The tunnels beneath Seoul were supposed to be abandoned.
Once, they had carried trains, steam, water. Now they carried nothing — nothing but silence and things that should not breathe.
Yi Ji-Hyuk walked through the darkness, guided only by memory and the faint pulse of mana clinging to the walls like mildew. He didn't need light. His eyes had long since learned to see in what others called blind.
The girl from the alley — the envoy of the "Ones Who See" — had vanished as mysteriously as she came. But she'd left behind something more useful than words.
A trail.
Small. Subtle. A ripple in the ambient mana — almost like perfume, if perfume had been distilled from centuries of forgotten rituals.
He followed it here.
To the underworld.
The deeper he went, the more Seoul disappeared above him.
The walls grew older, stone giving way to roots and wet dirt. The very air felt thinner. Like Berafe was pushing through reality just slightly harder here — as if the two worlds were rubbing against each other, leaving friction burns in space.
Then he heard it.
A whisper.
Not words, exactly — more like… hunger, shaped into sound. The kind of whisper that gnawed on the back of your thoughts and made your heart beat a little too fast.
He stopped walking.
And waited.
Something moved in the dark ahead.
Then something spoke. Not with breath — with presence.
"You should not have returned."
Ji-Hyuk tilted his head.
"Neither should you," he replied.
The figure stepped into view.
A tall man, draped in robes made of stitched shadows. His skin was pale, almost translucent. And his eyes — they were empty sockets filled with swirling black mist.
Ji-Hyuk didn't flinch. "Name."
The thing smiled. "Once, I was called Soriel. In Berafe, I served under the Third Moon. Now, I serve only the Door."
The Door.
Ji-Hyuk's expression sharpened. "You're one of the gatebinders."
Soriel bowed. "Not many remember that word. You do. Which means you've killed one of us before."
Ji-Hyuk's hand dropped slowly to his side, fingers curling.
"Yes," he said.
Then he vanished.
Not with magic — just speed.
One second he was standing still.
The next, his fist was burying itself in Soriel's chest.
Or trying to.
The creature dissolved into shadow just as he struck, reforming several paces away.
"You still move like a predator," Soriel said, amused. "But your scent… is Earth now. Softer."
Ji-Hyuk rolled his neck. "You talk too much."
With a flick of his hand, three glyphs spun to life around his fingers — defensive, anti-illusion, disruption. He didn't need flash. He needed results.
This time, he launched a second strike before Soriel could vanish. The disruption glyph snapped forward like a whip, slicing through the shadow magic.
Soriel howled as the spell hit, one arm disintegrating into black dust.
"You dare—!"
Ji-Hyuk's expression didn't change. "Tell me who is building the Doors."
But Soriel only laughed.
A deep, joyless sound. "We don't build the Doors anymore, human. We wake them."
A pulse of dark energy exploded from his body. Ji-Hyuk caught the brunt of it and skidded back several meters. His boots scraped stone, but he didn't fall.
He'd taken worse. Far worse.
He raised a hand again — this time forming a single glyph, silent and still.
A rune from Berafe's War-Lords. The kind of spell that unmade the nervous system.
He didn't even speak it.
He just thought it.
And Soriel's scream echoed across the tunnels.
The creature's body twisted, limbs jerking in unnatural angles before collapsing into sludge.
Ji-Hyuk stepped forward. Knelt. Picked up what was left of Soriel's head.
"I don't need you alive," he said coldly. "I just need your memories."
The extraction spell was old. Painful. Even by Berafe's standards.
He pressed two fingers to the remains of Soriel's forehead. The glyph burned white-hot. Essence poured from the corpse — not blood, not magic, but memory, thick and black like oil.
Visions flooded Ji-Hyuk's mind.
A circle of hooded figures chanting before a massive black gate in the center of a ruined chapel.
A voice speaking in a tongue older than both worlds.
A symbol carved into the floor: a spiral surrounded by seven eyes.
And a name.
Vernox.
Ji-Hyuk stood, pulse calm.
He knew that name. A fallen archmage who had once tried to collapse Berafe into its own shadow. Executed — publicly — by the Tribunal of Flame.
Or so everyone believed.
Back on the surface, dawn hadn't yet broken. The city was still dreaming.
Ji-Hyuk walked the empty streets, the world unaware that something ancient was breathing beneath their feet.
Vernox was alive.
And he wasn't just summoning monsters. He was trying to merge Earth and Berafe — tear down the barrier completely.
Ji-Hyuk stopped at a crosswalk.
A bus rumbled by. Headlights bathed his face for a brief moment. The driver didn't notice him.
He didn't blame them.
After all, how could anyone recognize a god of war pretending to be a man?
He took out a burner phone — one Yeonho had given him. He dialed a number.
A pause. Then a voice on the other end, groggy and confused. "Hello?"
"Min-Soo," Ji-Hyuk said. "You're not safe. Someone may come looking for you."
The boy stammered, "I—I've been hiding like you said. What's going on?"
"Just do as I say. I'll be there soon."
He hung up.
And started walking again.
If Vernox was waking the Doors…
Then Ji-Hyuk would close them.
With blood, if necessary.
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