Core signatures are normal, sir."
The woman's voice was calm and professional, yet it carried a weight that filled the sterile room.
"He is clear to proceed."
Jaemin stepped off the pedestal and instinctively rolled his shoulders, loosening up the tension that had been building in his muscles. He let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding.
"Very well then."
Haseok said quietly, already turning toward the door.
Jaemin followed him out of the office, the sound of their footsteps echoing lightly in the cold, white corridors.
"So, where are we going now? Another test?"
Jaemin asked, curiosity edging his tone.
"We are headed underground, to the Lapis Chamber."
Haseok replied without any hint of emotion.
Jaemin sighed silently, the weight of the moment pressing down harder. This time, the walk was shorter and heavier, carried in silence. The tension hung thick between them.
They arrived at a large white door marked with an electronic sign: Out of Order.
"It doesn't work. Why are we here?"
Jaemin asked, eyeing the door skeptically.
"It does work."
Haseok answered, swiping his ID card, and the door slid open smoothly. "We just put the 'Out of Order' sign to throw people off."
The elevator was small and utilitarian. Inside, there was only a single button — one direction: down. It was the only known way to reach the underground section of the facility.
As the elevator doors opened at the bottom, a dim, grey corridor stretched ahead. At the end of the hall was a room. They walked toward it and entered quietly.
Inside, several people stood, immediately rising and bowing to Haseok in respect.
"You may leave through the front of you."
Haseok said, nodding toward Jaemin.
Jaemin gave a slight nod of acknowledgment and started walking toward the exit.
"Jaemin."
Haseok called softly before turning to leave.
Jaemin stopped and turned his head slightly.
"Nothing matters here more than your life. Be careful."
Haseok said with genuine concern.
Jaemin nodded once more, swallowing the lump in his throat, before stepping forward and disappearing into the shadows beyond the door.
The moment Jaemin stepped through the door, the atmosphere shifted abruptly. The bright, clinical sterility of the facility vanished, replaced by an eerie darkness that swallowed the space whole. The walls, no longer smooth and white, morphed into rough, uneven stone, like the inside of a cave, modernised with subtle, almost imperceptible technology fused into the ancient rock.
A chill prickled the back of Jaemin's neck. The air was cold, heavier, and smelled faintly of damp earth and something metallic underneath. His breath misted before him, visible in the dim light that pulsed softly from the hundreds of paper sigils plastered all over the walls. They were ancient symbols written in Sanskrit, their ink shimmering faintly with an otherworldly glow, as if charged with a dormant power waiting to awaken.
Jaemin moved cautiously, every step measured and silent on the stone floor.
His eyes darted to the sigils, trying to make sense of their pattern, but they were cryptic—half forgotten rites that teased his mind with fragments of forbidden knowledge. The deeper he walked, the thicker the air became, dense with an unspoken tension.
A few steps ahead, a thick wall of mist hovered, swirling with a slow, unnatural rhythm. Jaemin's heart quickened. As he reached out, his breath nearly touching the vapour, the mist evaporated with a quiet hiss, revealing a colossal door unlike anything he'd ever seen.
It was covered in intricate sigils, glowing a deep, hypnotic blue. The symbols seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat, as if the door itself was alive, waiting for him.
Above the archway, the words were etched clearly: The Lapis Chamber.
Jaemin murmured the name under his breath, reverence and unease tangled in his voice.
His hands began to glow faintly, a soft azure light crawling along his skin as he summoned his daggers — the Binary Stars. The familiar weight of them felt like a lifeline in this oppressive place.
Gently, he pressed his palm against the door's surface. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a powerful whoosh, the door swung open wide, sending a rush of stale, cold air flooding the chamber's entrance.
Jaemin hesitated just a second, the cold bite of doubt gnawing at him.
"Is it safe to venture inside alone? Should I ask for backup?"
He scoffed quietly at his caution, shaking off the thought like an itch.
Steeling himself, he stepped forward, crossing the threshold into the unknown.
