Hyun-Jae woke up to the soft glow of the morning sun.
For the first time in years, he didn't feel the phantom weight of a training vest or the urgent need to check his stopwatch. He simply lay there for a moment, looking out the window at the sky. The crimson numbers of the countdown pulsed steadily, but he looked past them, focusing on the drifting clouds instead.
He spent the morning in front of his monitor. He was still clumsy with the controls, his muscle memory constantly trying to twitch into a different grip rather than clicking a mouse, but he was getting used to it. It was a different kind of challenge, one where failure didn't result in broken bones.
At lunch, the atmosphere in the living room was thick with the sound of the news broadcast.
The TV screen flickered with footage of massive, state-of-the-art facilities. Rows of Awakened stood in perfect formation, their markings glowing under the fluorescent lights of government training centers.
The reporter spoke in a hushed, reverent tone about the "rigorous standards" being applied. Each Awakened was being pushed to their absolute limit based on their rank. E-Ranks were mostly being drilled for logistics and support, while the C and B-Ranks were being forged into the tip of the spear.
Hyun-Jae sat down at the table, picking up his chopsticks. He watched a C-Rank warrior shatter a reinforced steel pillar on the screen.
I'm glad that's not me, he thought.
He didn't feel envy. He felt a profound sense of relief that he wasn't trapped in those sterile halls, being prepared like cattle for a slaughterhouse.
"What's the point?" Hyun-Jae said suddenly, his voice cutting through the reporter's commentary.
His family turned to look at him.
"We most likely don't stand a chance anyway," he continued, gesturing vaguely toward the TV. "Whether it's the Celestials themselves or whatever nightmare they put us through... all that training just seems like a way to stay busy while we wait for the end."
His father's expression hardened. He set his bowl down with a heavy thud.
"Hyun-Jae," his father said, his voice calm but layered with a sharp edge. "That's disrespectful. Those people are sacrificing their last days of peace to try and protect us. They are the only shield we have."
Hyun-Jae looked back at his plate, the taste of the food suddenly turning bitter.
"alright...," he muttered, though the words felt hollow.
He didn't say what he was really thinking. He didn't tell his father about the alleyway. He didn't mention the two D-Ranks who had laughed while they snapped his bones, or how the "shield of humanity" was currently being reinforced by thugs and criminals simply because they had marks on their necks.
He thought about Ejun and Sena, and the grim reality that the world was so desperate it was polishing trash and calling it a weapon.
Protect us? he thought to himself. They can barely protect their own humanity.
The tension in the kitchen didn't break; it increased.
"You almost think this is a necessity" Hyun-Jae's voice rose, sharp with a cynical edge he couldn't suppress. "But it's not necessity, Dad. It's a performance. We're just dressing up for a funeral."
His father's face flushed a deep, angry red. He stood up, his posture shifting into the rigid, imposing frame of the military officer he once was. For a man who lived by a code of duty and discipline, his son's sudden nihilism felt like a personal insult, not just to the soldiers on screen, but to the memory of why Hyun-Jae had started training in the first place.
"I don't understand you!" his father barked, his voice echoing off the kitchen tiles. "For ten years, you were the most disciplined person I knew. You pushed yourself harder than most active-duty soldiers. You said you wanted to be ready. You said you wanted to avenge your uncle. Now, when you realize you can't awaken you just... quit?"
Hyun-Jae felt a hot flash of rage at the mention of his uncle and his awakening. It was the two wounds that hadn't healed, the memories that still felt like a physical weight in his chest.
"Don't bring him into this," Hyun-Jae hissed, his chair screeching against the floor as he stood.
"Why not? He's the reason you started! Have you lost your pride? Have you lost your spine?"
"Pride?" Hyun-Jae snapped, his voice cracking with the sheer volume of his frustration. "What good is pride against beings that can delete a city with a thought? I was an idiot for ten years, Dad! I was chasing a fantasy! Being 'ready' doesn't mean anything when you're a bug waiting for a boot!"
He didn't wait for a response. He didn't want to see the disappointment or the fury on his father's face. He turned and stormed down the hallway, the sound of his bedroom door slamming shut vibrating through the entire house.
Inside the quiet of his room, the adrenaline began to fade, leaving behind a cold, hollow ache.
He threw himself onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling. His chest was still heaving, his heart hammering against his ribs. He grabbed a pillow and punched it, once, twice, letting off the steam that had been building since he walked away from that alleyway.
Damn it.
He rolled over, burying his face in his hands.
