Chapter Text
"I'm hungry…"
The words barely scraped past cracked lips, hoarse and hollow like wind through a shattered windowpane. It wasn’t a cry, nor a complaint. Just a fact. A truth. Spoken to no one, whispered to nothing but blood-slick stone and the carcasses beneath his feet.
The monster shrieked—but the sound was short-lived. The sword, a crude length of sharpened metal he’d salvaged and honed for an eternity, slid free.
The creature, a chittering amalgam of chitin and too many legs, collapsed atop a mountain of its brethren. Its dark, viscous blood spattered, mixing with the already drying ichor of its kin, painting the cracked, alien ground in shades of grotesque crimson and oily black.
Bones cracked beneath its weight.
Rotting muscle squelched and split. Blood—thick, black, and reeking of sulfur—splattered across the filth-caked ground, mingling with the ichor of its brothers and sisters. His boots sank deeper into the pile with each kill, the slope a pyramid of rot and agony.
He stood there, panting. But not from exertion.
Exhaustion had stopped meaning anything days ago. Or weeks. Maybe even years. He wasn’t sure. Time here was an illusion—a thing long since lost. There was only now. There was only hunger. And pain. And survival.
His hand trembled around the sword's hilt. His knuckles were bone-white, fingers torn and blistered. Most of his nails were gone, ripped off during battle or scavenging or—he didn’t remember. His palms bled freely where the sword had fused to his grip through dried blood and callus.
He just… stared.
His eyes, once objects of admiration, the sharp and steady gaze of Korea’s top Hunter, were now hollowed pits reflecting a shattered sky. They saw the pile of carcasses not as a victory, but as a larder.
Sanity was a fraying thread, and he held onto it with bloody fingers.
He dropped to his knees into the blood-soaked slurry with a grunt. His joints creaked. Every motion hurt, but the pain was dull now—muffled under layers of deeper pain. Older pain. The kind that carves its shape into the soul. That reshapes a man.
To survive.
He stared down at the corpse beneath him—its slack mouth still twitching, as if mocking him—and without hesitation, he tore it open. His hands, calloused and scarred, found purchase on the monster’s carapace. He ripped. He tore. Wet, ripping sounds echoed like breaking branches.
The sound of sinew snapping, of shell cracking, was as familiar to him now as the sound of his own ragged breathing.
And soon limb was separated from limb & organs, flesh, muscle—anything soft enough to chew were pulled.
And he ate.
No pause. No hesitation. No thought.
To survive.
There was no revulsion anymore. No gagging. No tears. No struggle to keep it down. That part of him had withered and died long ago.
Now, he consumed like a beast. Jaw unhinging, teeth gnashing. Blood smeared his chin, his throat, his cheeks, drying in hard crusts that cracked when he snarled or breathed too hard.
Just think of it like fish…
The meat was sour. Rank. Vile. Tainted. It reeked of sulfur and rot. A symphony of textures that no living thing should ever experience—stringy, gelatinous, and with a taste that was equal parts rot and acid.
But it was sustenance.
He devoured it like a wild beast on the verge of death. His jaw worked, grinding, tearing, swallowing chunks whole. Through tendon and fat as if it were freshly grilled pork. Because it kept him alive. Because it filled the hollow gnawing in his gut—even if only for a little while.
Not enough. Never enough.
But it had to be.
To survive. To survive. To survive.
He didn’t bother to wipe the blood that dribbled down his chin and onto his tattered shirt. He tilted the creature's mangled torso, drinking the pooling blood directly from the wound, desperate for any fluid, any nutrient.
His body, his mind, were no longer just a man’s. They were a reflection of this hellscape, a savage thing that roamed and hunted and consumed to see another cycle of this dimension’s bizarre, unending twilight.
To survive.
The words hammered like a heartbeat behind his eyes. They echoed in every footstep, every breath, every bite. Not a mantra. A command. A plea. A chain that dragged him forward. The last bastion against the howling void that threatened to swallow him whole.
He tore a limb from the corpse, gnawing on it as he staggered to his feet, the sword dragging behind him. His ribs pushed against his skin like jagged branches beneath a tarp. His clothes hung in tatters, soaked through with black blood and sweat. His eyes—once keen and calculating—were bloodshot, ringed in dark bruises. Hollow.
The West Sea Rift was quiet today.
That meant nothing.
Quiet didn’t mean peace.
Quiet meant predators were watching. Waiting.
He scanned the corpses piled around him. Dozens. Hundreds. He had stopped counting. It didn't matter anymore. He used to keep track. Back when he thought this would end. When he believed the final boss would appear, that he’d strike it down and the rift would close and he’d go home.
Back when he still knew what "home" felt like.
