[LIVE BROADCAST — CGN NETWORK](Anchor: Lee Mirae | Timestamp: 15:42 KST)
The screen flickers—
Wind howls in the background, shaking the mic. Cameras zoom in past flickering warning signs, swirling clouds, and distorted space. On the horizon, a Tier 3 Rift blooms like a scar in the sky, stretching wide over the Incheon Industrial Zone. Violet fissures pulse at its base.
Lee Mirae (anchor):
"We're reporting live from the outskirts of a Tier 3 Rift—this is not a drill. The Coreborn Association has officially dispatched Covenant: IRON JUDGEMENT to secure the breach and prevent escalation. Citizens within a 10 km radius are advised to evacuate immediately."
Behind her, Coreborn operatives in heavy armour push through wind, clashing blades, and flashing beams of light in the storm.
A knight-like figure from Iron Judgement with a halberd launches a Rift Beast into the air.
Another member firing tethered spears into the ground to pin down a four-legged Abyssal charging at civilians.
Abyssal roars echo like wet metal grinding against glass.
Lee Mirae continues.
"We're watching the Covenant handle multiple Class 2 Abyssals, some resembling shardbeasts and steel-fanged ravagers. While they've managed to push the front line, experts warn that if the Rift expands beyond the containment radius, a Tier 2 overflow is possible."
Suddenly, the feed shakes—
The sky behind her distorts violently as a Rift pulse echoes like thunder.
"...We've just seen what appears to be a Riftquake—apologies. Repeat: The Coreborn are still inside. Our team will remain at a safe distance, but for now, stay indoors and await emergency updates."
The interior of the Rift looks like a fractured scrapyard temple, metal groves and twisted debris suspended mid-air like gravity is fragmented. Pipes drip molten runoff from unseen altars. The air is thick with pressure.
A strike group of five Iron Judgement Coreborn are deep inside the breach. Their metallic armour is battered, scraped, and dented. Their visors flicker from impact damage. Several of them are visibly injured.
"Spread the barrier dome! Lock the corridor down—we can't let anything slip through!"
Yelled the squad leader.
Abyssals emerge from shadowy groves between jagged spires—skittering constructs with steel jaws and glinting limbs. These aren't just beasts. They're machined—flesh fused with corrupted alloys.
One lunges.
"Left flank!!"
CLANG—!!
A mace slams into the beast's head, sending it into a wall with a metal-crunching shriek.
But then three more follow—crawling low, moving in packs. One slashes an officer's calf. He stumbles.
"We're getting pinched! Do not lose formation—Yun, activate your tether. Buy us five more seconds!"
Suddenly—
The ground pulses.
The Rift's "heart" glows ominously ahead. The Coreborn are trying to reach it—a massive blackened crystal embedded in a molten altar. If they can destroy it, the Rift will collapse.
But it's guarded.
A Rift Warden, half Abyssal and half siege engine, drops from the ceiling like a meteor—its iron legs slamming down, hurling shrapnel. It has two torsos fused into one, with a face split in half by molten steel.
"...That's no Class 2."
"Fall—!"
—CRASH!!
The Warden slams its hammer-fist down, cratering the floor. A shockwave blasts the squad back. One soldier is knocked unconscious, slamming against a shard wall.
Three Abyssals start closing in on him.
"Captain! We need backup! There's no way in hell we're closing this Rift alone!"
The squad leader looks up through the roof fracture, bleeding and pressed back to a metal slab.
"Where the hell is Kang Daesung…?"
****
The wind screamed like a living thing.
Tattered warning banners flapped in the gale, half-torn from their moorings, slapping against cracked pavement and twisted scaffolding. Around the perimeter of the breach, what remained of the outer strike team from Covenant: IRON JUDGEMENT had formed a semi-circle—half to protect evacuees, half to hold the line.
But that line was breaking.
Flashes of aura lit up the ruined factory sector in rhythmic bursts—red, cobalt, and dull silver clashing against the deep violet corruption of the Rift. Class 3 Abyssals flooded out in unpredictable waves—some skittering low like arachnid constructs, others dragging gnarled appendages that scraped sparks from the concrete.