The anger was still there, but beneath it, a sense of guilt began to seep in. He knew his dad didn't understand. His dad hadn't seen the "imitations" up close like he had. His dad hadn't felt the casual, crushing power of those D-Ranks or the cold indifference of an S-Rank like Sena.
His father's pride came from a world where humans fought humans, where effort meant something. To his dad, quitting was the ultimate sin.
I shouldn't have snapped, Hyun-Jae thought bitterly, his energy leaving him all at once. I should have just let it slide. Why am I making things worse for them when we only have few days left?
He lay there in the silence, the crimson glow of the timer outside bleeding through his curtains, feeling like he had lost a fight he wasn't even supposed to be in.
The silence of the house was shattered.
Hyun-Jae bolted upright, his heart leaping into his throat. At first, he thought it was the timer, that the ten days had vanished in an instant. But the sound wasn't a celestial roar; it was the sharp, jagged cry of his mother from the living room.
He lunged out of bed, his feet hitting the cold floor as he sprinted toward the noise.
"No, no! Please, wake up!"
Hyun-Jae rounded the corner and froze. His father was sprawled on the floor, his body rigid, his chest heaving in a desperate, shallow rhythm. His mother was kneeling over him, her hands trembling so violently she could barely touch him.
The panic rose in Hyun-Jae's throat like bile, but then he saw Yuna and Yuri standing in the hallway, their faces pale and eyes wide with terror.
He couldn't break. Not now.
"Yuna! Call emergency services! Now!" he barked, his voice cutting through the hysteria.
He dropped to his dad's side, his training, the years of preparing for a war that he will never participate in, suddenly channeling into this. He gripped his father's hand, feeling the cold sweat. His dad was struggling for every breath, his eyes unfocused, rolling back toward the ceiling.
"Dad? Dad, look at me!"
But there was no response. Only the terrifying, wheezing sound of a man drowning on dry land.
The blue and red lights of the ambulance strobed against the walls of their home, clashing with the constant crimson glow of the countdown timer outside.
Hyun-Jae watched, paralyzed, as the paramedics loaded the stretcher. They moved with a practiced, grim speed that told him everything he didn't want to know.
"We're taking him to the municipal hospital," one of them said, barely looking up. "Follow us if you can, but stay out of the way."
As the ambulance sped off, the siren wailing into the empty night, Hyun-Jae stood on the sidewalk with his mother and sisters.
The guilt he had felt earlier now felt like a physical weight, crushing the air out of his own lungs. The last words they had exchanged were screams of anger. The last thing he had shown his father was a slammed door and a lack of respect.
If I had just been quiet, he thought, his eyes stinging as he stared at the retreating tail lights. If I hadn't snapped. If I hadn't let my own bitterness take over... would he be standing right now?
He didn't have the answer. He only had the hollow realization that while he was busy waiting for the world to end, his own world was already falling apart.
"Get in the car," he said softly to his mother, his voice devoid of any of the fire from before.
The drive to the hospital was a blur of neon lights and stifling silence. His mother's knuckles were white against the steering wheel, her eyes fixed on the road as if sheer willpower could make the car move faster. In the backseat, Yuna and Yuri were unnervingly quiet, their frames huddled together as they watched the city go by, a city that seemed indifferent to the fact that their world was splintering.
They burst through the hospital's sliding doors, the sterile, biting scent of antiseptic hitting Hyun-Jae like a physical blow. The waiting room was a chaotic mess of people, some injured from the rising civil unrest, others simply weeping in corners. After a frantic, almost desperate exchange at the reception desk, they were directed to a hallway in the intensive care wing, a place where the air felt even thinner and colder.
"Please, wait here," a nurse said, her voice strained as she held up a hand to block their path. "The doctor is still stabilizing him. You can't just-"
But Hyun-Jae didn't hear her. The guilt from their earlier argument was a physical pressure in his chest, a primal need to see his father alive, to undo the last words he'd spat at him. He pushed past the nurse, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, and stepped into the room.
The sound hit him first, the rhythmic, artificial hiss-click of a ventilator and the steady, haunting beep of a heart monitor. His father lay on the bed, looking smaller than Hyun-Jae had ever seen him. The broad-shouldered man who had served in the military and raised him with a firm hand now looked fragile, swallowed by the hospital linens.
But it wasn't the machines that made Hyun-Jae's blood turn to ice.
It was the mark.
Etched into the side of his father's neck was a single, static jagged line. It didn't pulse or glow with the vibrant, heroic energy often portrayed on the news; it sat there like a cold, permanent scar, a brand that changed everything.
Hyun-Jae froze, his hand still gripping the doorframe so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Is that..." he whispered, his voice trembling so much he could barely finish the thought. "A mark?"
