Everything felt intentionally plain.
A starter room for someone without a past.
Someone like me.
I forced myself to stand, stretching stiff limbs. My body felt painfully ordinary. No enhanced strength. No sharpened senses. No awakened abilities humming beneath my skin.
Just… me.
The same person who had been reading a novel twenty minutes ago.
Except now I was trapped inside it.
The thought spiraled through me like a vulture circling, tearing at my calm.
If this really was Arc 3 or 4…
Raids were deadlier.
Low-grade Gates spawned faster.
Weak monsters appeared in swarms large enough to tear through veterans.
And people died. Everyone died.
"What the hell am I supposed to do now…?"
I walked to the window. The city stretched out in brutal layers — towering walls, patrol drones slicing through the sky, pillars of light marking Gate zones like scars carved into the earth.
Hunters marched below in tight formation, armored and focused.
Not one looked up.
Not one noticed me.
Why would they?
My existence here was paper-thin.
The broken message echoed again in my mind.
We will meet again…
Become stronger…
I'll leave you a gift…
Apex. Fine.
But what good was Apex potential if I didn't even know my Echo?
Awakening an Echo required extreme stress, a near-death event, or a professional resonance test.
I had none of those.
And I wasn't suicidal enough to walk into a Gate blind.
But I did need to join a raid.
A C+ hunter wasn't weak.
Good enough for beginner raids.
Acceptable for mid-tier ones if I kept my head down.
And in Arc 3, raids were the fastest way to grow stronger.
The problem?
I had no squad.
No affiliation.
No Echo.
And no one who knew I existed.
Just a room.
An ID card.
And a system that glitched out after speaking to me like some omniscient narrator.
I opened the wardrobe. Inside hung standard-issue hunter gear — dark, reinforced, perfectly fitted. My size. My build. My name stitched into the tag with precise, almost obsessive care.
Whoever created this identity… they missed nothing.
Even the parts I didn't understand.
"Alright…" I whispered.
"First things first. Join a raid. Then figure out my Echo."
I didn't know who the glitching voice belonged to.
I didn't know why I had been dragged into this world.
But one thing was utterly, brutally clear:
Hesitation was a luxury I could not afford.
Not in a world like this.