Present Day — Kairo City
Year — 2140
---
The city never sleeps—it devours darkness with electric hunger, transforming night into a neon-painted canvas of endless possibility. Kairo City pulses beneath the obsidian sky like a living organism, its towering spires piercing the clouds with chrome and glass fingers that seem to scratch at heaven itself. Skylanes blaze with ribbons of light as flying vehicles weave intricate patterns between the architectural titans, their engines humming a mechanical symphony that has long since replaced the songs of birds.
Rain kisses the streets with gentle persistence, each droplet catching and fragmenting the holographic advertisements that bloom in the humid air like digital flowers. The moisture transforms every surface into a mirror, reflecting the kaleidoscope of corporate promises and digital dreams back at the eight million souls who call this metropolis home.
The largest holographic display dominates the central plaza like a monument to human ambition itself, its images dancing fifty meters high against the storm-dark sky:
"Welcome to Kairo—the Eastern Alliance's crown jewel!"
"Join the Tower Lottery today! Become a Floor Conqueror!"
"Ascend. Evolve. Earn Eternity."
Every screen, every speaker, every heartbeat in this vast urban organism revolves around the Tower. Even here, thousands of kilometers from that cursed obsidian spire, its shadow stretches across continents, across minds, across the very fabric of human ambition and desire. The Tower has become more than a dungeon—it is religion, economy, and destiny wrapped in crystalline mystery and the promise of power beyond mortal comprehension.
---
{The Mansion — Ancient amidst Neon Dreams}
In the Central District, where glass giants reach toward the stars with desperate architectural fingers, a wide estate sprawls like a fortress born from another age. The mansion rises amidst the skyline of glowing skyscrapers—silent, dignified, utterly immune to the electric heartbeat that drives the rest of the city. Ancient stone marries cutting-edge security systems, creating a sanctuary where old secrets whisper to new technologies.
Neon shadows paint the estate's walls in shifting hues of blue and crimson, the city's electric dreams casting their light across grounds that have witnessed more history than most museums.
---
{ Echoes of Tomorrow }
Within the mansion's depths, in a spacious chamber where shadows dance with filtered moonlight through heavy curtains, Jin-Seok sleeps fitfully. His eighteen-year-old face, sharp with aristocratic features that hint at noble, contorts with an anguish that rest cannot ease. His breath comes in unsteady gasps, his brow furrowed as if he's fighting battles in realms beyond the waking world.
The dreams come like fragments of shattered prophecy, cutting deep into his unconscious mind:
A crimson sky weeping blood onto barren earth, the very air thick with the scent of copper and despair. Monsters with too many teeth and eyes like burning coals emerge from tears in reality itself, their roars shaking the foundations of existence. A blade, familiar yet foreign, drips with essence darker than the space between stars. A silhouette—achingly familiar yet impossible to identify—walks steadily into an abyss that seems to devour light, hope, and memory with equal hunger.
Screams echo from a future that hasn't happened yet, and beneath it all, a roar so profoundly inhuman that it freezes the soul and makes mortal flesh remember when it was prey.
And through it all, threading between the chaos and terror, a voice—warm, weathered, beloved—calling his name from a place that exists only in the boundary between memory and nightmare.
Jin-Seok jolts awake like a drowning man breaking the surface of dark water, cold sweat painting his skin despite the room's perfect climate control. His chest heaves as reality reasserts itself—the silk sheets tangled around his legs, the mahogany furniture that speaks of wealth accumulated over generations, the gentle hum of technology that keeps the outside world at bay.
"Again," he whispers to the darkness, his voice carrying the weight of months, perhaps years, of identical awakenings. The word hangs in the air like an accusation, a question, a prayer to whatever forces govern the realm of sleep and vision.
His hand drifts toward the nightstand drawer, fingers trembling with an uncertainty that feels foreign on his usually composed features. The gesture is automatic, born of countless repetitions, but he stops himself before making contact with the polished wood.
"Not yet," he murmurs, pulling his hand back as if the drawer contains fire instead of memory. Whatever lies within can wait—must wait—until he's ready to face the weight of truth and consequence.
