That day, the god abandoned Lee Kanghyun.
Because he had abandoned victory and chosen the weak.
Thirty minutes after the Gate opened. There were still people alive on the underground platform.
That was when Lee Kanghyun lost his divine blessing.
The moment his divine blessing vanished, Lee Kanghyun's right arm dropped limply.
The bow wrapped in white light scattered like sand. The light drained from the hound sigil on his wrist. The sigil didn't disappear. It hardened into a black scar.
At the far end of the underground platform, a black beast raised its head.
It wasn't just its head that moved. Its neck twisted grotesquely, turning its face in the opposite direction from its body.
When it opened its mouth, the sounds of the platform sank away.
The child's cries. The warning beeps of the emergency lights. The crackle of sparks leaping beneath the tracks—all of them faded into the distance.
Only the smell of wet ash, old blood, and rusted iron grew stronger.
At the beast's feet lay the reason Kanghyun had come back. Beneath a fallen billboard, a small child and a woman with an injured leg clung to each other.
“Fall back!”
The Captain of the field response team shouted from beyond the fire door.
One hand gripped the lever that closed the door. But he hadn't pulled it yet. Kanghyun was still outside.
“The Patron Deity took back your divine blessing! Come back now and you can live!”
Kanghyun knew that too. Until moments ago, his arrows had pierced the black beast's hide. Now all he had left in his hand was a single cracked dagger.
After the Gate opened, humans chosen by a Patron Deity and granted a divine blessing were called Awakened. The power to choose had always belonged to the gods.
A low voice swept through Kanghyun's mind.
'You abandoned victory and chose the weak. The hound turned its back on the hunt, so the contract is over.'
It was the voice of the Hunter of Victory, embedded in his bones for seven years.
Kanghyun swept his gaze across the platform.
Thirteen steps to the child. The woman couldn't move on her own. The fire door could withstand the next impact for ten seconds at most.
A discarded fire extinguisher lay rolling beside the tracks. There was a groove in the ceiling where the emergency shutter would descend, and the Captain's hand rested on the manual lever.
If he went back, the ten people behind the door would probably survive. If he went to the two people, everyone could be put at risk.
The black beast shifted its gaze toward the child. It looked ready to pounce at any moment.
The Captain shouted.
“Kanghyun! You'll get yourself killed trying to save everyone!” “Hey! Just get over here!”
Kanghyun reversed his grip on the dagger. After looking at the child and woman in turn, he glanced at the Captain and grinned.
Then he jumped down onto the tracks.
The moment he landed, the beast's tail slammed into his side.
Kanghyun rolled across the ground, clutching his ribs. The sharp taste of blood filled his mouth.
Gritting his teeth, Kanghyun forced himself back up.
The black beast looked at him once, then turned its gaze back to the child. A moment later, the monster took a step forward, poised to tear the child apart.
Seeing that, Kanghyun drew the dagger lightly across his palm.
The carnivorous monsters he'd encountered over seven years always went after the smell of blood first. Even if his divine blessing was gone, his hunting experience hadn't been taken from him.
“Over here.”
The beast's pupils narrowed as it caught the scent of blood.
Kanghyun backed toward the opposite tracks. The beast took its eyes off the child and lowered its body.
Kanghyun tried to read its movements. But the beast lunged at the child instead of him.
It hadn't gone after the bleeding prey. It had been watching to see what Kanghyun was protecting.
Kanghyun threw himself forward before he could think. The moment he blocked the child, the black tail lashed across his side again.
The breath was knocked out of him. His back slammed into the tracks. The dagger flew from his hand.
The black beast climbed onto Kanghyun's chest. One forepaw pressed down on his body armor. His ribs bent inward.
Its lower jaw split open all the way to its chest. There was no tongue inside. Thin, yellowish teeth like human fingernails were embedded in rows all the way down its throat.
Every sound around him vanished. Kanghyun couldn't even hear his own heartbeat. The stench of rusted blood filling his mouth choked off his nose and throat.
He clenched his teeth.
Kanghyun reached toward the spot he'd noted earlier.
His fingertips touched a cold cylinder. The fire extinguisher that had rolled beside the tracks.
He shoved the cylinder between the beast's teeth and pressed the handle. White powder erupted inside its throat.
The beast bit down on the extinguisher. The vibration of crushed metal raced up his wrist. One tooth pierced the cylinder, and the remaining pressure blasted out like an explosion.
The black head whipped to the side.
Kanghyun twisted free from beneath its claws. If he had been a beat slower, he would have lost his head.
He picked up the dagger from the tracks and tucked it into his belt.
“Kanghyun!”
The Captain shouted from beyond the cloud of powder. Kanghyun coughed and looked up at the emergency shutter in the ceiling.
