"You can't just transform like this in front of an entire squad, Daesung."
The words echoed across the steel-paneled chamber like a blade being drawn in a silent room. The voice came from a tall, broad-shouldered man in a charcoal military uniform, his grey hair slicked back in tidy streaks of silver.
Sharp lines carved his face from decades of hardened battles and even harder decisions. His name was President Oh Gwangho, the acting leader of Covenant: Iron Judgment—and a living relic of the first wave of Coreborns.
Kang Daesung stood with his back straight and arms crossed, still dressed in the same fitted black suit from the Rift deployment, now slightly torn at the sleeves. The faint scent of scorched air clung to him like vapor off a cooling blade.
Oh Gwangho didn't sit behind his desk. He stood near the towering glass windows of his office, overlooking the half-reconstructed skyline of Incheon.
The sky was finally calming from the chaos of the earlier Rift. Hovercrafts buzzed above quarantine zones below.
Lights flickered from Coreborn med-vehicles and rescue drones scanning the ruins. The world hadn't slept since the breach.
"A lot of information about the Special Cores has passed onto the public."
Gwangho continued, his tone clipped, but never raised.
"Now they know who five of the eight are. That doesn't mean you start parading your Core like it's a light show."
"Calm down."
Daesung's voice was even. He barely blinked.
"It was a requirement. The Rift was overflowing. Class 2 and 3 Abyssals broke containment. People would've died."
Gwangho turned around, his eyes sharp under the dull fluorescent lighting.
"You think I care about optics more than lives?"
"No."{
Daesung replied.
"But I think you care about secrets more than sense."
That gave Gwangho pause. His jaw tensed.
Daesung continued, stepping closer into the warm-hued office.
"The Coreborn Association's biggest mistake could've repeated again. I wasn't going to let that happen."
Gwangho narrowed his eyes.
"Biggest mistake? Repeated?"
He slowly walked over to his desk and stood behind it, both hands resting on the surface as he leaned forward.
"Daesung... the anomaly that happened today isn't even a dust particle compared to Ulleungdo Island"
The room fell quiet.
The soundproof glass filtered out the city noise, letting only the low hum of energy systems and distant sirens whisper in the background.
Daesung's gaze didn't falter. But his shoulders did stiffen.
He spoke lower.
"What if something like that happens again?"
Oh Gwangho didn't move. Not at first. Then slowly, he exhaled.
"What if? It's not a what if, Mr. Daesung."
He walked toward the window and stared down at the fractured skyline.
"It will happen again. In a few months or so."
Daesung's throat tightened. He swallowed.
"And how are you so sure of that?"
Oh Gwangho didn't turn around.
"I've got a keen eye."
He said, voice almost a whisper.
"Let's put it that way."
Daesung stepped forward once more, his fists tightening slightly at his sides. The air grew tenser, as though the Core of Steel was responding to the shift in pressure.
But Gwangho remained perfectly still.
A thousand unsaid things hung in that silence. Ulleungdo—nineteen years ago—was a ghost they never spoke of unless forced.
An event classified to the point that even many high-level Coreborn operatives didn't know its full details. Only the presidents of the major Covenants… and those who had survived it.
But Oh Gwangho was.
The air in the room settled into a dense, thoughtful silence, broken only by the soft mechanical ticking of the wall-mounted chrono-clock above the office's sleek shelving.
Gwangho Cho—President of Covenant: Iron Judgment and a seasoned Coreborn of thirty years—stood by the massive, floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the northern districts of Seoul.
His hands were folded behind his back, the sleeves of his dark suit cuffed neatly above his wrists, like a man always ready for war, even in rest.
Outside, the city stretched far and wide—suburbs melting into urban sprawl, buildings rising like pillars beneath a pale sky… and above all, that storm.
A slow frown carved its way down Gwangho's weathered face as he tilted his chin upward.
"That storm is still hovering?"
Daesung followed his gaze.
"Yeah."
He replied, dragging a tired breath as he rolled his shoulder.
"Funny thing, though—it's just there. Been sitting over Seoul for three days now. No lightning. No rain. No thunder. All it's done is lower the temperature by a couple degrees."
"...Meteorologists?"
"Filed it as anomalous, but weakening. The Weather Authority released a report saying it's lost most of its pressure system. But that doesn't explain why it hasn't moved a damn inch."
Gwangho exhaled through his nose, a long, low hum rolling in his chest.
"And the Coreborn Association?"
"They're keeping it in the blindspot."
Daesung said.
"Minimal coverage. No alerts. No internal probes."
He rubbed his chin, eyes still fixed on the colorless swirls of clouds etched across the sky. A dull silver-gray, unmoving.