The city hums beyond his windows, its electric lullaby gradually pulling him back toward the uneasy rest that passes for sleep in a world where dreams carry the weight of prophecy.
---
{ Dawn of Organized Chaos }
Morning arrives in Kairo City with the orchestrated pandemonium that has become the metropolis's signature rhythm. The skylanes erupt into life as millions of citizens begin their daily migration, their flying vehicles creating aurora streams against the pale sky. The city awakens like a vast machine, each component moving in perfect synchronization with the others—a ballet of ambition performed on a stage of chrome and neon.
Holographic advertisements flicker to life with renewed vigor, transforming the atmosphere into a three-dimensional marketplace of dreams and desires. Corporate logos dance in the humid air, their messages pulsing with hypnotic frequencies designed to bypass conscious thought and speak directly to the primitive parts of the human brain that understand only want and need.
"Register today and get 30% off your first mana booster!"
"Become the hunter you were meant to be! Unlock your potential!"
"Ryu Han-Seok: The Sword That Saved the World!"
The final advertisement paints itself across the morning sky with particular grandeur—a hundred-meter display showing the legendary figure in his prime. Han-Seok's face is warm and confident, touched with the kind of magnetic charisma that had convinced an entire generation to follow him into hell itself and emerge calling it heaven. His smile is eternal, frozen in digital immortality, gazing down at the city like a benevolent god watching over his children.
Below the massive projection, Jin-Seok walks through Kairo's arteries with practiced anonymity. His school bag is slung over one shoulder, his stride measured and purposeful, his expression a carefully maintained mask of casual indifference. He never once glances up at the towering image of the legendary hero, though something in the set of his shoulders suggests he's acutely aware of its presence.
The morning crowds part around him without conscious thought—not from recognition, but from the subtle aura of controlled power that surrounds him like an invisible cloak. People sense something different about him, something that makes their instincts whisper warnings about predators and prey, but they can't quite identify what sets him apart from the masses.
---
{ Central Academy }
Central Academy rises before him like a temple dedicated to education and ambition, its crystalline walls reflecting the hopes and dreams of a thousand families who have invested their futures in the promise of advancement. The building itself is an architectural marvel, its surfaces shifting between transparency and opacity as smart-glass responds to the needs of those within.
Today, the final bell will toll—graduation day for Kairo's elite, the ceremony that will sort the wheat from the chaff and determine who will chase the Tower's promises into the realms of legend and nightmare.
Drones buzz overhead like mechanical locusts, their cameras capturing every moment for the feeds that the city consumes with religious fervor. Students flood the glass courtyard in waves of excited energy, their celebrations a symphony of youth and possibility. Some wear uniforms so sleek they seem painted on, while others sport garments plastered with sponsor logos like racing vehicles—each outfit telling a story of backing, investment, and someone's belief in potential.
Jin-Seok stands apart from the festivities, hands buried in his pockets, watching the spectacle with the detachment of a scholar observing an interesting but ultimately irrelevant experiment. His isolation is not born of arrogance but of something deeper—a fundamental disconnection from the dreams and ambitions that drive his peers toward the Tower's shadow.
The whispers find him anyway—they always do, following him like persistent ghosts wherever he goes:
"Hey, isn't that him? The scholarship kid who topped everything?"
"Yeah—Jin-Seok something. Aced every single test. Combat theory, mana control, tactical analysis, dungeon ecology. Perfect scores across the board."
"Such a waste of talent. Rejected every scout that approached him."
"Not even one sponsor. What kind of idiot turns down a chance at the Tower?"
"Maybe he's just scared of failing. These charity cases usually are—all theory, no guts when it comes to real combat."
"I heard he doesn't even have family. Complete orphan. No wonder no one wants to invest in him."
Jin-Seok's expression remains serene, but his jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. Three years at Central Academy have taught him that reputation is a double-edged sword—respect for his academic achievements balanced against suspicion about his background and motives. Excellence without connections breeds its own kind of isolation.
_________________________________________________
{An Original Series by Celestial Raven}