The train ride to Odaesan passed in a blur of half-hearted jokes and restless silence. Evelyn pressed her face against the window, her breath fogging the glass as Seoul's neon sprawl gave way to rolling mountains. The morning light painted everything in watery gold, but it did nothing to ease the knot in my stomach.
"First one to spot a bear buys dinner," Leon said, stretching his legs into the aisle.
Sylas snorted. "In Korea? You'll be lucky to see a squirrel."
The banter was familiar, comforting—but as we stepped off at the rural station, the air changed. Thicker. Heavier. Like the forest beyond the platform was holding its breath.
The trailhead swallowed us whole.
Ancient pines towered overhead, their branches knitting together to blot out the sun. No birds sang. No insects hummed. Just the crunch of our boots on pine needles and the occasional creak of swaying timber.
"Cheerful place," Alden muttered, adjusting his glasses. A bead of sweat traced his temple despite the chill.
Evelyn kicked a rock. It skittered into the underbrush—and something hissed. We froze. The bushes trembled, then fell still.
"Probably just a—" Ryuu began, when the deer stepped onto the path.
The forest answered with silence. No birds. No insects. Just the creak of ancient pines swaying in wind that didn't reach the ground.
Then a deer appeared.
It stood between two twisted oaks, its coat unnaturally white and glowing faintly at the edges. Not albino - luminous. The creature stared at us with eyes that held twin flickers of amber flame.
"Okay," Ryuu whispered, hand drifting toward the practice tanto at his belt. "That's new."
The deer bowed - an actual fucking bow, antlers sweeping the leaf litter - before vanishing between one blink and the next. Where it had stood, the air shimmered like heat over pavement.
Leon crossed himself. "Okay, that's not in the guidebook."
Evelyn was the first to move, stomping toward where the deer had been. "Come on, pussies. Since when do F-ranks get scared of Bambi?"
But her hands trembled as she adjusted her pack straps. I noticed. I didn't call her out.
Because the truth sat heavy in all our chests - we'd take mutated deer and dungeon leaks over going back.
At night we made a small campsite in the forest.
The fire popped, sending up a shower of sparks that died in the thick forest air. We'd built it too big - a reckless, snapping blaze that threw our shadows against the trees in grotesque shapes. No one suggested making it smaller.
Evelyn poked at the flames with a stick. "That deer wasn't right."
No one argued. The memory of those glowing eyes had followed us all afternoon, lingering at the edges of our jokes and forced laughter.
Leon tossed the twisted warning sign into the fire. The metal blackened, the words "DUNGEON ACTIVITY" curling into nothing. "Probably just some lab experiment. Bureaucrats get jumpy about their paperwork."
A log shifted in the fire. For a heartbeat, the flames burned too blue.
"You felt it too, right?" Alden's glasses reflected the fire, hiding his eyes. "That...pull?"
My fingers found the tree carving again through my pocket. The symbol had been warm to the touch, like something living.
Isla suddenly went rigid, her head snapping toward the darkness between the trees. "Did you hear that?" Her Scottish accent sharpened the words. "Like...breathing. But not."
We all froze. The forest had gone utterly silent - no wind, no insects.
Sylas stood abruptly, kicking dirt at the fire. "We're here because we're tired of being nothing." His voice cracked in a way I'd never heard on Dascord. "If this place can change that-"
The metallic sound cut through again - closer now. A grinding shriek of rusted metal moving after years of stillness.
Ryuu was on his feet in an instant, tanto drawn. "Gate mechanism."
Isla didn't reach for a weapon. She just stared into the dark, her gray eyes reflecting the firelight strangely. "It's watching us," she murmured. "Not just one thing. Many."
Evelyn broke the silence with a too-loud laugh. "Well shit." She raised an imaginary glass. "To stupid decisions and worse consequences."