“Kanghyun! Get up here!”
“When I signal, drop the manual lever immediately!”
“Are you crazy? Just get up here!”
“I can save everyone!”
With blood running down his hand, Kanghyun pointed beneath the shutter.
“Lower that on time.”
A series of cracking joint sounds came from within the white powder.
The black beast emerged. It was grotesque enough to make anyone seeing it for the first time scream.
It looked down at Kanghyun as if choosing its prey.
Its gaze settled on Kanghyun's bloodstained hand. The next moment, it charged.
Kanghyun threw himself toward the tracks at the last second.
“Now!”
The Captain pulled down the lever.
The half-lowered shutter slammed onto the beast's back. The metal bent, but it didn't pin the creature completely. When the black beast pushed upward with its back, the shutter screamed.
Kanghyun kicked the billboard wreckage aside.
“Send the child first.”
The woman pushed the child forward. The Captain leaned out and caught the child. Kanghyun hoisted the injured woman onto his back.
At that moment, the beast's claws raked a long gash across his thigh. His leg gave out, but he didn't stop.
The Captain released the lever and grabbed Kanghyun's arm. The people inside pulled the woman in first.
Once Kanghyun was inside too, the fire door slammed shut.
Boom!
The sounds swallowed up until then all returned at once.
The child's cries. People's ragged breathing. Claws scraping across the metal door. Warning alarms repeating in the distance.
Kanghyun leaned against the wall and sank down.
They were alive. He, the child, and the woman.
Only after confirming that did his tightly clenched molars finally loosen.
The Captain struck Kanghyun's shoulder roughly once.
“Kanghyun! Pull a stunt like that one more time and—” “Jeez... You nearly lost a whole leg...”
Kanghyun ducked his head with a smile.
“But everyone made it out alive.”
“Ugh... Whatever. Get the hell out of my sight!”
When the Captain raised his hand again, Kanghyun hid the child behind him with his uninjured arm. The child stopped crying and let out a small laugh.
Then a copper-colored glow spread across Kanghyun's chest.
A palm-sized token appeared in midair. On one side, the hand that had pushed the child away was engraved in lines; on the other, the back of Kanghyun carrying the woman was etched into the surface.
The center of the copper token was completely empty, leaving only a space where a sigil should have been. The token didn't disappear. It simply stopped in front of Kanghyun.
The Captain stared at the copper token, then his eyes widened.
“...An achievement?”
Kanghyun looked down at the copper token.
“What is this?”
The Captain's voice dropped.
“No way. The achievement... it hasn't been assigned yet.”
The fire door below rang out again.
“To the exit!”
The people ran up the stairs. But the metal door leading to the surface didn't budge. The Gate's collapse had cut the power, apparently causing the locks to engage.
A station employee pointed to the right side of the metal door with a trembling hand.
“The emergency release is outside the door.”
The wires connecting to the control room had already burned through. The inside of the ventilation shaft was packed with black roots that had grown from the Gate.
The Captain drew his sword.
“I'll go down and buy us some time. Kanghyun, take the people and find another way.”
Kanghyun helped the woman to her feet and stood her beside the child.
“We still have a way.” “Both of you, stay at the top of the stairs.”
He felt around the metal door. Cold metal, broken tile, an old sign. Everything his fingertips found was blocked.
On the other side of the blocked fire door, the monster's sharp claws began scraping and tearing through the metal.
Once. Twice. The third impact.
One of the fire door's hinges flew down the stairs.
Kanghyun closed his eyes. Between the screams and the grinding metal, an extremely thin breeze brushed across the back of his hand.
“Wait.”
It was behind the sign beside the exit.
Kanghyun smashed the tiles with the dagger's hilt. When he tore away two tiles, a small, blackened altar emerged.
At the center of the altar was a palm-sized stone door carved into it.
A stone statue that seemed to be pushing against the door was half-buried in dust, its right hand severed. Its face had been worn away, and only deep scratches remained where its name had once been written. A little stone dust fell from its body.
The Captain's expression hardened.
“...An altar?”
He brushed away the dust and examined the statue's erased face.
“There was a shrine to a god in a place like this.”
“Who was worshiped here?”
The Captain shook his head.
“I don't know. Its face and name have both been completely erased.”
There was no trace left to show who the statue had been or what it had guarded.
Crash!
The fire door below tore halfway off its hinges.
Kanghyun looked back and forth between the statue's severed hand and the achievement floating before him.
The gods chose useful humans and gave them divine blessings. Humans could accept or reject an offer once it arrived, but they couldn't choose a silent god first.
Kanghyun had been chosen that way too. And just now, he had been abandoned that way.