"Not a threat yet, I guess. Doesn't fit their criteria."
"Hmph."
Gwangho's scoff was heavy with skepticism.
"Something about still air makes me more uneasy than a Rift quake."
He turned his head slightly.
"At least the broadcast networks found something else to obsess over."
Daesung chuckled faintly.
"You mean after Ha Yura's awakening?"
"Yes."
Gwangho gave the slightest of nods.
"Can't tune in to any channel without seeing her face replayed ten times an hour. Rather dramatic footage too—she stopped that collapsing Rift like she was born to do it."
Daesung smiled under his breath and stretched, his spine popping from the tension of the past day.
"She was put into the spotlight pretty fast, considering how reserved she's always been."
"That's what happens when a Special Core awakens in public."
"And when the Core happens to be that one."
Daesung added, his voice softening with a mix of awe and unease.
"The Core of Revelation."
The office stilled again.
Outside, the clouds above Seoul sat like a ceiling, vast and unmoving. No rainfall. No wind. Only the occasional flicker—like a dying bulb in a forgotten room.
"She doesn't talk much."
Gwangho finally said.
"But that girl sees more than anyone else."
Daesung's eyes narrowed faintly at the horizon.
"You think she's seen something?"
"...She always does."
Gwangho stepped away from the window and returned to his chair behind the sleek, dark-paneled desk, his boots silent against the polished floor.
He sat down slowly, as if his bones remembered too much battle. Daesung remained standing near the window, arms crossed loosely over his chest.
"You know, When I was your age, we used to think the sky was the safest place. That danger only ever came from below."
Gwangho said as he looked back toward the storm in the distance.
Daesung let the thought linger before answering.
"It still does."
"Maybe."
Gwangho said.
"Or maybe we've just stopped looking up."
A long pause.
Daesung tilted his head.
"You think this storm's a sign?"
"I don't think."
Gwangho murmured.
"I watch. And when the sky refuses to move, something beneath it always has a reason."
****
The wind had quieted for the moment. But silence in this Rift was never peace—it was tension bottled just beneath the skin of the sky.
Jaemin sat at the edge of a jagged, floating platform, his legs dangling off the side into the void. His black t-shirt clung tightly to his body, soaked through with sweat that hadn't dried in hours.
The sleeves had curled up near his shoulders, revealing wiry arms lined with thin muscle—a lean, trained frame hardened through relentless movement.
His tucked shirt strained beneath his belt, as if the cloth itself had grown tired of resisting gravity. His hair, floated lazily in the air, caught in the ambient updrafts of the storm.
His breathing was low, steady. Not calm—calm had left long ago—but tempered. Controlled. Like someone who had no option but to continue moving forward.
He wiped the sweat trailing from his brow with the back of his forearm. It only smeared it.
"Two or three days have probably passed outside the Rift."
He thought, his dark eyes lifting slowly toward the glowing tower of chaos above. Storm clouds twisted endlessly through the sky, always present, always humming.
The swirling gray abyss beyond the platforms felt endless, a chasm that mocked his balance with every step.
"I've climbed 189 platforms so far… maybe more. A few more and I'll reach whatever's at the top."
He tilted his head back further. That final platform—maybe four or five tiers higher—gleamed ominously.
It wasn't bathed in light, like the others. No, this one was different. It pulsed. A low, thunderous glow shimmered in hues of dark storm-blue, like lightning caught in oil. It wasn't light—it was pressure. And it radiated downward like gravity had reversed.
The source. The eye of the storm. The thing responsible for the unrelenting maelstrom overhead.
He narrowed his eyes.
"That's it."
His hands tightened over the edge of the platform. Wind cut across the sky once more, carrying the sound of distant crackles and an unnatural pulse that beat like a second heart in the clouds above.
A flicker of movement rippled through the stormline overhead—was it a shadow, or lightning?
He couldn't tell.
With a grunt, Jaemin pushed himself to his feet. His limbs ached. Not from damage, not exactly—it was something deeper. A fatigue that settled in the marrow.
That kind of exhaustion only came from fighting things people weren't meant to fight, from pushing past limits over and over until the body forgot what rest was.
His boots scraped against the edge of the platform. He adjusted the belt around his waist and flexed his fingers. The static in the air kissed his skin again.
He glanced down at his palms. Burn marks and microfractures lined the flesh like spiderwebs from repeated aura flares. He hadn't even realized when he stopped using his training gloves. At one point he needed them becuase his hands were to weak, now his hand have become solid enough.
"Doesn't matter."
He thought.
He looked up again, eyes fixed on the next floating slab—just barely within reach if he jumped right.