Three Coreborn stood at the front, bloodied but unyielding.
"We're thinning them, but it's not enough!"
"How the hell are there this many outside the breach?!"
"They're overflowing from a Tier 3 like it's a goddamn Tier 2! This isn't normal!"
An aura spear flared in the hands of one operative.
She hurled it with a scream, impaling a leaping Abyssal mid-air. It detonated on impact, sending limbs flying—but for every one that fell, two more spilled out like liquid death from the jagged Rift maw.
Another operative, barely holding back a hound-shaped Abyssal with an energy shield, gritted his teeth.
"No retreat. We hold. If we let them past, Incheon burns."
There was no need to ask if anyone wanted to run. They were IRON JUDGEMENT. Withdrawal wasn't in the vocabulary.
But then—
A rumble.
Low at first. Like distant thunder. Then—
KR-KR-RAAACK—!!!
The ground splintered beneath them, jagged lines tearing through the cracked concrete like lightning bolts made solid. Metal pillars buckled. Entire sections of collapsed roadway shifted violently as if something beneath the earth was waking up. The Rift pulsed.
The air turned heavy.
Several Abyssals stumbled, losing footing as the terrain quaked beneath them. One slid off the ledge and splattered against an exposed rebar pipe. Coreborn were thrown back as shockwaves burst upward through their boots.
"Tremor?! No—this is a seismic breach! BACK—!"
A blinding arc of violet Rift energy erupted from the fissure—
And then—
A voice.
Not shouted. Not desperate. Just loud enough to rise above the chaos, clear and calm like a steel bell cutting through war drums.
"My bad, gang."
The tremor stopped.
Not gradually—instantly.
It was as if the Rift itself had paused to listen.
Dust slowly drifted down. An eerie, momentary stillness spread over the breach site.
Heads turned. A few Abyssals hesitated—animal instinct responding to something more ancient than fear.
One Coreborn muttered under their breath, eyes wide:
"...Is that—?"
From the cracked highway slope above, a single figure descended through the dissipating dust cloud—casually walking down the incline, boots crunching over broken debris.
He was tall—broad-chested, suited, and somehow both modern and mythic in silhouette.
A living bulwark.
Face hardened with resolve. Scars lined his jaw, and his eyes glinted like molten steel behind coal-black pupils.
He walked without urgency.
The remaining squad stepped back instinctively—not out of fear, but reverence.
"Iron Bastion..."
"Kang Daesung."
He glanced once at the squad, then at the Rift, where his team was fighting and bleeding inside.
And then, without ceremony—he spoke.
"Evacuate."
Not a plea. Not a discussion. An order.
He didn't wait for a reply.
Daesung turned his back to the strike team and walked toward the Rift, boots sparking briefly against the metal-streaked ground. As he neared the threshold, violet static curled toward him like a beast recognising a rival. The energy shimmered at the edge of his Core's influence, unable to touch him.
"...What is he doing?"
One of the operatives whispered.
"He's going in alone?"
"That Rift Warden... it took our whole squad—he can't—"
Daesung didn't look back.
With a final step, his body was swallowed by the violet glow of the breach—And the screen shimmered as reality bent around his entry.
The earth rumbled again—but this time, with rhythm.
A metallic pulse.
Like a hammer tapping against an anvil in the heart of the world.
The Rift churned with chaos.
Blackened stone twisted upward like jagged ribs, forming a half-collapsed arena around the strike team. Craters smoldered, painting the cracked surface in flickers of red and violet. The air stung with the scent of burnt metal, core discharge, and blood.
And towering above it all—
The Rift Warden.
BOOM!
The Coreborn inside the Rift had stopped fighting.Not out of surrender.But out of pure, paralysing confusion.
Because the Rift Warden—apex predator of this breach—had just been sent flying.
It smashed into the far wall with a thunderclap, dislodging tons of corrupted stone. Debris rained down in waves, smoke filling the chasm. The tremor echoed like a buried war drum. One of the rookie Coreborn ducked behind a melted cargo slab, mouth half open.
"...What the hell was that…?"
Then, they saw him.
Stepping through the Rift opening, he had walked through—not been transported by, not phased in through—a man in a dark grey tailored suit emerged from the smoke.