One by one, we joined her - Leon with a smirk, Alden with trembling hands, Sylas with his jaw set. Isla finally looked away from the trees to raise her hand, her fingers curled like she was holding an invisible dagger. Ryuu just nodded. When my turn came, the words tasted like truth:
"Better monsters out here than the ones waiting back home."
The fire had burned down to embers when we finally slept. One by one, we surrendered to exhaustion—Evelyn curling into her sleeping bag like a child, Leon sprawled out like a starfish, Alden's glasses still perched crookedly on his nose. Even Ryuu, who'd sworn to keep watch, eventually succumbed, his tanto resting across his lap like a lover.
I woke to the sound of dripping.
Dawn's pale light filtered through the trees as I blinked awake. The others still slept soundly, their breath fogging in the chill air. But something was wrong. The forest had gone deathly still—no birds, no insects, just that relentless dripping sound coming from...
The tree.
Where there had been smooth bark yesterday, a symbol now gaped like an open wound:
◉⃘
A perfect circle with a hollow center, weeping thick, amber sap. The edges looked burned, the wood blackened as if seared by lightning. My breath caught when I realized—the dripping came from the symbol itself. Each drop of sap hit the forest floor with an audible plink.
"Hey." I kicked Leon's boot. "Wake up."
One by one, they roused, rubbing sleep from their eyes. Then they saw it too.
Evelyn scrambled backward. "What the hell is that?"
Evelyn was the first on her feet. "That's... not possible." She reached out toward the symbol but Ryuu caught her wrist.
"Don't," he warned.
"Don't touch it." His voice was tighter than I'd ever heard. "That's no ordinary mark."
Alden adjusted his glasses with shaking hands. "It looks like... an eye."
The realization hit us simultaneously. We all took a step back. The symbol wasn't just carved—it was watching us. The hollow center seemed to drink in the morning light, the sap-thick "tears" tracking down the bark like...
"Like it's crying," Isla whispered.
Then Leon's sleeping bag rustled. We turned to see his gear moving on its own. With a final jerk, the fabric flipped over—revealing the same symbol stained into the underside in dark, ichorous streaks:
◉⃘
Evelyn screamed when she checked her own bag. Then Alden. Then Sylas. Every single one of us had slept with the mark beneath us all night.
Ryuu's blade flashed as he spun in a slow circle. "They weren't carved." His voice was barely audible. "They grew."
The forest seemed to lean in closer, the trees creaking like old bones. That's when we noticed—the symbol wasn't just on our campsite. Dozens of them stared back at us from every direction, peppering the trees in a perfect spiral pattern leading deeper into the woods.
Each one weeping. Each one watching.
And worst of all—the hollow centers had shifted. Every "eye" was now fixed in the same direction: straight at me.
The forest held its breath as we stared at the weeping symbols. The hollow eyes had multiplied overnight, watching us from every tree. Evelyn reached out—
The ground screamed.
An earthquake ripped through the forest, sending us sprawling. Trees groaned as roots tore free. Dirt rained upward as the earth split open mere feet from our camp, revealing jagged concrete edges beneath—the shattered remains of some ancient structure.
Then we saw it.
A dungeon gate.
Not the gleaming, government-approved portals from the newsfeeds, but a fractured monstrosity. Its metal frame twisted like broken bones, the surface a swirling void of black and crimson. The air around it warped, distorting the trees behind it into nightmare shapes.
A notification burned across my vision in jagged, glitching text:
[WARNING: DUNGEON DETECTED]
[RANK: UNKNOWN]
[STATUS: UNREGISTERED / CORRUPTED]
[ENTRY PROHIBITED]
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then chaos erupted.
"We need to go. Now." Leon was already backing away, phone in hand. A new message glowed on his screen—just two words: "IT'S HERE."
Evelyn stepped forward instead, her boots scattering pebbles into the abyss. "Are you kidding? This is our chance!" She grinned, wild and unhinged. "No guards, no permits—just pure, unfiltered power!"
