Tick. In the dead of night, while the rest of the world slept, the faint sound of a single thread snapping cut through the silence. The boy’s eyes instantly shot open. He rose without a sound, his movements as fluid as a cat's, and fixed his gaze on the iron gate. His room was a cell, barely large enough for two adults to lie down. With no windows, the small iron door was the only way in or out. Holding his breath, the boy stared at the door handle. Click. Click. The sound of someone turning the handle echoed in the cramped space. The intruder was trying to be quiet, but to the boy’s already alert ears, it was as loud as a drum. Clunk. Finally, the lock gave way. The door creaked open, and a figure peered inside. In his hand, the intruder held a dagger the length of a man’s forearm. Not yet accustomed to the darkness, he entered cautiously, feeling his way forward. The boy remained perfectly still, a shadow in the corner, watching everything. Unaware, the man took another step into the room. That was the moment. Tick. Another snap, this one from beneath the man's boot. It was the trap the boy had set. Bang! “Oof!” A dull thud and a strangled scream erupted at once. A small dagger was now embedded in the intruder's side, launched by the very mechanism he had just triggered. For stepping into the boy’s room, the man had paid a harsh price. “Argh! What the…?” he writhed on the floor, voice thick with pain. In that instant, the crouching boy moved. Thud! He launched himself from the floor, landing squarely on the intruder's chest. He snatched the man's own dagger and pressed the point against his throat. The man stared up in bewildered shock. “Ugh! This little bastard…” “I was wondering who was sneaking in like a stray cat,” the boy said. “It’s just my neighbor.” He was, quite literally, the man from the next room. They lived in adjacent cells. The boy had even seen him last night; he remembered the man’s sour face and the ugly, lingering way he had looked at him. The boy lightly tapped the man’s cheek. “Hey, mister. Don’t you think robbing your neighbors is taking things a bit too far?” “What neighbor? We’re just rats in the same ant hole! Let me go, you brat. Do you have any idea who my brother is?” “How would I know that, mister?” The boy’s expression was one of pure disbelief, which only made the man beneath him grimace harder. “He’s an Chowol-in. An Chowol-in who uses magic.” “If you’re going to lie, at least make it a good one. You expect me to believe the brother of an Chowol-in is living in a dump like this?” “It’s true. I’m just here for a while, for… reasons.” “Then you should’ve kept your head down instead of trying to rob a kid.” “Hah! Damn it, you think I was just going to ignore it? I saw you with that magic stone!” “So you did see it.” The boy clicked his tongue. He’d found a small magic stone by chance. It was his first, and he’d been admiring it when the man from the next room must have spotted him. It was a stupid mistake. This slum was known as the Geoji-pa, or the Gae-mi Gul. It was a festering settlement for the poor who couldn’t get into the Shin-Hanseong Colony, a place where rules and laws were meaningless. Here, the strong trampled the weak and took whatever they wanted. To be weak was a sin; to be strong was a license. The boy, Yoon Ji-han, knew the laws of the slum better than anyone. He was born and raised here. His earliest memories were of the Geoji-pa, of being forced to beg from the moment he could walk. There were no good memories there. He was beaten for earning too little and beaten for eating too much. So, when he was old enough, he had escaped. He didn’t just leave; he slipped out in the dead of night while the leader of the Geoji-pa slept, vanishing without a trace. To this day, the leader was still searching for him. The name Yoon Ji-han was his own creation. He needed a name to claim an identity. It didn’t mean much; he just thought it sounded cool. He was quite satisfied with it. He had done whatever it took to survive. Pickpocketing, theft—everything short of murder. He knew that in the slums, complacency meant death, which was why he had even booby-trapped his own room. That meticulous caution had just saved his life. Yoon Ji-han considered what to do with the man pinned beneath him. If his brother truly was an Chowol-in, this was dangerous. Just then, a cunning glint sparked in the man’s eyes. Swoosh! A second dagger slid from the man’s sleeve, one he had hidden for emergencies. “Die, you little brat!” he roared, swinging the blade. Yoon Ji-han threw himself backward. The man scrambled to his feet and lunged, his eyes wild with venom. He slashed wildly, driven by the single-minded goal of killing Yoon Ji-han and taking the magic stone. “Ugh!” They grappled desperately in the tiny room. Plop. A moment later, the wet sound of a blade sinking into flesh filled the air. “Argh!” The man screamed and collapsed, a dagger buried in his chest. He stared at Yoon Ji-han with an expression of utter disbelief, his body began to tremble, and then his breath left him for good. “Shit!” Yoon Ji-han slumped to the floor. He’d never killed before. The sickening sensation of the blade piercing the man’s throat was still vivid in his hands. “Fuck! Why did you have to break in…?” Yoon Ji-han muttered, staring at the corpse. He had always known this day would come. To survive in the slums without being trampled, killing was inevitable. He just hadn't expected it to be today. Yoon Ji-han forced himself to his feet. If the man’s brother was an Chowol-in, he was in grave danger. Hiding the body was impossible; the slums were crawling with people, and he’d never move a corpse without being seen. It was better to leave it and run. Decision made, Yoon Ji-han moved fast. He locked the door to the room from the outside, sealing the body within, and stepped out into the night. The street looked like something out of the old Mijin Seong in Hyangok. Shabby buildings were crammed together like chicken coops, their rooms stacked in a chaotic jumble, turning the alleys into a bewildering labyrinth. Yoon