Chapter 1

The instant the Shadow blanketing the sky opened its one-eyed, humanity instinctively knew its end had come.

It was a calamity far beyond even the Hunters—the awakened vanguard of New Humanity—to contain.

Wherever the Shadow passed, only ruins remained. Blood soaked the earth into a crimson sea stretching to the horizon. People died before they could even comprehend what had struck them, and the supernatural abilities that had once seemed omnipotent proved utterly useless.

Yet not everyone surrendered to despair. Across the devastated expanse, Hunters burned through every last trace of their mana in a desperate bid to destroy the entity. Even if their resistance amounted to nothing, they fought frantically to defend the final line.

“Healer! Is there a healer here?!” a frantic voice screamed through the swirling dust.

Kang Eui-rim was caught in the very heart of that chaos.

“I’m a healer!” Eui-rim shouted back, coughing against the ash-choked air that scorched his throat.

He was merely a low-ranking civil servant, an unremarkable D-rank healer whose skills rarely commanded attention. But today, rank meant nothing. Amid this slaughter, any healer was a miracle, however small.

A wounded female Hunter staggered toward him, gasping for breath. “How much—” She broke off, wheezing as she fought for air. “How much mana do you have left? Can you… still heal?”

More than half the woman’s face had been torn away, as though she had scraped past the monstrous Gaze by a fraction of an inch. Blood streamed relentlessly from jagged wounds that looked as if iron pickaxes had gouged into her skull.

The young healer quickly assessed her catastrophic injuries and forced a reassuring smile. However hopeless the situation, Eui-rim refused to let a patient glimpse his terror. His mana was nearly depleted—almost, but not entirely—and he fought to project steady composure.

“I have enough left to treat one person,” Eui-rim said gently, stepping toward her. “Don’t worry.”

“Not me!” A violent shudder wracked the woman’s chest, her blood-slick fingers scrabbling desperately at his sleeve. “Please… go help our Guild Master instead!”

The plea caught the healer completely off guard.

A Guild Master? Does that mean one of the high-ranking Hunters survived?

“Please, hurry!” the female hunter pleaded, her grip tightening like a vise.

While the younger man stood momentarily frozen in disbelief, her trembling hands dragged at his collar, pulling him toward the rubble. Eui-rim cast an involuntary glance up at the monstrous form dominating the heavens. The vast one-eyed had drifted away.

Its gaze shifted north a moment ago. If we’re going to move, it has to be now.

“…Lead the way,” Eui-rim said, steadying his breath.

The injured woman led him toward an underground bunker in the western sector. Eui-rim had been stationed in the south and had not set foot here in some time; the bunker’s relatively intact blast doors suggested that the Shadow’s Seed had not yet discovered it.

When Eui-rim pried open the mangled entrance, stale, musty air spilled out over them like a breath from an unsealed tomb. The stench thickened as he followed the female hunter inside: coppery blood, ancient dust, and the foul undercurrent of something rotting beneath it all.

“Go straight down this passage.” The woman paused, fighting for air against the crushing pain in her chest. “Our Guild Master… should be there.”

The wounded hunter descended the ladder first, then pointed toward the pitch-black passage. Eui-rim caught her arm just as she swayed on her feet.

“Are you sure you don’t need treatment first?” the healer asked, supporting her weight.

“Yes. I’m fine. It… it looks worse than it is.” The woman drew a ragged, shuddering breath. “Please, just go. The Guild Master…”

She could not finish. Trembling with restless panic, the woman looked ready to collapse at any moment, her desperation sharpening Eui-rim’s own sense of urgency.

Eui-rim lowered his voice to soothe her. “Leave this to me and head for the southern perimeter. Hunter Shim Woo-joo is stationed there—find her immediately and get treated.”

“But…” the woman hesitated, her bloodied eye wavering.

“Healing isn’t a team effort,” Eui-rim said, softening his tone further. “Right now, looking after your own life comes first.”

Every combatant was precious; the healer could not bear to let her bleed out in the dark. With the Shadow’s gaze turned north for the moment, she had a narrow window to reach the southern safe zone.

Thankfully, the female hunter did not argue further. Murmuring repeated words of gratitude, she hauled herself back up the ladder.

The heavy bunker hatch slammed shut above, plunging the tunnel into suffocating darkness. Eui-rim stood frozen for a beat before edging forward. Every instinct screamed at him to turn back and run with her, but if an elite Hunter was still breathing down here, he had to reach them. There was no other choice.

Only after venturing deep into the subterranean passage did the healer catch the faint stir of another presence. Steeling his trembling legs, Eui-rim pressed on—until a low, rasped curse drifted from the darkness ahead.

