First Target

The Jeju Forest loomed along the western edge of the viscounty like an open, festering wound upon the earth.

Sprawling across hundreds of square miles, it was a dark, suffocating expanse dominated by ancient, twisted trees bearing ink-black leaves that absorbed the sunlight rather than reflecting it.

Above the jagged canopy, thick clouds of heavy, obsidian-tinted mist hung perpetually motionless, sealing the woodland in an eerie, endless twilight.

To a normal human, the dense, unrefined abyssal mana radiating from the black woods was suffocating—a sickening pressure that smelled of ozone, scorched iron, and rotting bone.

To Dark Sister, however, it was home.

She was an Abomination herself, a proud Child of the Abyss.

As she soared over the dark canopy, her broad wings catching the thermal currents rising from the corrupted soil, her massive reptilian lungs inhaled the raw, dark mana with pure, instinctual satisfaction.