There was no cape.
No gleaming armour.
No glowing emblem screaming his power.
Just a man in dress shoes, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, black gloves flexing slightly—his posture relaxed, but the weight of a god behind every motion.
And his aura.
It wasn't like other Bastions, which flared outward in displays of bravado—spikes, tendrils, crackling overlays of energy.
No.
His aura hovered like fogged mercury, dense and dim, slowly pulsing around his shoulders and collarbone like it wanted to collapse inward.
A dim metallic silver.
Not chaotic. Not unstable.
Controlled. Disciplined. Condensed.
Daesung cracked his neck once. Loud.
KRK-KRACK.
Then he looked at the fallen Warden, which had begun to rise—shaking off the cratered impact, red-hot veins flashing across its chestplate. Armour hissed. It began to reinforce itself, obsidian plating flowing like a liquid shell over its previous damage, spikes unfurling like thorns in anticipation.
The Rift roared behind them.
But Daesung's voice, low and unbothered, cut through everything.
"You really wanna fight, huh?"
Steam hissed from his glove.
And then—his right fist began to crystallise.
It started subtle—faint cracks forming under the glove's surface as his Core pulsed again. But then the glove split, peeling away in burnt strips as the transformation solidified. The limb beneath wasn't flesh anymore.
It had become translucent mineral—glistening with internal latticework, glowing faintly from within.
A steel-crystal hybrid.
Impossibly smooth, yet terrifying in density. A core-born material that shimmered like it had been forged inside the Earth's mantle.
His fist flexed once.
Steam curled from the knuckles.
Then it cracked the air just by tightening.
"...That thing could shatter pure diamond."
whispered one of the younger Coreborn from the squad.
Another swallowed hard.
"I've never seen Core manipulation like that. What kind of transformation is that even? Is that some variant Bastion form?"
A rookie—face streaked with Rift soot—turned toward the squad captain, eyes wide.
"Captain. Who is he? How did he just do that—? And that aura... It's not like ours. It's not even like other Bastions... It's silver. Like something ancient. What is he?"
The captain—lean, scarred, battle-worn—watched in silence for a few more seconds. His grip tightened around his spear, but it wasn't from fear.
It was from memory.
A quiet reverence settled in his voice as he answered, gaze never leaving the suited figure walking toward the now-reinforced Warden.
"That man…"
"That's Kang Daesung."
"The Commander of Covenant: IRON JUDGEMENT."
The words alone carried weight, but the captain wasn't finished.
His voice grew quieter—almost like speaking it aloud was a rite.
"He's one of the holders of the Eight Special Cores."
"The bearer of the Core of Steel."
"The unyielding wall that once held the Third Collapse breach single-handedly for three straight days. The man who shattered a Class 2 Tyrant Abyssal's shell with one strike. The one the Abyssals call 'The Walking Fortress'…"
He inhaled.
"...and the rest of us just call him the Iron Bastion."
Silence. Even the air seemed to go still.
And then Daesung moved.
Fast.
Too fast.
One instant, he was walking.
The next—he was in front of the Warden.
The Rift Warden, prepared this time, launched its arm forward with a vibrating blade of twisted alloy. But Daesung leaned—not dodged, not stepped, simply leaned—just enough for it to miss.
Then he planted his crystal fist into the Warden's gut.
THAWCK—!!!
A blast of compressed shockwave erupted outward, tearing through the surrounding battlefield. The Warden's armour cracked—despite being reinforced moments ago.
It didn't fly this time.
It launched upward, backward, arcing through the air like a missile that had misfired.
BOOM—!!
It crashed into a second ridge, embedding into the Rift wall.
Daesung exhaled once. His breath fogged.
Then, as if just stretching out a stiff limb, he raised his other hand. His palm opened.Steel energy began to gather in it—not flaring like fire, but building pressure. Silent. Heavy. Controlled.
And then he whispered, not to his team, but to himself:
"Ten seconds. That's all I'll need."
FWUP—!!
Daesung vanished.
Not teleported. Not blinked.
Moved.
So fast the space around him left an afterimage of his tailored frame—a heat-warped silhouette in the rising Rift mist.