The doctor, a man with deep bags under his eyes and a lab coat that looked days old, stepped forward. He sighed, checking the readouts on the monitor with a grim expression before turning to Hyun-Jae.
"Yes," the doctor said quietly. "It appears your father has awakened. To be honest, the medical community still has a very limited understanding of how Etherea truly interacts with human biology. We're mostly just observing and reacting at this point."
The doctor gestured toward the jagged line on his father's neck.
"We've seen enough cases like this over the last decade to recognize the pattern, though. The 'Awakening' process, the moment that mark appears, is a massive, sudden influx of energy. For a man his age, with the stress his body was already under... it's a shock that his system simply wasn't equipped to handle. His heart gave out under the sheer pressure of the transformation."
The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
Hyun-Jae didn't feel the relief he should have felt knowing his father was alive. Instead, a cold, paralyzing dread settled deep in his marrow. He knew exactly what this meant. The government wouldn't wait ten days for the Celestials to arrive. With the countdown at its final stretch, the "draft" was in full effect. They would be here within hours, perhaps even minutes, to collect their new asset. They didn't care that his father was a veteran with a failing heart. To the state, he was now a weapon that needed to be pointed at the sky before the timer hit zero.
He thought of Sena and Ejun. He thought of how they hunted down anyone with a mark, regardless of their circumstances, to fuel the war effort. If his father couldn't walk, they'd likely find a way to make him.
A sick joke.
The thought bubbled up in Hyun-Jae's mind, bitter and venomous. For ten years, he had bled, sweated, and prayed for a single mark. He had been willing to sacrifice everything, his youth, his social life, his own safety, just for a chance to stand on that battlefield and seek revenge for his uncle.
And now, with the end so close, the power had gone to the one person who never wanted it. The man who had spent his life caring for them was now being broken by the very power Hyun-Jae had craved.
Hyun-Jae looked at his own bare, unmarked hands, calloused from years of useless training, and then at the cold, jagged line on his father's neck.
"Why him?" he breathed, his voice cracking as the unfairness of it all threatened to choke him. "I was the one who wanted it. I was the one who was ready. Why did it have to be him?"
The irony was a jagged blade, twisting in his gut. The Celestials hadn't just taken his uncle; now, they were coming for his father, and they had used the very "gift" Hyun-Jae had obsessed over to set the trap.
Hyun-Jae stared at his father's pale face.
It should have been me, he thought. I'm the one who spent ten years training to be a weapon. I'm the one who doesn't have a wife and daughters depending on him. His family needed their father to survive, not to be a sacrifice. His dad was the pillar of their home, and now the Celestials were turning him into a pawn before he could even wake up.
He turned to the doctor, his voice a frantic whisper. "Does anyone else know? About the mark? Can we... can we just not report it?"
Before the doctor could answer, the door swung open. His mother rushed in, followed by Yuna and a wide-eyed Yuri. The room filled with the sound of his mother's sharp gasp as she saw the mark. She collapsed into the chair by the bed, burying her face in her hands. Yuna stood frozen, her eyes darting between the monitor and the jagged line on their father's neck. She knew what this meant.
Yuri tugged on Hyun-Jae's shirt, her voice small and shaking. She didn't understand the ranks or the marks, but she could feel the heavy sadness in the room, and it scared her.
The doctor waited a moment before gently leading Hyun-Jae to the corner of the room, away from his mother's crying.
"Listen to me," the doctor said, his voice low. "It's the law. Every doctor and family member has to report an Awakening the second it's confirmed. I already sent the alert to the Ministry. I had to."
Hyun-Jae felt a pit in his stomach. "So they're coming now?"
"Not until tomorrow morning," the doctor sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. "The government didn't expect new Awakenings this late. Their transport teams are busy moving the other ranks to make final preparations. They'll get to the 'late-bloomers' at sunrise."
He looked at Hyun-Jae's father with pity. "It's bad timing. If they take him tomorrow, he won't have time to recover, let alone train for whatever is coming in ten days. He'll be sent in pratically defenseless."
The doctor looked through the window at Hyun-Jae's mother, who was clutching Yuri tightly. He looked back at Hyun-Jae and leaned in close.
"I reported that an Awakened was found here," he whispered. "But the system is a mess right now. I haven't uploaded his ID or what he looks like yet. I just logged it as an 'unidentified male.' It gives you... a little bit of time."
Hyun-Jae looked at the doctor, surprised. The doctor didn't say anything else, but the message was clear: the government knew someone was here, but they didn't know who, not yet.