The sky split open at 9:17 a.m.
Not metaphorically. Not like a storm cloud breaking apart or sunlight cutting through rain.
It split.
A jagged violet crack tore across the blue heavens above the city, stretching from one horizon to the other like a wound carved by something far too large to belong to this world. For one frozen second, everyone looked up in silence.
Then the screaming started.
Glass shattered across the street as people stumbled backward. Cars slammed into each other in a chain of screeching metal. Someone dropped a stroller. A delivery biker crashed into a traffic light. Every phone in sight lost signal at once, their screens glitching into static.
Kai Ren stood in the middle of the crosswalk with a plastic grocery bag in one hand and his heartbeat pounding in his throat.
"What...?"
The word barely left his mouth before the air changed.
The temperature dropped so fast that his skin prickled. A pressure descended over the entire city, heavy and suffocating, as though the world itself had just inhaled and forgotten how to breathe out. That impossible crack in the sky widened by another inch.
Something on the other side moved.
Kai's body locked up.
He didn't know why. He couldn't see it clearly—only a vast shadow behind the fracture, larger than the buildings, larger than the skyline, shifting slowly as if it were looking down through the opening.
Then blue light burst in front of his eyes.
A translucent screen flickered into existence, hanging in the air so close that he nearly stumbled back.
[System Initialization Complete]
[Planetary Integration: Successful]
[Eligible lifeforms detected]
[Awakening begins now]
Kai stared.
Around him, more screens had appeared in front of other people. Some were screaming and swatting at the air. Others had dropped to their knees. A suited office worker ran straight into a parked car because he couldn't stop staring at the blue panel floating in front of his face.
"What the hell is this?" someone shouted.
A woman nearby started sobbing.
Then the ground exploded.
Not everywhere. Not all at once.
But all across the avenue, circular distortions opened in the asphalt, dark holes spiraling into existence with wet, sucking sounds. One formed beneath a taxi, swallowing its front wheel. Another opened beside a bus stop and tore a bench in half as black mist poured out.
Kai's instincts screamed at him to run.
He ran.
The grocery bag tore from his grip almost immediately, oranges spilling across the pavement behind him. He didn't look back. People were stampeding now, trampling bags, shoes, phones—anything in their path. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance. A child cried. Someone was praying.
Kai made it halfway down the block before he heard the first monster.
A guttural shriek echoed out from one of the dark openings behind him, sharp and inhuman. The crowd's panic doubled instantly. Kai glanced back once and wished he hadn't.
Something thin and gray hauled itself out of the portal on all fours.
Its limbs were too long. Its spine jutted through paper-thin skin. Its face was hairless and stretched, with a mouth that split almost to the ears. Black saliva dripped from needle teeth as it lunged onto the pavement.
A second one followed.
Then a third.
The first creature pounced on a man who had tripped in the street. Its claws punched through his back before he could even scream properly. Blood splashed across the curb.
Kai nearly vomited.
This wasn't a riot. This wasn't terrorism. This wasn't anything his mind could fit into the shape of ordinary disaster.
The world had changed in under a minute.
He sprinted into an alley, lungs burning. His apartment was three blocks away. His younger brother, Min, was at home sick today.
The thought hit him like a hammer.
Min.
Kai pushed harder.
He cut through the alley and emerged into a narrower side street lined with old brick buildings and shuttered storefronts. Here, the panic was thinner—but not absent. A pair of women were trying to force open a locked pharmacy door. A man in construction gear stood frozen in the middle of the road, staring at the blue screen in front of him.
Kai's own screen flashed again.
[Awakening complete]
[Individual appraisal in progress...]
His vision blurred for half a second.
Then new text appeared.
Name: Kai Ren
Age: 19
Status: Unawakened Civilian → F-Rank Hunter
Primary Attribute: Low
Skill acquired: Absolute Drop Rate
Kai almost stopped running.
Absolute... what?
That was it. No explanation beyond the name.
No weapon. No armor. No sudden blast of power surging through his body like in games or webnovels. Just a single skill with a ridiculous name and a rank so low it might as well have been a joke.
"Seriously?"
A crash interrupted him.
A fire escape ladder tore loose from the wall above and came down in a shower of rusted metal.
Kai threw himself forward. The ladder slammed into the pavement where he'd been a moment earlier, sparks flying. One of its side rails snapped off and skidded across the alley.
He grabbed it without thinking.
It was heavy. Rusted. Barely straight.
Still metal.
Still something.
A wet scraping sound came from behind him.
Kai turned.
One of the gray monsters had followed him into the side street.
At this distance, it looked worse. Too human in the wrong places. The thing's ribs pressed visibly against its skin. Its eyes were white and empty, like boiled fish eyes, but its mouth stretched wider as it saw him. Its claws clicked against the asphalt as it crouched.
Kai's hands tightened on the metal bar.
He had never been in a real fight in his life.
Not a serious one. Not one where losing meant being torn open in the street and eaten alive.
The creature lunged.
Kai swung wildly.
The bar connected with the side of its head with a clang of bone and metal. The impact numbed both his hands, but it was enough to knock the thing sideways. It hit the ground, hissed, and sprang right back up.
Too fast.
Way too fast.
Kai stumbled backward. The creature swiped. Claws sliced through his sleeve and opened four burning lines along his forearm. He shouted and slammed the bar down again and again, driven by pure blind terror.
One hit shattered its knee.
The next cracked its jaw.
The third drove it flat to the ground.
Then something inside Kai snapped loose.
Adrenaline. Fear. Survival instinct.
He raised the iron bar with both hands and brought it down with every ounce of strength he had left.
The monster's skull caved in.
It convulsed once.
