January 1st, 2030.
The world counted down to midnight. Fireworks waited to bloom over the Han River, the air sharp with winter and the noise of celebration.
Then, the sky split.
A fracture of black light carved itself into the heavens, bleeding red energy. The ground shook. Screams erupted as massive, pulsating black spires burst through streets and skyscrapers. The air turned heavy, metallic, and cold.
Sohara Renji didn't have time to run. The railing beneath his hand dissolved into light, and the world twisted inside out.
When his vision cleared, he was no longer in Seoul.
Two moons hung over an endless crimson forest. Strange constellations burned in the sky, and the air thrummed with a pressure that made his bones ache. In the shadows, colossal beasts moved—eyes glowing, fangs glinting.
This was the Origin Realm.
The birthplace of the monsters.
Present Day – Seoul, 2035
A tremor of unstable portal waves rippled through an empty street in Mapo District. Kim Chaewon, captain of the Korean Hunter Bureau's Gate Response Unit, raised her fist.
"Hold. Readings are spiking," she ordered.
The air shimmered like heat over asphalt. Then, with a crack of thunder, a figure fell from a tear in space, landing hard on the pavement.
The man was tall, lean but built like a seasoned warrior. His clothes were made of strange hides, stitched with gold thread. An ornate insignia—two crimson blades crossing a black crown—was branded into his shoulder guard. His long, dark hair was streaked with silver, and his face, though young, bore the sharp lines of someone who had commanded armies.
But his eyes were closed.
He lay unconscious, lips moving in a strange, guttural language none of the hunters recognized. It was the battle tongue of the Origin Realm—the language of kings and generals.
Chaewon crouched beside him, frowning as the words slipped out in a voice both exhausted and unyielding
"For the Crimson Throne... no retreat... no surrender..."
Her lieutenant whispered, "What the hell is he saying?"
Chaewon didn't answer. She was too busy staring at the faint, unnatural light that pulsed from the mark on his armor—one she had only ever seen carved into the ruins inside S-Class dungeons.
"Who is this man... and why does he wear the crest of a realm that shouldn't exist on Earth?" Chaewon thought