Kai Storm

The machine measured him twice. It only reported one of the numbers. Jeon Il-su has been classified as Unranked since he was sixteen, zero mana reserve, no ceiling assigned, no future in a world that runs on rank. Three mandatory reassessments in one year said the same thing. The technicians would not meet his eyes when they said it. Then he died in a D-rank Gate. He did not eject. He woke up inside.
And the System, for the first time in three years, produced a notification it could not classify. Now Il-su is legally dead, running condemned district Gates nobody watches, and building a map of everything the Association has been hiding in the gap between what the machine measured and what the file recorded. The gap is thirty-eight years wide. The names at the end of it go all the way to the top.
He is not angry. Angry is a direction. He has something colder than that. And the ceiling is still moving.