“Is someone in there?!” Eui-rim called into the gloom.

As his pace quickened, his footsteps echoed loudly off the narrow walls, prompting him to speak up again. The younger man called out so the injured survivor wouldn’t panic at the sudden noise of someone approaching.

“I’m a healer!” Eui-rim shouted ahead. “Someone outside asked me to help you! I’m here to treat your injuries!”

“Ah, damn it,” a rough, irritated voice muttered back.

That groan of sheer exasperation—so devoid of relief—left Eui-rim far more flustered than the injured man seemed to be.

What is this? Is he not as badly hurt as I thought? Or was this a situation where no one else was supposed to enter?

Short of that, there was no reason for anyone to react with irritation upon hearing that a healer had arrived.

Eui-rim halted and peered into the shadows, where a broad silhouette sat slumped against the far wall. The tunnel was as cramped as a mine shaft, making the stranger’s towering build stand out even in the gloom.

“Who sent you?” the low, gravelly voice demanded from the shadows.

“A member of your guild said you needed help…” Eui-rim answered, hearing the hesitation creeping into his own voice.

“I’m asking which guild member told you that,” the unseen hunter pressed, his tone sharp.

The tone bordered on confrontational, yet the healer felt more bewildered than offended. No matter how hard he tried to replay the last few minutes, nothing coherent came to mind.

Wait… who was that?

Her face had certainly been drenched in blood, yet a sudden fog seemed to have rolled through his memory. What had she looked like? A woman, probably. But what was her name? Had he even asked? Had he properly checked which guild she belonged to, who this Guild Master was, or why an elite commander had been forced to hide in a bunker like this?

What was I thinking, saying I’d stay here alone?

Snap!

Startled by the sharp crack, the healer lifted his head to find his surroundings suddenly bathed in bright light. Eui-rim rubbed his stinging eyes and swallowed a groan. His vision blurred as though he had emerged from a dark cavern into sudden noon, making his head spin.

“Turn back while you still can,” the raspy voice warned. “I don’t need healing.”

As the glare subsided, a strangely familiar timbre cut through the ringing in his ears. Eui-rim blinked away the spots dancing before his eyes, gathered his wits, and looked up from the man’s combat boots.

“…Huh?” A stunned syllable escaped Eui-rim’s throat.

Eui-rim caught his breath the instant he recognized the ruined face. His mind went completely blank; for a dizzying second, the civil servant forgot why he had even come down into this bunker.

“Hunter Seo Hae-gun…?” The name slipped past Eui-rim’s lips before he could stop himself.

No answer came, but the healer was certain. Even veiled in deep shadow and grievous wounds, those singularly colored eyes were unmistakably Seo Hae-gun’s.

Staring into those luminous blue-gray irises, Eui-rim barely managed to steady his breathing. Thank goodness he was bracing his shoulder against the wall; otherwise, sheer shock might have dropped him straight to the concrete floor.

Did Seo Hae-gun face the Gaze head-on as well? There’s no other way to explain his condition.

Setting aside the deep diagonal gouges tearing across his face and torso, the S-rank hunter’s right arm and leg had been completely severed, leaving him in a condition beyond recovery. The blood loss alone was so catastrophic that any ordinary hunter would have perished from hemorrhagic shock long ago.

“You’re the Cheongho Guild Master, aren’t you? You survived? What about the other guild members?” The questions tumbled out of Eui-rim faster than he could weigh them.

At the barrage of questions, the dying Guild Master’s gaze flashed. Hae-gun’s blue-gray irises gleamed like raw opal, rippling with faint tremors like an aurora shifting across a dark sky.

Did he just use a skill to check my status window?

“You really were a healer,” Hae-gun murmured, a faint trace of relief filtering into his rough voice.

Hearing that tone, Eui-rim knew his intuition had been correct.

Right. He looked at me with 〈Mirror Gaze〉 after all.

Eui-rim narrowed his eyes at the ruined face. Was the Guild Master sneering, or smiling with faint relief? Lacerations crisscrossed the man’s skin as if iron blades had plowed through the flesh, making his expression nearly impossible to decipher.

“Unfortunately, my guild’s kids are all dead,” Hae-gun stated evenly. “I’m the last one left.”

“Everyone is dead?” Eui-rim managed, his voice catching.

“Yes,” the man replied without hesitation.

The flat, unequivocal confirmation left Eui-rim speechless. In the Guild Master’s eyes, now settled back to their customary blue-gray hue, there was no trace of jest or deception. A heavy chill settled behind the healer’s ribs.