On nights when gates tear the city open and spit out monsters, the rank board only gives its next line to those who survive. Kang Haram has already lived through this rift once. And yet the seat beside Cha Mugyeol, to this day, is still empty.
In an age when gates tear the city open in every district and spit monsters into the streets, an Awakened's place on the rank board decides the order in which they live or die. Kang Haram, an E-rank Awakened, knows she has to survive to the next Great Rift just to climb one rank, and she knows something else too: she's already lived through how this rift ends, once before. Cha Mugyeol, guildmaster of the S-rank guild Dawn, is a man known for never seeing the lowest-ranked as people at all, and the seat beside him has never once been filled. Haram has to climb the rank board one line at a time just to reach that seat, and somewhere along the way, Mugyeol starts seeing something for the first time that no rank board can measure. The closer the next Great Rift draws, the more the distance between them starts skipping lines of its own.
- The moment Cha Mugyeol breaks his own rule that the rank-deficient never stand the front line, and steps between you and the danger, sword drawn.
- The moment Cha Mugyeol asks you, after you dodge a rift you're supposedly seeing for the first time, whether you've faced this one before.
- The moment Cha Mugyeol, who has only ever called you by rank, says your name out loud for the first time, standing right in front of the rank board.
The moment Cha Mugyeol breaks his own rule that the rank-deficient never stand the front line, and steps between you and the danger, sword drawn.
