The cold night air felt like shattered glass in Jin-Woo's lungs, but he couldn't stop. The streets were dead and empty. He forced his leaden legs to keep moving, his vision blurring at the edges as the exhaustion from the previous fight threatened to drag him under.
Right behind him was Seo-Ah, her knuckles white as she gripped the metal baseball bat. A few paces back, Tae-Soo sprinted, his phone screen reflecting in his glasses—the only one who could actually see.
[System Alert] [Distance to Target: 2.8 km → 2.1 km → 1.4 km] [Hostile Signatures: 3] [Sync Level: Rising]
"If they engage before I get there… he's dead," Jin-Woo thought, gritting his teeth and pushing himself to sprint even faster.
They rounded a sharp corner into a narrow alleyway behind a PC Bang. The air here felt suffocatingly heavy. Near a row of overflowing dumpsters lay a toppled delivery scooter. The delivery boy was sprawled on the asphalt, scrambling backward in pure terror, his trembling hands scraping against the ground. He couldn't even stand. His legs refused to obey.
Looming over him was the Execution Choir.
There were three of them in immaculate white, featureless masks. As Jin-Woo skidded to a halt, the three entities tilted their heads at the exact same angle, at the exact same millisecond. It wasn't just their movements that were synced. Their chests didn't rise or fall. They didn't breathe. Behind the dark slits of their masks, they didn't blink. Frame-perfect, unnatural synchronization.
When they spoke, three distinct voices layered over one another in a chilling, dead monotone:
"Judgment requires harmony."
[System Warning] [Shared HP Pool: Active] [Damage Distributed] [Sync Attack Pattern: Engaged]
Jin-Woo didn't wait to read the rest. Seeing the delivery boy cornered, he lunged forward, throwing a desperate, heavy right hook at the center unit.
But it was a mistake.
Before his fist could even connect, the other two units moved. One caught Jin-Woo's wrist with a vice-like grip, while the third delivered a crushing kick to his ribs. The counterattack was flawless. Jin-Woo was sent flying backward, crashing hard against the brick wall. He coughed, tasting copper.
[System Alert] [Vessel Integrity: 41% → 36%]
"Jin-Woo!" Tae-Soo yelled from the mouth of the alley, his eyes darting from his screen to the fight. "Don't attack them head-on! They're syncing! It's not three enemies—it's one system!"
Tae-Soo rapidly typed on his device, analyzing the data flow. "There's a gap! [Sync Delay Detected: 0.4 sec]. You have to break their rhythm!"
Jin-Woo struggled to his feet, clutching his side. He couldn't outmuscle them. He looked over at Seo-Ah, who was trembling, staring at the masked figures.
"Seo-Ah!" Jin-Woo shouted, his voice rough. "Create a disruption!"
She flinched. But as she looked at Jin-Woo bleeding and the terrified boy on the ground, something inside her snapped. She didn't freeze this time. Letting out a piercing, defiant scream, Seo-Ah charged forward. Instead of attacking the Choir directly, she swung her heavy metal bat with all her might into the corrugated steel of the nearest dumpster.
CLANG!
The deafening noise echoed violently through the narrow alley. For a split second, the Execution Choir's heads snapped toward the sound. Their flawless rhythm faltered.
[System Alert] [Emotional Sync: Defiance Detected] [Faith Spike Initiated]
"Now!" Taking advantage of the 0.4-second delay, Jin-Woo darted in. He bypassed their guard and landed a devastating, bone-crunching strike square into the chest of the nearest mask.
The unit stumbled back... but it didn't fall. The impact seemed to ripple across all three of them simultaneously, dispersing the lethal force. Shared HP. It was going to take more than one good hit to put them down.
On the ground, the delivery boy looked up through tear-filled eyes. He saw Jin-Woo, battered and bleeding, standing between him and certain death.
"Hyung... please..." the boy whispered, his voice cracking with desperate hope.
[System Alert] [New Believer Candidate: Accepted] [Faith Link Established]
Jin-Woo felt a sudden, sharp surge of energy course through his veins.
"Break their sync again!" Tae-Soo commanded through the earpiece, his voice tight with panic. "Hit different timings! Seo-Ah, distract! Jin-Woo, delay your strike until I give the signal!"
They moved as one. Seo-Ah hurled a heavy glass bottle from the trash right at the left unit.
But this time, the Choir adapted. The left unit didn't just dodge; it snapped its neck toward Seo-Ah with terrifying, unnatural speed and lunged directly at her.
Seo-Ah froze, raising her bat in a desperate, futile block.
"No!" Jin-Woo forced his battered body forward, throwing himself between Seo-Ah and the masked figure. The Choir's strike grazed his shoulder, tearing through his jacket and flesh. Jin-Woo let out a choked gasp as a blinding flash of pain shot through his nervous system.
[System Alert] [Vessel Integrity: 28% → Dropping]
He stumbled, dropping to one knee.
"Three... two... ONE! NOW!" Tae-Soo roared.
Jin-Woo tried to push off the ground, but his injured leg betrayed him, buckling for a fraction of a second.
Too slow.
The Choir didn't miss the opening. The center and right units had already re-synced, their hands raised like executioner's blades, descending directly toward Jin-Woo's exposed neck. It was a guaranteed kill. Time seemed to slow down into a suffocating crawl.
I'm going to die.
But as the delivery boy screamed his name, a desperate surge of adrenaline exploded in Jin-Woo's chest. Ignoring the tearing of his own muscles, he twisted his torso violently, ducking under the lethal strike by millimeters, and drove his fist upward with everything he had left.
He struck the center mask a microsecond before their sync locked in.
A sharp, hollow fracture echoed—wrong, unnatural. It wasn't the sound of breaking bone or shattering mask. It sounded like cracking reality itself.
[System Alert] [Sync Failure] [Shared Pool Collapse: Fatal Error]
Without the safety of their network to distribute the force, the central mask caved in completely. A sickening shudder violently ripped through all three bodies. They seized up simultaneously, collapsing to the asphalt like puppets whose strings had been abruptly severed.
Silence crashed down heavily over the alley.
Then, Jin-Woo's vision completely tunneled into darkness. He collapsed onto the rough asphalt, his lungs burning, his shoulder bleeding out. He couldn't move a single finger.
[System Warning] [Vessel Integrity: 22%] [Critical Warning: Permanent Damage Risk]
He breathed in ragged, shallow gasps, staring at the red flashing letters. The illusion of safety was gone; every fight from now on meant risking death.
Slowly, painfully, he rolled his head to look at the delivery boy. The kid was shaking violently, clutching his knees, but he was alive.
[System Prompt] [Apostle Candidate Confirmed] [Contract Available]
Jin-Woo coughed, tasting blood. His voice was barely a whisper, yet it held an undeniable, terrifying weight.
"Do you want to live?"
Before the boy could even process the words, the temperature in the alley plummeted. The air grew thick, electric, and utterly suffocating. The hair on Jin-Woo's arms stood up on end.
A final, chilling message flickered into his field of vision.
[System Warning] [Higher Authority Observing]
Jin-Woo slowly tilted his head back, looking past the grimy rooftops, up into the pitch-black, starless sky. Something massive, unseen, and impossibly ancient was looking down at them—
and it had been watching for a long time.