That hope had rotted just like the flesh beneath his feet.
The monsters here were evolving. Adapting. Growing smarter. Or maybe he was just losing it. Hearing voices that weren’t there. Smiles in the fog. Eyes watching from the cracks between reality. They spoke sometimes. In the voices of people he once knew. They laughed. Cried. Begged.
“Eui-jae… help me…”
“You left us.”
“You promised—”
He clutched his head with his free hand, shaking, breathing fast. His fingers curled into his scalp, nails digging into grime-caked roots.
"Shut up. Shut up. Shut up—"
But they never did.
Every kill left him emptier. Every meal made him more like the beasts he slaughtered. The line between them blurred. He could feel it. Something beneath his skin, crawling. Changing. Tearing at what was left of the man he used to be.
He didn’t know how long he could fight it.
But he had to.
It’s for them. For my team. The ones who fell. I carry their weight. I have to. They died so I could keep going. Don’t let it be for nothing. Don’t you dare let it be for nothing.
The people back home. Waiting. Waiting for their hero. Hunter J. What a fucking joke. A hero? Look at me. Look at what I am.
Fuck, how long can I keep going? When will I see home again? Will I be able to go home again…? Will I still be me…?
That terrified him more than the monsters ever had.
But there was always one thing that kept him from letting go completely.
The boy.
Burned. Silent. Wrapped in gauze and bandages like a mummy. But alive. And watching. And hoping. The one he’d managed to pull from that collapsing building. The only one he’d saved. Whose small, broken hand had squeezed his and begged—without words—for him to come back.
Cha Eui-jae had knelt at that bedside, blood still wet on his gloves, and sworn:
“I’ll return. I swear it. I’ll survive. I’ll come back for you.”
He promised. Cha Eui-jae had promised that boy.
Promised to return. Promised to return. Promised to return.
I need to keep that promise.
And he meant it.
So he couldn't die.
He couldn’t break.
Not here. Not yet.
His voice cracked as he tore another bite from the carcass. “I promised. I promised. I—”
He repeated it over and over, a litany against the madness. His promise was the bedrock. His promise was the anchor. His promise was the reason he was still Cha Eui-jae and not just another monster.
The words choked in his throat, but he swallowed them down, same as the meat.
No matter how much he wanted to fall into the dirt and disappear.
No matter how many times his hands shook or his knees buckled or the world tilted sideways and refused to right itself.
He had to keep going.
To survive. To survive. To survive.
Chanted it over and over as he rocked on blood-soaked knees, sword resting in his lap like a lifeline, like a weight.
The Rift pulsed in the distance. Its breath hot. Its heartbeat steady.
It wanted to keep him.
It was changing him.
But he wouldn’t let it finish.
Somewhere in that swirling fog was the Rift Boss. The one he hadn’t found. The one he had to find. Not to win. Not for glory. But because it was the only way out. The only way home.
Even if by the time he got there, he wasn’t Cha Eui-jae anymore.
Even if he came crawling out of the Rift more monster than man.
He would still keep his promise.
Because even monsters keep promises.
He bit again.
Then came the sound.
A roar.
From the south.
Louder than anything he’d heard in weeks—if they were weeks. Deep. Piercing. Unnatural. It rolled through the air like a shockwave, vibrating the earth beneath his feet, rattling his bones, and splitting through the fog like a blade through flesh. A sound of pure power, a challenge that any Hunter below S-rank would have found their eardrums rupturing from the sheer pressure.
But Cha Eui-jae didn’t flinch.
He froze—not in fear, but recognition.
The sound dragged him out of his gnawing. Blood and muscle dripped from his lips as he slowly looked up, breath catching.
The half-eaten limb fell from his grasp, landing with a wet slap on the pile of gore.
His head snapped up. His eyes, which had been dull with exhaustion and self-loathing, sharpened. The pupils constricted, narrowing into predatory slits.
It was a look that didn’t belong on a human face.
Not human.
Not anymore.
His hand reached instinctively for the sword. His fingers closed around the handle with the easy familiarity of muscle memory long turned to survival reflex. Every tendon in his arm pulled taut.
A shudder left his throat, breathless and cracked, his voice low, strained, feral—
“I’m so hungry…”
Then he ran.
Faster than any living thing should’ve been able to run. His body, starved and weary, surged with a sudden, violent energy. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think. He bolted.
Boots slapped against the stone, skipping over blood, over corpses, over bones and shattered chitin. His movement was no longer graceful, no longer even tactical—it was animalistic. All drive. All speed. No hesitation.
Just a blur of ragged cloth and raw power. He ran up the side of a decaying, monolithic structure that might have once been a hill or a skyscraper—the geography of this place was a fever dream. His feet found purchase where there should have been none, his body moving with an animalistic grace that defied his broken state.