But before he moved, he let his body breathe. His eyes fluttered half-shut, then closed fully as he sank into himself. Listening.
The storm. The platform's soft, humming vibrations. The occasional flicker of blue light lashing across the air in slow, suspended arcs.
There was a rhythm to it. Not just weather. Not just chaos. Something older. Something... watching.
The Rift wasn't empty. It never had been. It was waiting.
He opened his eyes again. They looked sharper now. Less tired, more resolved. Whatever lay at the top wasn't going to be some ceremonial prize.
It was alive.
And Jaemin knew that if he didn't claim it—someone else would.
He crouched, steadying his breath one last time.
And leapt.
Jaemin's foot touched down on the 190th platform with the light crunch of gravel meeting sole. The platform rumbled slightly beneath his weight, swaying gently in the sky like a forgotten stone bridge suspended in a stormcloud.
But he didn't flinch. The winds roared all around him, curling his long black hair upward, whipping it against the sharp edges of his face.
Sweat clung to his skin like a second skin—his black shirt soaked through, sticking tight to his lean frame, every muscle tense, every breath shallow but steady.
And then the Iron Warrior stepped into view.
Ten feet tall, forged from blackened steel and ancient cruelty, the Abyssal construct was shaped like a knight from a nightmare—an armored monstrosity with broad spiked shoulders and a chest plate that hissed steam with every breath.
Its legs were thick pillars ending in talon-tipped boots that cracked the stone beneath it. In place of arms, it bore heavy weapon gauntlets—one shaped into a fist like an iron pile driver, the other a mounted molten cannon, already glowing.
Its core—a glowing furnace lodged in its chest—flared to life as the warrior let out a low, mechanical screech. The molten cannon began to churn, lava-like energy bubbling to its brim.
Jaemin didn't blink.
He simply twirled the Binary Stars in his hands— that shimmered faintly against the chaos of the Rift's sky.
The Iron Warrior fired.
A molten orb erupted from the cannon with the sound of tearing steel—
FWOOOOOM—
Cutting through the air like a comet. Jaemin was already gone, his body sliding low across the stone, the heat brushing past his back as the orb exploded behind him with a searing blast. Shards of melted platform flew into the sky like glass rain.
Jaemin spun and launched forward, his daggers hissing through the air.
The Iron Warrior swung its pile-driver arm in a wide, brutal arc—
THUD-WHAM—
smashing the ground where Jaemin had stood half a breath earlier. The platform cracked in a web beneath the force, but Jaemin had already flickered past it, eyes glowing faintly as he moved low and fast, his body tighter than a spring.
He leapt upward and slashed—
SHRIIINK—
carving twin lines across the golem's shoulder. Sparks flew, but it didn't stop.
The Iron Warrior roared, spinning, its cannon firing again—
FWOOOOOM FWOOOM FWOOOM—
lava bombs peppering the sky in a barrage. Jaemin weaved through them, twisting in mid-air, one hand slicing a projectile in two mid-flight with a blur of steel, the other gripping the platform's edge as he flipped over its side, vanishing from sight for a heartbeat.
Then—THWACK!
Jaemin launched from below with a reverse grip slash, both daggers burying into the Iron Warrior's torso just above its molten core. The creature stumbled back, shrieking as black oil hissed out like blood.
It slammed a knee forward—
BANG!—catching Jaemin's ribs.
He grunted and flipped back from the impact, boots skidding across the stone. Pain flared through his side, but he didn't fall. He rolled his shoulder once and stared coldly.
"I've fought faster."
He muttered, and dashed forward again.
This time, Jaemin moved like a blur—ducking one punch, leaping over a sweeping cannon-arm, landing on the golem's shoulder.
His blade stabbed downward into a joint—
CHINK—
And twisted. The Iron Warrior screamed, turning into a whirl of metal and fury.
But Jaemin never stayed in one place long enough to be hit.
He was already behind it.
The daggers flashed again—
SLASH
SLASH
SLASH
—severing hydraulic lines along its spine, exposing sparks and glowing lava veins. The Iron Warrior's motions grew clumsy, faltering.
It tried to turn, lurching as it prepared one final cannon burst.
Jaemin didn't wait.
He sprinted straight at it, a low glide that kept him barely grounded. The glow from the furnace core reflected in his eyes as he came closer.
Just before the cannon erupted again, he leapt up, twirled his daggers once
—swish
swish—
And buried them both into the chest plate hard
KRA-KOOM.
The Iron Warrior staggered.
Jaemin twisted the hilts—crossing the blades inside the golem's core.
Then he ripped them apart.
BOOOOOOM.