Sylas cracked his knuckles. "Fuck the system. Literally everything is prohibited for F-ranks." He jerked his chin at the gate. "That? That's an invitation."
Alden adjusted his glasses with shaking hands. "It's corrupted. That means no rules, no safeties—"
"Exactly." Evelyn's eyes shone. "No limits."
The argument raged, but my attention snagged on the gate itself. The swirling void pulsed—once, twice—in time with my heartbeat. A whisper curled through my mind, not in words but in wanting.
Come home.
I took a step without meaning to.
"Neph?" Isla's hand closed around my wrist. "Don't—"
The gate lunged.
A tendril of black energy lashed out, wrapping around my ankle. The pull was irresistible, yanking me toward the abyss. I barely had time to see the others' horrified faces before the ground vanished beneath me.
—then strong hands grabbed my arms.
Leon and Ryuu, holding on tight as the gate's pull dragged us all forward.
"Let go!" I shouted.
"Like hell!" Leon growled, but his boots were sliding through the dirt.
Evelyn dove forward, grabbing Leon's waist. "If he goes, we all go!"
Sylas and Alden joined the chain, Isla anchoring the end—but it was no use. The gate's hunger was too strong.
One by one, our grips failed.
I saw the terror in Alden's eyes as his fingers slipped from Isla's.
Heard Sylas's curse as he tumbled past me.
Felt the gate's cold embrace as it swallowed us whole.
The last thing I saw before the darkness took us was the forest—the watching symbols, the shattered earth—and then:
Nothing.
Cold stone bit into my cheek as consciousness returned. The air stank of copper and wet earth. I pushed myself up, my hands sinking slightly into the damp ground—not dirt, but something spongy and warm.
Where—
Memory crashed back. The gate. The pull. The others—
"Neph!"
Evelyn's voice. I turned to see the others stirring nearby, sprawled across the same fleshy ground. Above us stretched a crimson sky, thick with swirling black clouds. The trees—if they could be called that—were skeletal things, their bark replaced by glistening veins, their leaves rustling like dried skin.
A notification flickered before my eyes:
[Welcome to ████████ Dungeon]
[Current Status: █████████████]
[Warning: No System Safeties Active]
Leon groaned, rubbing his head. "Everyone alive?"
One by one, they responded. Evelyn, already on her feet, spinning in a slow circle. Alden, patting the ground for his missing glasses. Ryuu, his tanto still miraculously in hand. Sylas and Isla, back-to-back, scanning the twisted forest.
All here. All whole.
Then the whispering started.
"Neph..."
A voice like wind through dead leaves. My name, drawn out, echoing from everywhere and nowhere.
Evelyn's head snapped up. "You heard that too, right?"
We moved as one, drawn toward the sound. The forest parted to reveal a clearing—and at its center, a waterfall of thick, dark liquid cascading down jagged rocks. The pool beneath didn't ripple as it fell.
Blood.
And beside it, a shrine.
Six statues stood in a half-circle, their features blurred as if seen through frosted glass. The seventh space stood empty. At their feet, words were carved into the stone:
"The Abyssal Seven Shall Rise."
Evelyn reached out first. "That's... us?"
The statues wavered as she approached, their forms shifting. For a heartbeat, I saw us reflected—Evelyn's wild grin, Leon's guarded stance, Alden's nervous hunch—but the stone refused to hold their shapes.
All except mine.
My statue stood clear, its face perfect in every detail. The others' gazes burned into my back.
"Neph..." The whisper came again, now from the shrine itself.
Ryuu's hand shot out to stop me. "Don't—"
But Evelyn was already touching the stone.
The effect was instant.
A shockwave of energy threw us back as the shrine activated, light erupting from the statues' eyes. Notifications screamed across my vision:
[WARNING: SYSTEM BREACH]
[RANK REASSESSMENT IN PROGRESS]
Then, impossibly:
[Baek Nephrios - Rank: F]
A glitch. A flicker.
[Baek Nephrios - Rank: ???]