The Warden—still wedged in the wall—barely lifted its head before Daesung reappeared.
BOOM—!!
One foot crashed into the wall beside its head. The ridge cracked from the pressure.
"RAUUGHHH—!"
The Warden shrieked, eyes flashing like halogen beams.
But Daesung was already moving.
His left fist, still normal, slammed down in a hammer strike onto the Warden's clavicle.
K-K-KRAAAAMM—!!
Armour exploded into fragments, molten obsidian flying like volcanic shrapnel. The Warden's entire upper body was driven down, knees buckling as the stone beneath them ruptured.
"HGGKKKHHHH!!"
It clawed upward, blades lashing out with an ear-splitting.
SCHING—!!
Daesung tilted back just slightly.
Not dodging. Controlling.
Then his crystal fist struck again.
This time—straight into the Warden's face.
THOOOOOM—!!!
A crater formed behind the Warden as its head snapped backward, the velocity enough to form a sonic ripple in the air. Its eyes glitched—red light flickering into static.
Then came the follow-up.
Daesung shifted his stance—shoulders square, core tight—and unloaded.
THUMP!!
THUMP!!
CRACK—!!
BOOM!!
His fists rained down like war drums. Each impact concaved a different section of the Warden's body. Ribs. Chestplate. Arm socket. Gut.
"GUAAARRHHHHH!!!"
The Warden tried to retaliate—swinging with its molten blade—but Daesung ducked, turned his waist—
KRA-KOOOOM!!
—and landed a hook so brutal, the entire Warden lifted off the ground and skidded across the Rift for fifty feet, tearing through the battlefield like a skipping stone.
Silence.
Then—
SKRRRRRCHHHT—!!!
Daesung was already there—again—grabbing the Warden mid-air by the ankle.
"Not done."
He spun once—entire body twisting with torque—and hurled the Warden like a meteor.
THOOM—!!
It smashed through a fallen Rift spire, debris cascading behind it in a tidal wave of rock and smoke.
From behind, the observing Coreborn strike team stood frozen.
"H-he's not even flaring."
One whispered.
"He's not even breathing hard…"
"That monster is a Tier 2 Apex Warden. And he's manhandling it like it's a sandbag..."
"No—"
The captain corrected.
"He's not fighting to survive. He's fighting to make a statement."
The Rift Warden crawled from the wreckage, one of its arms bent entirely backward. Its chestplate cracked in three different places. Steam hissed from its fractured helmet. Its blade tried to reform.
But Daesung was already walking forward.
The silver tint in his aura shimmered now, flickering at the edges of his form. The silver remained dominant—but like fire licking through steel.
His voice echoed across the Rift floor.
"Too much armour."
He cracked his neck again.
K-KRACK.
"Let's fix that."
Then he crouched.
One moment, he was walking.
The next, he launched—like a cannonball with a human frame.
VWHOOM—!!
He collided with the Warden at full speed, shoulder-checking it into the ground.
GBOOMM—!!!
Stone shattered into layered rings beneath them. Dust blew outward in concentric circles. The Rift's architecture groaned.
Then Daesung crouched low, like a boxer—and began his final barrage.
"HRK—!!""GAHHH!!""RRGGHHH!!"
His fists rained down.Not wild. Measured. Surgical. Ruthless.
He targeted joints first—shoulders, elbows, hips—shattering each under pinpoint crystal strikes.
CRRRACK—!!
THWAMMM—!!
Then came the core plating, his crystal knuckles caving in the Warden's core socket with relentless pressure.
The Warden tried to crawl—Daesung stomped its wrist.
CRUNCH—!!
Tried to stab upward—Daesung snapped the blade off with a palm strike to the forearm.
Tried to scream—Daesung kicked it in the mouth.
"SKRAHHK!!"
The force sent the Warden's jaw spiralling into the Rift fog.
Then he grabbed it by the neck—lifting it off the ground with one hand.
The Rift Warden thrashed—blades retracting, eyes dimming, vents sputtering—
And Daesung simply stared at it.
Calm. Cold. Focused.
Then—
"Render."
His crystal fist glowed white-hot—a surge of light pulsing from his shoulder down to his hand.