If he postponed assigning the achievement, another option might appear. But he had no time to find out whether that possibility was real.
The black beast's snout appeared from the darkness below the stairs.
The child grabbed Kanghyun's torn body armor.
“Are you going out with us too?”
Kanghyun pressed the back of the child's hand once.
“Yeah. All of us.”
Kanghyun looked back and forth between the statue and the copper token floating in the air.
After taking a moment to steady his breathing, he slowly held out the copper token.
“Let's give it a try.”
The copper token's light stopped. The sounds echoing up the stairs and the people's breathing faded for the briefest moment.
Nothing happened.
Kanghyun held the copper token out over the statue's severed hand.
“This is the achievement I earned.”
He didn't force it in.
“If you want it, take it.”
A faint scraping sound came from inside the cracked stone. The statue's remaining fingers slowly opened.
'I accept.'
It was a voice he'd never heard before.
Kanghyun placed the copper token on the open hand.
“I offer this to you.”
Only then did the copper light begin to move.
The achievement that no Patron Deity's sigil had been able to claim left Kanghyun's hand and flowed into the nameless statue.
The child's face. The back carrying the woman. The falling shutter.
The scenes engraved on the token melted one by one, seeping into the statue's severed wrist and chest.
A cracking sound came from the statue.
Transparent bone grew from the end of the severed wrist. Faint flesh and stone-colored skin covered it.
The newly formed hand seized Kanghyun's wrist. It wasn't cold. It was lukewarm, like the threshold of a door that had been closed for a long time.
The Captain took a step back.
“Did you just... choose a god?”
His gaze trembled between the vanished copper token and the restored hand.
“It received a human achievement without a contract or Patron Deity approval.”
The restored hand released Kanghyun's wrist.
That was when it happened.
The hand slowly rose toward the blocked exit.
One finger slowly traced a line through the air.
A thin black line appeared in empty space. The line spread open. It was barely the size of a palm.
Beyond it, they could see the nighttime street outside the subway station and the flashing lights of ambulances.
The Captain sucked in a breath.
“Did it... split space?”
The restored hand pointed at the child.
Kanghyun picked up a broken piece of tile from the floor and held it to the rift.
The shard's outline thinned and vanished. The same shard fell onto the pavement of the nighttime street beyond the rift.
Only then did Kanghyun bring the child to the opening.
“Just touch the edge of the rift with your fingertip.”
The child cautiously touched it.
The outline of the child's small body grew thin as paper, then folded into the rift.
The child reappeared on the nighttime street beyond it.
The injured woman followed the child.
When the third person touched it, the edge of the black rift trembled faintly.
A hairline rift spread across the back of the restored hand.
The survivors touched the rift one by one and moved outside the station.
Each time someone disappeared, the rift narrowed as if it might collapse, then barely returned to the size of a palm.
Stone dust kept falling from the fingertips. The rift never grew wider than a palm.
The Captain stayed until the end and looked back at Kanghyun.
“We're going together.”
“I'll be right behind you.”
The fire door below collapsed. The black beast crawled up the stairs.
The moment the Captain passed through the rift, the restored hand twisted at the wrist. The hairline rift covering its back stretched to the finger joints.
The nighttime street beyond the rift vanished. In its place appeared the depths of the unlit platform.
The black beast charged at Kanghyun. Kanghyun backed up until he was right in front of the rift.
The beast's forepaw touched the small opening. In an instant, its enormous body folded like paper.
The black beast vanished as if sucked into the palm-sized rift.
From the far end of the platform, the sound of something heavy slamming into a wall echoed.
The restored hand seized Kanghyun's wrist again.
The view beyond the rift changed back to the nighttime street.
Kanghyun's body folded thin as well.
The next moment, he was standing on the cold asphalt outside the subway station.
The rift in the air narrowed like a hairline rift.
From within it, claws scraped at space.
Once. After a brief pause, twice.
The translucent hand clutched the hairline rift as if squeezing out its last strength. The opening narrowed further.
Only then did unfamiliar letters appear in the center of Kanghyun's vision.
[Chosen Relationship] Relationship Administrator: Lee Kanghyun Achievement Assignment Authority: Lee Kanghyun
The sensation of power came first, and the information followed belatedly.
Kanghyun read the two lines that had opened for him, then looked back at the rift in the air.
The Forgotten God's new hand was already turning translucent. The achievement he'd offered apparently wasn't enough to keep it going for long.
Kanghyun raised his palm beneath the collapsing hand. Stone dust piled onto his wounded hand.
He didn't lower his hand until the last fragment had settled.
At that moment, a red hairline rift spread through the center of the black scar remaining on Kanghyun's wrist.
As if someone far away had seen that crack, one star in the night sky turned red.