The static over the radio briefly fell silent, replaced by the faint sound of breathing and another burst of crackling noise.
"...Rook-8... Seo Do-gyeong... respond..."
In the silence that followed, everyone's gaze converged in the same direction.
Park Seo-yeon gave a short nod.
"I've got the signal. Synchronizing to its cycle and moving in. Anchor—on."
A moment later, footsteps echoed from further down the dark hallway, and a shadow appeared.
It was the Chaser team, finally free of the loop and joining up at last.
With Team Leader Lee Jun-seong at the head, Kang Mu-yeol, Shin Yeon-hwa, and Yun Seo-jun stepped out behind him, folding into the formation.
After a long and harrowing journey, Searer team was finally united with Chaser team, their formation now complete.
—thump... thump...
In the darkness of the underground, the anchor beacon's pulse echoed at 0.8-second intervals, low and resonant.
A steady electronic tone beat through the space like a heartbeat, serving as the final lifeline anchoring them to reality.
At the heart of the distortion beneath Gangnam Station, in the direction from which Seo Do-gyeong's call had emerged, the team members started forward—each of their steps falling in time with the pulsing beacon.
Breaths quavered in the tense silence, and the red mist clinging to the walls, ceiling, and floor glided like a living thing at the threshold between reality and nightmare.
From the middle of the group, Jung Hae-jun and Fog swept their gazes around.
At the very front, Kang Mu-yeol, bearing a shield, slowly forged ahead down the passage. Lee Jun-seong and Yun Seo-jun followed right behind him, watching the flanks on either side.
At the rear, Park Seo-yeon paused to continue murmuring a barrier incantation, while beside her, Kim In-woo wiped sweat from his brow and stood guard.
A taut, electric tension was etched on every face.
Jung Hae-jun felt cold sweat gathering in his palms and forced himself to focus on the anchor beacon's pulse thrumming in his ears.
The faint breath of "Rook-8" that had crackled over the radio moments ago—that was proof he was still hanging on somewhere inside this twisted domain.
—thump... thump...
With each thump of the beacon, Hae-jun's resolve solidified further.
I will find him. Even if I have to go to the very heart of this nightmare.
Fog gave Hae-jun's shoulder a light tap and whispered, attempting to sound nonchalant.
"Miss a beat and you'll get lost, Detective. Even ghosts keep to the rhythm."
Hae-jun took a quick breath and nodded.
Then, fixing his gaze squarely on the darkness ahead, he stepped forward, deeper into the gloom.
Yet with every step, the illusions' disruptions grew more cunning.
In the flickering strobe at the corridor's end, a door that shouldn't exist kept appearing and then vanishing again. A shadow stretched across the floor suddenly twisted, wavering as if it were about to rise in human form.
"Tch...!"
Hae-jun swallowed dryly and blinked hard a few times, trying to shake off the illusions.
But at that moment, a sensation of icy shock—like something splitting open—surged up his spine.
In that flash of cold, a scene from long ago—draped in red mist—overlapped his vision.
As fleeting visions of comrades collapsing on an ashen-gray street flashed by, a seething fury flared up in Hae-jun's chest like flames.
The boundary between reality and nightmare shuddered as if about to collapse, and deep inside him, a familiar fire began to writhe.
The Berserker—that power to forget everything and rampage on pure fury and will—started pulsing anew in his chest.
The déjà vu of that horrific red mist incident months ago came rushing back, and the edges of Hae-jun's vision wavered like a mirage.
"Hey, Detective."
A low voice came from beside him—Fog.
Fog had crept up without a sound, and now he spoke with that same forced casualness.
"You're losing focus. I told you, miss the beat and you'll get lost."
Fog raised one hand in an exaggeratedly carefree gesture, but the tremble in his breathing gave away his anxiety.
Hae-jun could feel that anxiety seeping straight into him as well.
He exhaled slowly, a long breath escaping his lips.
He took a deep, deliberate breath, forcing his wildly thrashing heart to steady itself.
The anchor beacon's steady rhythm—0.8 seconds per beat—echoed in his ears.
The maelstrom inside him—which had been surging as if to sweep him into madness—gradually began to calm.
Fog pointed toward the swirling mist and muttered in a trembling voice.
"Man, it's like a curtain's rising... except this isn't the kind of show I wanted to see."
Fog was right.
All around them, the red mist suddenly began to seethe as if it were alive.
Briefly, they saw an illusion of the solid tiled floor turning into a sticky mire, and unknown whispers rained down from the empty air.
"...co...me..."
The jumbled whispers, like static, scraped at the team's nerves.
Yun Seo-jun shook his head, trying to dispel the phantom voices swirling around him, while Lee Jun-seong let out a harsh breath and steeled himself.
Shin Yeon-hwa, too, felt her mind going hazy for a moment, but she latched onto the beacon's pulse to stay grounded.
Suddenly, the concrete walls on both sides of the passage wavered and began to writhe.
