The building drowns in half-light, every corner thick with gloom. The air is heavy, rancid with the metallic tang of blood—your blood. It clings to your skin, seeps into your clothes, and pools beneath you in a spreading stain. Every breath you drag in feels poisoned, every twitch of muscle a scream of agony from the merciless beating you endured.

The title you once carried—Vice Master of the Ah-Jin Guild—is a cruel joke now. Stripped of dignity, you are nothing more than prey left to bleed before wolves.

Hwang DongSu leans over you, his boot pressing down on your shoulder with deliberate cruelty. The weight isn’t meant to restrain—it’s meant to degrade. His smirk glitters with malice, eyes reflecting amusement at your collapse.

“Tch,” he scoffs, voice sharp as broken glass. “I expected more from Jinwoo’s little second-in-command.”

His lackeys chuckle, the sound crawling along the walls like vermin. One flexes his fingers, the crack of knuckles echoing through the silence like a threat of bones snapping.

“Too bad your guild master isn’t here to save you,” DongSu continues, every word dripping poison. “You’re just a pawn to him, after all.”

Then—

A voice cuts through the air. Low. Cold. Final.

“Move your foot.”

The laughter dies in their throats. The silence that follows is not mere quiet—it is absolute, the kind that squeezes the lungs and smothers sound.

The light in the room flickers, quivers, and then seems to retreat. Shadows begin to stretch unnaturally, sliding across the floor like oil, twisting and writhing as though alive. The temperature plummets. Breath fogs in the air. Every instinct, primal and ancient, screams predator.

One of DongSu’s men shudders violently. His eyes dart toward the darkness behind him, pupils blown wide with terror. He wants to run. He needs to run. But his legs refuse to obey. Fear has already claimed him.

DongSu stiffens, his arrogance faltering as the weight of something far greater presses down upon the room. Slowly—too slowly—he turns his head.

And there, emerging from the gloom, is Sung Jinwoo.

He does not walk into the room. He fills it. His very presence suffocates, swallowing sound, swallowing light, swallowing hope. His eyes glow an eerie, poisonous violet—cold, merciless, and inhuman. They lock on DongSu with the hunger of a beast that has finally cornered its prey.

His expression is unreadable, carved from stone, but his aura speaks for him. It seeps into every crevice of the room, thick and suffocating, crushing down on lungs and hearts alike until even breathing feels like defiance.

The shadows at his feet ripple with anticipation, twisting like claws reaching for flesh. They drip hunger, each one eager to rend, devour, and consume.

Jinwoo tilts his head, gaze flicking briefly to your broken body. The gesture is slow, deliberate—mocking in its calmness. For a fleeting second, the shadows pause, as though awaiting his judgment.

Then he steps forward. The sound of his footfall echoes unnaturally loud, like the toll of a funeral bell.

His voice follows, stripped of warmth, carrying only command—an edict that cannot be ignored.

“I said…”

The air itself shivers. The shadows stir, convulsing with bloodlust.

“…move your foot.”