Then its body dissolved into black ash.
Kai froze over it, gasping.
The blue screen flashed again.
[Target eliminated]
[Absolute Drop Rate activated]
A red object clattered onto the pavement.
Kai blinked.
A weapon lay where the monster had died.
It was a sword—shorter than a longsword, longer than a dagger, its blade dark red from hilt to tip as though forged from old blood. Black veins pulsed faintly beneath its surface. The guard resembled hooked fangs curling inward around a crimson gem.
No normal monster should have dropped a weapon.
No part of that sentence made sense, and yet the weapon was there.
Kai's screen updated.
[Item acquired: Blood Fang Sword]
Rarity: Rare
Effect: +200% Attack Output
Curse: Rage Corruption
Warning: Use at your own risk
Kai stared at the word Curse.
Then the creature behind him screamed.
He spun.
A second gray monster was charging down the street straight at him.
There was no time to think.
He grabbed the sword.
Pain exploded through his arm.
It wasn't ordinary pain. It was like molten iron flooding his veins, racing from his fingers to his shoulder and then straight into his chest. Kai's knees buckled. For one split second, he thought the sword was killing him.
Then the whisper began.
Hungry...
The voice was soft.
Too soft.
Not heard with his ears, but inside his skull, curling around his thoughts like smoke.
Kai's eyes widened.
"What—"
The monster leaped.
Kai moved before he could think.
The sword rose in a blur of red-black light. His swing felt wrong—too fast, too heavy, too smooth, as though the blade already knew where it wanted to go.
It cut the creature clean in half.
There was no resistance.
One moment the monster was in the air. The next it came apart in a spray of black blood and collapsing flesh, both halves slamming wetly onto the street before dissolving into ash.
Kai stood there shaking.
He could feel the sword in his hand like a living thing.
Its hunger.
Its satisfaction.
Its rage.
The voice whispered again, a little clearer this time.
More.
Kai nearly dropped it.
Another item fell from the dead monster—a dark ring set with a dim violet stone.
The System flashed.
[Item acquired: Bone Whisper Ring]
Rarity: Uncommon
Effect: +15% Sensory Awareness
Curse: Auditory Hallucinations
Kai actually laughed.
A broken, breathless sound.
"This has to be a nightmare."
Every monster he killed dropped something.
That had to be what the skill meant.
But the items were cursed.
Every single one.
A crash echoed from the end of the street. More screams. More monsters.
Kai looked at the sword in his hand, then toward the direction of his apartment.
Min was still home.
Nothing else mattered.
He started running again, this time with the cursed blade in his grip.
The city had become a war zone in under ten minutes.
Storefronts were smashed open. One apartment building had part of its upper floor torn away, exposing a bedroom to the outside like a dollhouse. Dark portals pulsed at random intersections, vomiting out things with too many limbs, too many eyes, too many mouths. Somewhere overhead, helicopters thudded through the air.
Kai cut down another monster in a stairwell.
Another item dropped.
A torn black glove.
Curse: Nerve Decay
He ignored it and kept moving.
By the time he reached his apartment block, his shirt was soaked with sweat and blood. Most of the front windows were shattered. The main entrance hung half open.
Too quiet.
Way too quiet.
"Min!"
No answer.
Kai took the stairs two at a time, sword dripping black residue behind him. The whispers in the blade had grown stronger with every kill—still indistinct, still mostly hunger and bloodlust, but definitely there. He shoved them aside and burst onto the fourth floor.
His apartment door was open.
His heart stopped.
"Min!"
He sprinted inside.
The living room was overturned. A lamp lay smashed against the wall. Pills from Min's prescription bottle were scattered across the floor.
And in the middle of the apartment stood a creature larger than the others.
This one was almost human-sized, its torso armored in black chitin, one arm swollen into a hooked blade. It had cornered Min against the kitchen counter.
Min looked up, pale and shaking.
"Kai—!"
The monster turned.
Kai didn't even feel fear this time.
Only rage.
Pure, savage, blinding rage.
The sword in his hand pulsed like a second heart.
YES, the whisper hissed.
Kai moved.
The creature swung first, blade-arm shrieking through the air. Kai ducked under it by inches and planted his blade deep into its ribs. The impact cracked something in his shoulder, but the cursed blade punched through the monster's torso and out the other side in a burst of dark fluid.
The creature screamed into his face.
Kai roared back and ripped the sword sideways.
The monster split open.
It collapsed in pieces.
And for one awful second, Kai wanted to keep cutting.
He wanted to hack the body apart.
He wanted to tear through the building and find every last thing that had come out of those portals and paint the walls with them.
The rage wasn't his.
Or maybe part of it was.
That scared him more than the monsters had.
The body dissolved, leaving behind a small crystal the size of a thumb joint.
The screen appeared.
[Item acquired: Rage Shard]
Rarity: Rare
Effect: Temporarily amplifies combat output by 50%
Curse: Aggression Overflow
Kai didn't touch it.
Not yet.
"Kai?"
Min's voice shook.
Kai turned. His brother was alive. Bruised, terrified, but alive.
The iron grip around Kai's chest loosened so suddenly it almost hurt.
He staggered forward.
Min grabbed him.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Outside, the city was still screaming.
Kai looked past his brother toward the shattered window and the bleeding sky beyond.
The System screen hovered silently at the edge of his vision.
Skill: Absolute Drop Rate
Status: Active
He understood it now.
This was not a blessing.
This was not luck.
Every monster he killed would make him stronger.
And every step forward would drag him deeper into curses powerful enough to twist his body, his mind, maybe even his soul.
The sky had broken.
The world had changed.
And Kai Ren had just taken his first step into darkness.