The Han-Sung grand hall, a sweltering paradise just hours ago, was starting to descend into chaos.
Jazz from the orchestra had fallen silent. The string quartet had packed away their instruments. Forced laughter from the elite dissolved into tight, frantic whispers as reality from the outside world finally pressed through heavy oak doors.
"What do you mean the roads are impassable?" a tech CEO hissed at his bodyguard near the coat check. "I pay you to drive, not to give me weather reports. Get the snowplows!"
"Sir, the city plows are frozen solid," the guard replied, his face pale. "The temperature just dropped past negative forty. Engine blocks are cracking. We can't leave."
Across the room, Kang Dae-Ho stood near the towering ice sculpture, his expression carved from stone. He held a crystal glass of whiskey, though he hadn't taken a sip in twenty minutes.
Tae-Soo approached, his heavy footsteps lacking their usual arrogant swagger. He looked annoyed, but there was a tight edge of genuine anxiety around his eyes.
"Father," Tae-Soo said, lowering his voice. "Driver Kim just called in. He didn't bring Do-Hyun home."
Dae-Ho's eyes snapped to his second son. "Explain."
"The idiot ordered Kim to drop him off at the Gangnam-gu intersection," Tae-Soo scoffed, though the laugh sounded forced. "Right at the edge of the Sector 4 quarantine zone. Kim said he just walked into the blizzard."
Tae-Soo shook his head, a cruel smirk touching his lips. "He's dead, Father. You can't survive out there in a tuxedo. The weak fool probably wanted to finish what he started at the hospital."
Dae-Ho's grip on the whiskey glass tightened so hard, it looked like it would shatter at any moment.
"He humiliated General Bak," Dae-Ho murmured softly, his calculating mind racing. "He manipulated the conversation perfectly to avoid a scandal, and then he vanished into a quarantined sector without a trace."
Dae-Ho turned his cold gaze onto Tae-Soo. "Do you truly believe a suicidal fool orchestrates a night like that?"
Tae-Soo opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. His hand twitched. He suddenly remembered the crushing, suffocating killing intent that had washed over him in the driveway just days ago. The shadows wrapping around his throat.
Fire burns both ways, brother.
"No," Dae-Ho continued softly. "Something has changed in him. I want him found. Alive."
Across the hall, standing alone by the tall windows overlooking the frozen city, Han Isabella looked out into the whiteout.
She reached down, her thumb brushing the bare skin of her right ring finger. A phantom warmth pulsed deep within her mana—a two-way tether pulling her senses northward.
She closed her eyes, focusing her latent power into the connection: A faint map bloomed in her mind's eye. A single, dark violet dot was moving steadily through the whiteout conditions in Gangnam, heading toward the residential districts.
He's alive, she thought, a quiet exhale escaping her lips. And he's not struggling.
She looked back at the panicked room of billionaires and politicians. General Bak had stormed out hours ago. Her own father was frantically shouting into a satellite phone, begging the military for an armored convoy. They were rats trapped in a sinking, freezing ship, completely blind to the fact that the ocean had already swallowed them.
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Do-Hyun was the only one who understood the rules of this new world. Running into the blizzard wasn't about dying. It was about the hunt.
Isabella looked down at her hands. A faint, golden warmth flickered at her fingertips—the very beginning of her Solar awakening.
"I won't be left behind," she whispered to the empty glass.
Gangnam District - Sector 4 Perimeter.
The wind howled like a dying animal, tearing through the concrete canyons of Seoul.
Do-Hyun walked steadily through the knee-deep drifts. The silver expedition parka he had taken from the looters in the shattered Apex Alpine store was performing flawlessly. Combined with his thermal regulation and the Ring of the Shadowed Sun's passive resistance, the -42°C air felt like nothing more than a brisk autumn chill.
[Vitality: 21.0%]
[Calorie Burn Rate: Stable. Insulation holds.]
[Countdown: 17 Days, 21 Hours.]
[System: Don't get arrogant just because you stole a heavy coat. You're walking into a high-density spawn zone. The military didn't quarantine this area for fun.]
"I know," Do-Hyun murmured through his black tactical mask.
He was heading toward the northern edge of the district. Kang Seo-Rin's elite preparatory academy—the Winter School—was a sprawling campus built like a fortress. If his memory of the timeline held true, a localized Rift was going to tear open inside its walls by morning.
He needed Seo-Rin. Not out of familial love, but because an Epic-class Winter Witch was too valuable an asset to let die in a low-level dungeon break. If he was going to conquer the absolute zero event in under 18 days, he needed subordinates who wouldn't freeze to death when he expanded his Void domain.
Crunch. Crunch.
Do-Hyun stopped.
Heavy, dragging footsteps moving through the snow ahead of him.
He slipped into the shadow of a frozen bus stop, his hand resting on the hilt of the Headsman's Edge.
Three figures emerged from the whiteout. At first glance, they looked like human survivors. They wore tattered winter coats and carried briefcases. But as they drew closer, the sickening truth became clear:
Their skin was entirely blue, stretched tight over their skulls. Solid white spheres of ice filled their eyes. Jaws hung open, revealing jagged, frozen teeth.
[Monster Encounter: Frost Ghouls (Rank E)]
[Description: Corpses reanimated by the Great Chill. They feed on body heat. They are very hungry, and you are wearing a very nice coat.]
The leading Ghoul stopped, its head snapping toward the bus stop. It couldn't see Do-Hyun in the shadows, but it could smell the thermal energy radiating beneath his parka.
It let out a wet, rattling screech and broke into a jagged sprint. The other two followed instantly.
"Mindless trash," Do-Hyun said flatly.
He stepped out of the darkness, drawing the Headsman's Edge in a smooth, upward arc.
The dark steel sliced through the freezing wind.
Slash.
He ducked under the first Ghoul's grasping claws and drove the dagger upward through its jaw, pinning its skull to the roof of its mouth. Black, slushy blood erupted over his glove.
[Critical Hit.]
Kicking the dead Ghoul off his blade, he used the momentum to spin toward the second. A horizontal slash tore through, severing the creature's vocal cords and half its neck in one fluid motion.
The third Ghoul tackled him.
The sheer weight of the frozen corpse drove Do-Hyun back into the glass of the bus stop. Glass shattered, raining down around them. The Ghoul snapped its jaws inches from Do-Hyun's face, a wave of putrid, freezing air washing over his tactical mask.
"Get off," Do-Hyun grunted.
He brought his knee up, crushing the Ghoul's frozen sternum, and shoved it back. Before it could recover its balance, Do-Hyun threw the dagger.
The Headsman's Edge buried itself to the hilt directly between the Ghoul's white eyes. It dropped like a stone.
Do-Hyun walked over, pulled his blade free, and wiped it on the creature's tattered coat. The three corpses dissolved into gray ash, leaving behind three small, pale blue monster cores.
He picked them up: They were low-grade, barely the size of marbles, but out here, calories were currency.
He popped them into his mouth and swallowed them whole.
[System Notification: 3x E-Rank Cores Consumed. (+120 kcal)]
[System: Scraps. You're eating the equivalent of potato chips. If you want to survive the 18-day mark, you need a full meal. You need a Boss.]
"Patience," Do-Hyun whispered, looking down the long, snow-buried avenue. "The school is still two miles away."
He sheathed his dagger and kept walking into the dark, leaving the ashes to scatter in the wind.