Jaemin stepped deeper into the chamber, the heavy mist clinging to his clothes, cold against his skin. Each step echoed slightly, soft, distant, like the chamber swallowed sound and gave it back in a whisper. The space was massive. Cathedral-level vast. The kind of scale that mocked human size, as if carved for giants—or something far worse.
He remembered Gyeongnim's words clearly:
"The chamber is smaller from the inside."
Bullshit.
"I'm never trusting old people again."
Jaemin muttered with a half-laugh, the sarcasm barely keeping down the unease crawling under his skin.
The chamber had a ceiling he couldn't even see. It disappeared into the darkness like an unfinished void. Strange structures rose around him—broken pillars made of obsidian-like rock, fractured walls with symbols etched in languages he didn't recognise. The entire place was coated in a pale glow, like moonlight bleeding through smoke.
Everything felt ancient. Alien.
The chamber was layered into three: Horizon, Abyss, and finally Singularity.
He moved quickly through the Horizon layer, his boots brushing against fractured ground. Shattered crystal dust glittered faintly along the floor, mixed with blackened Rift Dust—fine, weightless, and dangerous if inhaled for too long. He pulled up his collar. There were tablets too, fragments of slate inscribed with unknown scripts, but most were cracked beyond reading.
He checked his timer: 20 minutes left.
"Shit."
So far, nothing obvious. Nothing groundbreaking. Just more questions, more mystery.
The sigils floating in mid-air were a whole different thing. They weren't anchored to anything. No wires. No support. Just there—hovering, spinning slowly like they were orbiting an invisible core. Their faint glow wasn't electric or magical in the typical sense. It was something raw. Something ancient.
Jaemin reached toward one, carefully. The moment his fingers brushed the edge of its light, it reacted, flashing with a violent pulse before vanishing entirely.
"Okay..."
He whispered, stepping back.
"Not touching that again."
The sigils weren't imported. That much was obvious now. He remembered overhearing a quiet rumour during a routine debrief. An insider had claimed that the sigils appeared one night on their own. No ritual, no spellcasters. Just... manifested.
The official cover story was that mystics from India were brought in to bind the chamber shut. But Jaemin had a gut feeling that was bullshit too. No mystic he knew left their mark mid-air like that.
Still, he searched. Dug through fragments. Picked through decayed debris. Any sign—any hint—of what made this place the heart of so much fear. But nothing. Just cold silence and creeping time.
He looked at his timer again. Twenty-one minutes passed. Nineteen left.
And still no sign of any lost Coreborn. No bodies. No gear. No trails. The Horizon Zone had been a dead lead. Which meant one thing—he had to move deeper.
To the Abyss layer.
He exhaled through his nose, gripping his daggers tightly as he pressed forward.
"Let's see what you're hiding in there."
Jaemin stepped into Zone: Abyss, the air shifting around him as if the chamber itself had just taken a breath.
The swirling fog from Horizon was gone. What opened before him was a jagged stretch of land—fractured terrain as if tectonic plates had been ripped apart mid-motion, then frozen in time. The rock was black and bone-white, lit by cracks of glowing blue lines etched into the stone like energy veins, pulsing faintly beneath the surface.
It was dead silent.
And then came the sound.
Wooooooo...!
A low, distorted howl, long and drawn out—like a warning spoken in a dialect only the dead remembered.
Jaemin's eyes narrowed, scanning the far end of the field.
There, slinking across the glowing fractures of the land, were serpent-like wolves, lean and long-bodied with twisted, almost ancient fur, black with streaks of moonlit silver. Their eyes glowed a vibrant cyan, and spines ran down their backs like rigid blades.
They had the gait of something that used to be wild, but had become patient. Observant.
"Abyssal Gravehoarders."
Jaemin muttered, stopping in his tracks.
Unlike most Abyssals, Gravehoarders weren't driven by a mindless urge to kill. They were strange. Half-aware. Passive, unless provoked. And more importantly, they possessed core fragments, like many other Abyssals.
Most Abyssals did. Barbtails. Gravehoarders and many more. All of them carried core fragments, remnants from Rift explosions, absorbed into their body like cursed energy.
Except for a few. A select few Abyssals never held fragments, and never would. Jaemin listed them instinctively in his head—he'd memorised them during training:
Lupus – savage, primitive, purebred Abyssal beasts. No fragments.