SHHHHHHHH!!
With one final punch, he drove his fist through the Warden's core socket.
Straight through.
SK-THRRRRKKKK—!!
The Warden convulsed, spine arching.
Its core imploded, pulling its internal plates inward like a vacuum.The sound that followed was silent—like air being sucked out of a sealed room.
Then—
B-BBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!
A geyser of silver, red, and black energy burst skyward, forming a massive inverted flame that lingered for seconds before dispersing into motes of dying Rift energy.
The Warden's body collapsed, lifeless. Steaming.
Steam drifted from Daesung's arm as he pulled it free.
His suit, still intact despite the carnage, was now dusted with glowing fragments of shattered core glass.
He rolled his neck one final time, muttering softly:
"...Nine seconds."
Back on the Ridge
The entire squad stood slack-jawed.
No one dared speak.
Until finally—someone breathed:
"What… kind of monster…"
The captain crossed his arms.
"Not a monster."
"A Coreborn."
"The Coreborn."
"The embodiment of what we're all trying to be. That's why they call him Iron Bastion. Because when he steps onto the field…"
He looked out toward the Rift, where Daesung now calmly adjusted his cuffs.
"...The battle's already decided."
The Rift Warden's corpse hadn't even cooled when the sky twisted.
KRRRRRHHHHH—!!
From the jagged horizon, a legion of Abyssals stirred—long-limbed horrors of shifting blackstone and ember veins, like shadow giants born from volcanic ash. Some crawled, others levitated, spines jutting from their backs like living blades.
All of them had seen what happened.
And none of them hesitated.
They came for Daesung like a tide—twenty, maybe thirty at once.
The squad on the ridge panicked.
"Captain—!"
"There's no way he can take all of them—!! We need to—"
But the captain didn't move.
He watched, arms crossed. Calm.
"...Just keep your eyes open."
Daesung tilted his head slightly, watching the Abyssals emerge like insects from a rotting wound in the Rift's shell.
He sighed. Deep. Tired.
Then, with a mutter that somehow carried through the thick Rift air:
"Let's make this quick…"
He reached into the inner pocket of his blazer and retrieved a small, silver folding knife.
Click.
The blade gleamed under the red Rift glow—until he dragged it across his left palm.
SHKKT—
A line of blood split open across his palm, dark and viscous.
The Rift pulsed once.
Then everything stopped.
Daesung raised his hand.And smiled.
"I hate canceling dinner reservations."
Then—
KRRRRRRRRRAKOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!
A SILVER LIGHTNING BOLT dropped from the broken Rift sky like a divine punishment.
It didn't strike near Daesung.
It struck on him.
BOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!
The ground cratered instantly. Dust became light. The sky itself began to warp, glitched lines cracking across its artificial dome.
From the steam and light crash, something rose—
A shape.
Human, but more.
The silhouette was burning silver—liquid metal made flame.
Kang Daesung's suit was gone.
In its place was a gleaming warform—not armour, but a perfect crystallisation of steel and power, forged directly onto his skin like a second body.
His eyes—silver stars.
Every breath echoed with mechanical reverberation.
Above, the Rift itself began to unravel.
Its walls flickered.
Gravity distorted.
The air howled.
Even the Abyssals stopped.
A few stepped back, trembling.
The smarter ones fled.
But it was too late.
Daesung walked forward.
Each step left burned metal imprints behind, like boot-shaped brands on the Rift floor. His arms gleamed with segmented brilliance—lines of molten chrome flexing beneath translucent steel skin.
One of the Abyssals lunged.
SHWIIIING—!!
Daesung caught it by the skull mid-air.
"Wrong move."
CRRRRUNCH—!!
The Abyssal's head exploded in his grip—like glass under a press.
Before the pieces hit the floor, Daesung blurred forward.
"RRRRAUUUGHHHHH!!!"
Another Abyssal shrieked, swinging a blade-limb the size of a van.
Daesung dodged without effort.
VWWWWMMM—!!
CLANG—!!
He slid under the strike, grabbed the monster's own limb, twisted it like wet clay—
SNAP—!!