A burst of molten pressure and steam blew the chest wide open. The Iron Warrior's core flickered once—then died.
Its body crumpled in on itself, slamming to the platform in a heap of broken plates and blackened iron, its molten blood hissing into vapor.
Jaemin stood above the wreck, panting, shoulders heaving. The daggers dripped with hot steam, glowing faintly from absorbing the heat.
He exhaled, pushing sweat-matted bangs from his eyes.
"One more down."
He murmured, and looked up.
Only a few platforms remained between him and the final glowing storm above. The one where everything would change.
And he wasn't going to stop now.
****
The room was dim. Just the soft hum of the overhead fan and the occasional rustle of papers broke the silence.
Screens glowed faintly on the dark oak desk, but neither man was looking at them. Instead, they stood over a long table strewn with photos—each one worse than the last.
A hoard. No—a population.
Hundreds of thousands of small, ape-like Abyssals filled every inch of the ruined coastline in the images, their eyes glowing crimson, their limbs crooked and sinewed like predators born in a fever dream.
Corpses of once-thriving forests lay rotting beneath their feet. Shorelines blackened. Buildings turned to skeletons of steel and ash.
"This..."
Murmured Kwon Hyun-Woo, President of Covenant: NOVA.
"Perhaps went down in the history of Korea as one of the worst anomalies we've ever faced."
Gwangho, arms folded behind his back, gave a slow nod.
"Yeah… the Ulleungdo Island catastrophe is no joke."
His voice carried weight. Not just because he'd lived through it. But because he'd read the parts no one else had seen.
"We've kept the most important parts of it confidential."
Hyun-Woo said after a beat, flicking a photo away to reveal another even darker beneath it.
"Even if the public knows nearly ninety percent of what happened… it's that missing ten percent that still keeps the Coreborn Association awake at night."
He tapped one of the images. A crater—perfectly circular—scorched into the middle of the island. There was no Abyssal there. No structure. Just… absence. A void.
"A rift."
Gwangho said.
"when it remains untouched and stable for too long, it doesn't just fade… it festers. Expands. Until it spills over. We should've known."
He moved beside Hyun-Woo, staring at the image.
"The Association dismissed it. Thought it was too far out to pose a threat. Just a few small rifts, too remote to matter. But over time they multiplied. Merged. Became something unnatural."
Hyun-Woo didn't speak.
"And then came the main rift."
Gwangho continued.
"not summoned… but born. The surrounding rifts fed into it. It grew teeth. And from it came those things."
He gestured to the photographs. The ape-like Abyssals. The thousands. The black horizon.
"When Abyssals seep out into our world, we call it a raid."
Hyun-Woo said, voice low.
"Just like how we raid their rifts—rift raids."
Gwangho nodded.
"Correct. But what happened that day… wasn't a raid."
He paused.
"It was a MAX RAID."
The words filled the room like a weight.
"Something that tore open the sky."
He said slowly, jaw tight.
"Something that wasn't local. It wasn't hidden. It didn't creep through shadows. It screamed as it came. And the whole country heard it."
Hyun-Woo was silent.
So was Gwangho.
The hum of the fan grew louder, as if the silence was something it had to fill.
All of Korea had seen that storm. All of Korea had heard the cry from the sky that day. But only a few knew what it really meant.
And now, as the dark clouds over Seoul loomed again—silent, unmoving—memories of that catastrophe returned like old scars beneath a new wound.
Hyun-Woo exhaled slowly and leaned over the edge of the table, his fingers brushing across a grainy satellite image of the current Rift storm over Seoul.
"…What does our Chairman think of it?"
He asked, his voice cautious, careful.
"You know—the Max Raid happening again in a few months."
Gwangho didn't answer right away. He turned his eyes toward the ceiling, as if searching for the right words in the stagnant air above them. Then he finally spoke.
"Chairman Seo Jinyoung…"
The name alone felt heavier than any photograph in the room.
"He's been quiet on it. Of course he knows. He probably knew before any of us even considered the possibility."
Gwangho continued.
"You could say he's planning in silence."
Hyun-Woo raised a brow.
"Planning in silence, huh?"
"Yeah."
Gwangho nodded.
"That's just how he operates. Never rash. Never loud. He's not the type to rally the masses. But when the moment calls… he moves like a sword."
"Of course."
Hyun-Woo muttered, straightening his posture.
"He may not be one of the Eight Special Coreborns, but no one sane would challenge him. The man's been on the frontlines longer than any of us. You could feel it in the way he walks."
There was no bluff in his voice. No flattery either. Just truth.
Seo Jinyoung, Chairman of the Coreborn Association, was a legend in the old world and a terrifying force in the new one.