Rifthounds – hounds that swarmed in packs, eyes like dying stars. No fragments.
Rifthowlers – their shrieks could break bone, but no fragment signatures.
Riftlords – towering monstrosities, but their bodies were naturally formed, never tainted.
Titans – catastrophic, slow-moving calamities. No signs of fused cores.
These five were "pure Abyssals", never contaminated by fragments, never enhanced. Their existence itself was the Rift's will.
But these Gravehoarders, they were different.
Possessing fragments, but refraining from hostility. A paradox.
Jaemin kept his hands near his weapons but didn't summon them yet. One of the Gravehoarders—the largest, with horns curling like tree roots—lifted its head and looked at him. Not with hunger. Not with hate.
With… acknowledgment.
It huffed once, loud and guttural, then turned.
The entire pack of five moved in sync, slinking through the rocky terrain without sound. As they did, their claws scraped the fractured floor, and from their steps trailed a glowing neon path, faint, shimmering in white-blue light. Like soulprints.
"The hell…"
Jaemin breathed, watching it ripple.
Then, without wasting another second, he ran.
His boots crashed against the earth, crunching crystal shards and ash as he bolted after the trail. It twisted around columns of ancient rock, spiralling downward, leading through paths carved by time or something older. His daggers—Binary Stars—hummed. Lightly vibrating with energy as if they, too, sensed something… ancient.
All the while, the Gravehoarders never looked back. But their path grew brighter, clearer, the closer he got.
"They're not fleeing…"
Jaemin muttered, breathing hard.
"They're guiding me."
The thought struck him like a jolt—unsettling, but somehow right.
These weren't just Abyssals. They were guardians of something. Witnesses. Remnants.
And they had chosen to show him the path forward.
Toward what, he didn't know.
But as he crossed deeper into the Abyss zone, with 20 minutes left on his timer and no obvious clue in sight, Jaemin finally stopped asking why.
He just followed.
The mist shifted, thinner now, cracks of light seeping through the jagged walls around him. Jaemin's feet thundered against the stone, the neon trail of the Gravehoarders still pulsing faintly ahead.
That's when he heard it.
Growl!!!
Low, guttural, like gravel being crushed in a grinder.
And then—howls. Short. Sharp. Familiar.
Rifthounds.
A small pack—fangs bared, eyes glowing pale green, muscles twitching as they lunged straight into his path.
Jaemin didn't flinch.
His daggers—Binary Stars—lit up, the obsidian blades humming as they locked into his palms in a reverse grip.
"You're in my way."
SLASH!
One fluid movement. A blur.
The Rifthounds were cleaved in half before they even landed. Their bodies evaporated into Rift ash mid-air—silent, formless, gone.
Jaemin didn't stop running.
The neon trail still burned ahead.
But then—
RIIIPPP!
The air itself tore open like fabric being shredded.
A rift opened.
And something stepped through.
A massive frame. Grotesque muscle. Antlers like blackened bone. Eyes like deep voids.
Riftlord.
Its roar shook the very chamber.
"KRACCCKKAA!!"
It charged.
Jaemin's grip on his daggers tightened.
"No time for this—"
He moved.
DASH!
Straight into its face.
SLASH!—
He carved straight through its lower jaw, spinning mid-air to redirect the force.
Landing behind it, he launched forward again—
SLASH!
SLASH!
SLASH! SLASH!
Each strike bled light. Orange streaks cut through the shadows as Jaemin danced between the Riftlord's collapsing limbs, shredding the beast apart with speed that should've cracked bone and torn tendons.
But he was fluid. Ruthless.
A force of motion.
The Riftlord crumbled, its limbs twitching, head detached and rolling. Rift steam rose from its body, its fragments dissolving into the dirt like cursed snow.
Jaemin didn't wait for the steam to settle.
He dashed forward again, following the trail.
The Gravehoarders had already vanished into the deeper dark.
But the neon trail still shimmered. Alive. Pulsing. Waiting.
And Jaemin wasn't slowing down.
Not now.