—then rammed it back through the Abyssal's chest with a fluid uppercut.
BKOOM!!
The creature folded, dead.
The rest charged him together.
THREE. TEN. TWENTY.
It didn't matter.
Daesung raised his arm—silver veins glowing up to his shoulder—and punched the ground.
"Break."
K-THOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!
The Rift floor erupted into iron spikes, rising from his shockwave like jagged steel flowers.Half the Abyssals were impaled instantly.
Another wave came.
Daesung dashed through them in silver flashes, leaving afterimages as he struck.
"THUNK!!"
– a head punched clean off.
"WHAM—!!"
– Two Abyssals collapsed as he shoulder-smashed them like a freight train.
"KRAK—!!"
– Three more broke like stone statues under a spinning roundhouse.
"SKRHHHHH—!!"
– an entire pack disintegrated under a beam of compressed steel pressure fired from his palm.
Behind the squad was silent.
"...This can't be real…"
"He's… He's the malfunction. The Rift isn't breaking. He is making it malfunction—!"
The captain's voice finally came.
"You're witnessing something very few ever live to see."
He looked down at the burning figure.
"The full manifestation of a Special Core."
Final Frame of the Scene
Daesung stood atop a mountain of Abyssal corpses. His body glowed, steam hissing off his crystalline form. The Rift around him was dissolving, unable to withstand the pressure of his existence.
He looked up at the glitching sky and exhaled.
The silver light in his eyes dimmed just slightly.
"Reservations at 8:00…"
He glanced at the blood on his hands, then flicked it off.
"Still got time."
The last Abyssal had already crumbled, its body dissolving into nothingness before it could even hit the ground.
No more twisted roars.No more flickering Rift glows.Only silence.
The sky above fractured one final time, like a window giving in to a slow, deep pressure.
And then—
CRACK—CRACK—FWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!
The Rift imploded inwards, folds of reality curling like torn pages. A low gravitational pull tried to draw in everything—loose stones, air, even light.
But Kang Daesung didn't budge.
He stood at the centre.
Calm.
Centered.
From his body, steam began to hiss out—slow at first, then in fierce plumes, venting from his shoulders, his fists, his spine. Every line of crystal-steel faded under the heat, dissolving into the faintest glimmer of particles before peeling off entirely like burnt skin turning to ash.
His eyes dimmed.
The silver glow vanished.
And his suit returned.
The same one he'd entered with: dark, sleek, sharp-collared.Untouched.Perfectly tailored.
As if the last few minutes had never happened.
He adjusted the cuffs with a sigh, then straightened his tie.
TCHHH— A final hiss of steam burst from his collarbone.The last of the aura—gone.
The Rift behind him was now a dead hole.
Just black static where a world used to exist.
And in it—no presence remained.
Daesung turned around slowly and began walking, the soles of his polished shoes tapping against the still-warm earth.
Tap.Tap.Tap.
Behind him, ashes and silver dust drifted upward, caught in the imploding Rift's collapse. A glowing wind pulled them into the black as if reclaiming everything he'd released.
****
Outside, the remaining strike team saw the first collapse
The squad stood in stunned silence as Daesung and the others emerged from the Rift's warped boundary.
He didn't say a word.
No one did.
He just walked past them.
One of the rookies, barely able to breathe, finally whispered:
"H-He's back in his suit…"
Another murmured.
"...Was that even real?"
The squad captain swallowed, stepping forward.
"Sir, the anomaly Rift is—"
"Handled."
Daesung replied, voice calm.
"Anyone died? from inside?"
The captain hesitated.
"...One."
Daesung stopped walking.
"Name?"
"Unconfirmed. We only know he was a trainee. We're investigating now."
Daesung was quiet for a moment.
He looked out over the ruined Rift field. The collapsing sky was almost fully closed now, like curtains being drawn after a violent opera.
He slipped his pocket knife back into the inside of his jacket.
Then with a sharp exhale...
"Keep the media quiet on this. I'll file the report later."
"Yes, sir."
And with that, Kang Daesung walked away.
Back straight.
Aura gone.
But not a soul on the field doubted:
The Rift wasn't erased by the system.It was judged.
And it had been found wanting.