With decades of battle experience and the Elemental Imprint of Aether, he was revered as a Coreborn who had not only survived dozens of cataclysmic Rifts, but single-handedly stabilized some with nothing more than resolve and raw willpower.
No flashy transformations.
No global broadcasts.
Just results.
"Some say the only reason the Eight Special Cores haven't gone off leash is because they know the Chairman exists."
Gwangho added quietly.
"He's not the leash. He's the quiet weight keeping the balance in check."
"And the day he takes action…"
Hyun-Woo began.
"…is the day we're either saved."
Gwangho said...
"Or on the edge of something worse."
The silence returned. But this time it was different.
It wasn't hollow.
It was anticipatory—like the air just before a lightning strike.
Outside the window, the unmoving clouds still loomed, hovering like a bruise over Seoul's skyline. Still no rain. Still no wind.
Just waiting.
****
A chunk of stone crumbled beneath his boot, tumbling down into the swirling abyss below. Han Jaemin stood hunched over, drenched in blood and sweat, perched on the edge of the 199th platform.
His chest heaved, drawing ragged breaths into lungs that had long since numbed from the cold, high-altitude air.
The Rift sky above him rumbled again, lightning cracking in slow motion like the world was ripping apart.
His black shirt was no longer intact. The fabric was torn from his pecs down to his abs, clinging uselessly to his drenched torso.
Steam rose from his skin, heat and blood mixing in the thin air. His right arm hung loosely, crimson dripping from a jagged gash across his forearm.
His temple was scratched open too—blood running into one eye, half-blinding him.
But he didn't blink.
Below him, the shattered remains of the Abyssal Titan lay broken. A thirty-foot brute made of obsidian sinew and crackling red core veins.
It had taken everything Jaemin had—speed, precision, instinct, and a final close-range strike between its ribs using both daggers in a cross.
Jaemin spat blood off the side of the platform, letting his hand rest on one knee.
"199 platforms…"
His eyes turned upward—toward the last. The 200th.
It loomed above him, suspended like a throne in the sky, glowing faintly in deep storm-blue hues. Lightning slithered around it like snakes. It looked close, just another leap…
But Jaemin knew better.
"It always gets worse the higher I go."
He stood up slowly, cracking his shoulder with a wince. His bones popped audibly. He rolled his neck, feeling the weight of every inch he'd climbed over the past few days. How long had it been in the real world? Two days? Three? Four?
"Doesn't matter. Whatever's at the top… it's the source. The eye of the storm. The one that's still hovering above Seoul."
He stared into the void above.
"If I fall now, all of this was for nothing."
Jaemin crouched, coiled like a spring, and surged his Core energy downward. A sharp burst of wind snapped around his feet—then with a deafening crack, he shot upward like a bolt of black lightning.
His body soared through the chaos. Wind roared past his ears. Lightning flashed so close it kissed his skin.
He landed hard on the obsidian edge of the final platform, sliding a few feet before coming to a stop.
Silence.
Everything was still.
This place… it was nothing like the others. The obsidian stone was unmarred. Smooth. Etched with strange, ancient symbols that shimmered faintly as his feet touched them.
And in the center, floating above a pedestal, was a shard.
No larger than a human heart, the fragment was storm-gray, suspended mid-air like it defied time itself. It pulsed in slow, steady beats—like it was alive.
"The Core of Tempest.?"
Jaemin read, a small holographic presenation with the core's name which only he could see.
But Jaemin didn't take a step forward.
His instincts screamed.
That's when he saw it.
Descending slowly from above, like it had been waiting all along, came a figure.
Humanoid in shape. Seven feet tall. But its form was impossibly wrong.
As if it were sculpted from thunderclouds, outlined by stormlight. Its torso was armored in obsidian and copper, etched with lightning veins that glowed white-blue.
It floated inches off the ground, arms to its side, and in its right hand—
A spear of raw electricity.
Not held. Formed.
Eyes, or what passed for them, blazed beneath a cracked mask that covered half its face. Wind coiled around it unnaturally, as if even nature bent to its presence.
Jaemin stepped back, slightly.
His fingers curled around the Binary Stars.
"This… thing. It's not like the Titan. Or the Golems. It's not just strong. It's intelligent."
The creature raised its spear.
Not in aggression, not yet.
But in challenge.
As if it understood who Jaemin was.
Jaemin didn't move. His heart thudded once in his ears. Sweat rolled down his jaw.
"Is this what guards the Core of Tempest?"
Lightning coiled between them. The tension was absolute.
He breathed out once through his nose.
And whispered.
"So be it...."