Ji-han vanished into the maze. “Fuck! To think he was telling the truth. Of all the bad luck in the world…” Yoon Ji-han muttered, hunched inside an armored bus plated with scavenged steel. The man’s older brother was a real Chowol-in. And not just any Chowol-in—a B-rank. A chase from even an F-rank would have been a death sentence, but a B-rank was a nightmare. Among the thousands of Awakened Ones in Shin-Hanseong, barely a hundred had reached that level. If a B-rank was nobility, Yoon Ji-han was less than a peasant. If caught, he wouldn’t just be killed. The man’s brother was enraged and had pursued Yoon Ji-han relentlessly. It didn’t matter to him that his brother had been the one to break in. He was family, and the thought that some gutter rat had killed him had driven the man into a frenzy. “I’m running like a coward today, but I swear I’ll get my revenge. Park Dong-hyun.” That was the name of the Chowol-in hunting him. His power was Lightning Magic, which, even among mages, was known for its terrifying destructive force. He was one of the strongest of all the B-ranks. Worse, Park Dong-hyun knew the slums as well as Yoon Ji-han did. Though he now lived in Shin-Hanseong, he had come from this same filth. He knew every hiding spot, every escape route. Yoon Ji-han had eventually been cornered, which was why he was now on this bus. It was an armored transport heading from the Shin-Hanseong Colony to the Yeongseok Gwangsan far out in the wasteland. Once he was outside the colony’s influence, not even Park Dong-hyun could easily track him down. ‘I can’t believe I’m getting on this bus of my own free will,’ Yoon Ji-han thought, biting his lip. Beyond the walls of Shin-Hanseong Colony was nothing but desert. An endless expanse of red sand where not a single blade of grass grew. The burning landscape was teeming with dangers. Sandworms and armored sand beetles lurked beneath the dunes, while fire wolves and giant horned hyenas roamed the surface. Worse still were the scavenger gangs that preyed on anyone traveling between settlements. Nowhere was safe. It was why the poor, despite their subhuman existence, clung to the slums just outside Shin-Hanseong Colony. For some reason, the beasts rarely ventured too close to the city walls. Staying nearby at least reduced the chance of being eaten. Yoon Ji-han had stayed for that very reason, but with Park Dong-hyun hunting him, the slums were no longer a sanctuary. “Damn it! If only I had Awakened, too…” A hundred years ago, the Earth had become a desert. Over ninety percent of humanity had perished, and the survivors scraped by on the ruins. It was the Awakened Ones who had saved them. As if by design, a fraction of the survivors had suddenly manifested incredible abilities. Some gained superhuman strength, while others learned to wield magic. They became the new rulers of the world. Even the lowest-ranked Awakened Ones received special treatment in Shin-Hanseong. Compared to them, a boy like Yoon Ji-han was nothing. If he died, no one would even notice. His only choice had been the bus to the Yeongseok Gwangsan. The mines were located in the Go-am San, seventy kilometers from Shin-Hanseong. Every magic stone pulled from the earth there was sent straight to the city. The energy they provided was the lifeblood that kept the metropolis running. But mining was brutal work and required a massive labor force. The tunnels were narrow and cramped, forcing miners to work by hand with pickaxes. Men died constantly, which meant there was always a shortage of workers. As a result, Shin-Hanseong let anyone willing to go board the bus, no questions asked, no identity checked. That was how Yoon Ji-han had managed to get on. ‘I’ll survive in those mines, no matter what. And one day, I’ll have my revenge on Park Dong-hyun.’ As Yoon Ji-han stared out the window, burning with resolve, the bus continued to fill with other miners. “Hey, kid! You heading to the mines, too?” a man sitting next to him asked. He was burly and coarse, exactly the type of man who would volunteer for such work. Yoon Ji-han answered curtly. “What of it?” “Kid’s got some fire in his eyes. Still, you’d better be careful out there.” “Why?” “That place is full of guys who’d love to get their hands on a pretty little thing like you. Heheheh.” The man raked his eyes over Yoon Ji-han’s body with a sinister grin. ‘This fucking bastard.’ Yoon Ji-han knew that look all too well. The slums were full of predators who targeted boys. Yoon Ji-han was slim, with a handsome face. Beneath the feral intensity in his eyes, he was a fine-looking young man. If not for his sharp instincts and ferocity, he would have been taken advantage of countless times. He idly toyed with the dagger hidden in his sleeve, debating whether he should just cut the man now. Maybe not kill him, but sever a tendon, leave him a cripple. It would send a message to the others. That was how you survived at the bottom. But he didn't have to worry about it for long. With a lurch, the armored bus began to move. Soon, it rumbled out of Shin-Hanseong Colony and into the open desert. The endless waves of red sand outside the window were breathtaking, silencing everyone on board. Even the man who had been leering at Yoon Ji-han now stared out, his mouth agape at the vast, desolate landscape. The armored bus was just a speck of dust in a sea of red. Yoon Ji-han muttered under his breath, “We’ll make it to the mine safely, right?” He regretted the words the instant they left his mouth. That damned mouth of his. Behind the bus, the red sand began to churn. Something massive was moving furiously just beneath the surface, kicking up a fierce plume. A huge sandworm was chasing them. “Shit! There shouldn’t be any sandworms this close to the colony.” As if to prove him wrong, the creature’s enormous body erupted from the sand. It arched through the air like a living meteor and slammed into the armored bus. Whoosh! For Yoon Ji-han, the entire scene unfolded in vivid slow motion. ‘Fuck! Sandworms can fly?’ Bang! The world exploded in a massive impact.

Chapter 1: The Snapping Thread