He reached the summit, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts.
The ruins of a city spread out below him. Towering buildings cracked in half like broken bones. Fires smoldered in black pits. Streets flooded with green sludge, the remnants of things long dead or worse, half-alive.
And in the center of it all—a giant.
Eui-jae didn't even flinch.
Didn’t hesitate.
Didn’t feel anything at all.
His eyes scanned it once. Just once.
Its body was twisted, half-formed. Like something that hadn’t finished being born before it started killing. Its arms dragged across the earth as it walked, each step an earthquake. Its maw was filled with teeth meant for tearing through steel. It was immense. But Eui-jae’s first thought was not of danger. It was of disappointment.
Not the boss, he thought.
Too loud. Too slow. Too proud.
This one will die in seconds.
And that was that.
This thing, as intimidating as it looked, was just another meal. Another obstacle. He’d fought bigger. He’d killed things far more dangerous.
He started his descent, a predator closing in.
His path was not clear, but it didn’t matter.
He tore across the shifting terrain of the Rift, his figure a blur, blades dragging faint lines of silver in the air. Every creature that so much as peeked from the fog took one whiff of his scent and fled.
The ones too slow?
They died. Instantly.
They didn’t even get the chance to scream.
He didn’t stop. Didn’t look back.
Smaller monsters, scavengers drawn to the giant’s destruction, scattered as he approached. They scurried and fled, a primal terror seizing them.
They could smell him.
They could sense him.
After so long in this rift, Cha Eui-jae was no longer prey. He wasn’t even just a predator. He was an apex. An anomaly. A walking, breathing warning to every lesser creature that to stay was to die.
He didn't spare them a glance. His focus was singular.
He launched forward again, moving like a shadow torn from its source. Small monsters—the ones that hadn’t already retreated—turned tail and vanished. They knew better. All things in this Rift knew better now.
Cha Eui-jae was not prey.
He wasn’t even predator.
He was something else.
An anomaly.
A ghost with fangs.
A monster that remembered what it meant to be human, but only just barely.
The Rift had shaped him, bent him, evolved him. His body no longer moved the way a human body should. He didn’t sleep. Didn’t rest. The wounds he took either scarred or festered or vanished altogether, depending on something even he no longer understood.
And the hunger. Gods, the hunger.
It was a storm inside his ribs. A howl that never ceased. Eating the monsters barely numbed it anymore. But he kept doing it. He had to.
To survive.
To survive.
To survive.
The chant never left him now. It clung to his thoughts like oil to skin. A whisper crawling through his brain like a centipede.
He remembered what he used to be.
The careful, composed man. The strategist. The leader. The one who made sure others got out alive.
Now?
He barely remembered his comrades’ names.
But he remembered the screams.
The burning.
The begging.
The blood.
He remembered the moment he stopped speaking to himself in his own voice. The moment his own thoughts began to echo with snarls and clicks and growls. The moment he realized he was closer to a Rift-beast than a man.
And still—he kept going.
Because death was not an option.
And mercy was a luxury.
He reached the city in moments. The buildings loomed around him, empty and dead. He walked through their skeletons like he belonged there. His sword still slick with blood, his eyes locked on the towering creature ahead.
The giant spotted him.
And stared.
As if it could sense it too.
That this wasn’t a man charging toward it.
This was something else.
Cha Eui-jae didn’t speak. Didn’t scream. He didn’t need to. The sword came down once—just once—glinting in the red Riftlight.
A single strike.
A clean cut.
The giant didn’t even have time to react. Its torso separated, cleaved in half. The upper body slid backward with a shuddering thud, ichor gushing from the wound like a fountain of tar. Its legs buckled and collapsed, twitching. The roar died in its throat.
Dead.
Instant.
Eui-jae stood over the corpse, breath slow, controlled.
His eyes were blank.
And without a word, he knelt.
And began to feed.
There was no hesitation. No moment of horror. No flicker of guilt. His hands dug into the massive beast’s ruined body, pulling hot flesh free and stuffing it into his mouth with methodical savagery. Blood soaked his chest, his face, his arms. He chewed, swallowed, reached for more.
The hunger screamed louder.
But his thoughts screamed louder still.
“To survive. To survive. To survive.”
His mind was splintering—he could feel it. His grip on himself slipping with every bite. His skin buzzed. His bones ached. His thoughts blurred.
But he had to eat.
He had to live.
Even if the part of him that was human was already gone, drowning beneath instinct and bloodlust and memory. Even if what stared back at him in the pools of monster ichor no longer looked like Cha Eui-jae.
Even if no one would recognize him if he ever made it back.
He would still fight.
He would endure.
And the cycle started all over again.