"Watch the walls!"
Kang Mu-yeol, at the front, hoisted his shield and shouted.
The walls to either side immediately twisted as if alive, pressing inward toward them.
It was like two giant teeth were trying to chew the corridor from both sides—the walls were closing in with a force that threatened to crush bone.
Kang Mu-yeol lifted his buckler-sized shield and held down a button on its grip.
Swoosh—chunk!
In a split second, alloy panels shot out from the shield's sides, top, and bottom, and it expanded into a tower shield more than twice its original size.
The expanded shield wedged itself between the walls, its spikes biting into the concrete with a harsh crunch.
Kang Mu-yeol clung to the shield's handle and anchored his body like a human lever to keep the crushing force from ripping it away.
"Keeping... the path open...!"
As Kang Mu-yeol's deep-throated shout rang out, Lee Jun-seong and Yun Seo-jun immediately pressed in on either side of him to help prop up the shield.
At that moment, Oh Maria's calm voice came through their headsets.
"...Barrier sync at 90%... 95%... Good, it's stable. Researcher Park, deploy the barrier now."
"Deploying barrier—now!"
From the rear, Park Seo-yeon's sharp voice rang out.
Moments later, a blue aura shot out from around her like lightning, and an intricate barrier sigil flashed into being on the corridor floor.
Park Seo-yeon wiped her sweat-soaked brow, squeezing out the last of her strength.
As the barrier unfurled, her energy drained rapidly and her breathing turned ragged.
Still, she continued the incantation to the end and finally completed the barrier.
"...O Providence, drop anchor at this place."
At those words, the circular barrier array on the floor brightened as if taking a breath.
At the same time, Agent Kim In-woo drove a long metal stake straight into the center of the sigil with all his might.
Kim In-woo planted a knee firmly on the ground, panting.
He gripped the long metal pin with both hands, aimed it at the floor, and then slammed it down, mustering every last bit of his strength.
—TUNG!
A metallic reverberation rang through the underground space, slicing through the air.
That stake was a phase pin, meant to moor reality in place.
As the barrier's light intersected with the pin's vibration, the surrounding illusions convulsed momentarily, as if in protest.
As the barrier's light spread, the crushing pressure from the sides gradually relented.
The illusions thinned, peeling away to transparency, and the weight bearing down on Kang Mu-yeol's shoulders vanished.
He drew a quick breath and reset his shield in front of him.
But as their view cleared, what appeared before them was not an illusion but an actual concrete wall.
It meant that wall was no mere illusion, but part of the domain's actual structure still remaining.
At that moment, Lee Jun-seong issued a firm order.
"Breach, now! Everyone, cover!"
Everyone sensed that an explosive clash was imminent.
They all held their breath, and the very air felt frozen with tension.
The next few seconds as the countdown began felt endlessly long — for some, like standing at the very brink between life and death.
"One, two—three!"
Kang Mu-yeol surged forward, his shield emitting a howling screech of metal.
The spikes at the shield's edge slammed into the concrete wall, and the end of the passage split open with a thunderous crash.
Seizing on the opening, Shin Yeon-hwa yanked the safety pin from a flashbang with her teeth and hurled it with all her might.
At the same time, Lee Jun-seong gestured for the team to duck.
—BANG!
A blinding white flare and a boom of sound engulfed the underground space.
For a moment, all sound was muffled and every inch of vision was flooded with stark white.
The flashbang's blast of light forcibly drove back the darkness of the illusions.
Almost in the same instant, Park Seo-yeon's barrier sigil pulsed and surged brighter.
In sync with the beacon's pulse, the intensified barrier light rolled out in waves, and the curtain of mist dividing reality and nightmare split apart with a keening shriek.
In that instant, the phantom whispers and echoes that had been ringing in their ears abruptly cut off, and like a radio dying out, the lingering traces of the illusions crackled and then dissolved.
Fog asked in a trembling voice, "I-Is it o-over?"
Hae-jun didn't answer; he kept carefully watching their surroundings instead.
It was not time to let their guard down yet.
Park Seo-yeon lifted a hand, sensing the energy of the barrier.
"The surrounding phase is stabilized... success."
At her relieved pronouncement, a faint ripple of joy passed through the team.
Soon, silence fell around them, and the eerie voices that had plagued their ears vanished as if they'd never been.
Everyone was panting hard, but for the first time in a while they were able to breathe easier.
Hae-jun fought to keep his focus through the lingering ringing in his ears.
A fierce pounding still reverberated deep in his chest, and his breath—rigid with tension—kept coming in quick, shallow bursts.
After a moment, he absentmindedly tapped at one ear, trying to regain his muffled hearing.
His nose was filled with the heavy stench of gunpowder and cement dust.
For the first time in what felt like ages, he was seeing the underground space as it truly was.
It was the real layout of the Gangnam Station underground, as it had been before the distortion.
Beneath the flickering emergency lights, cracked pillars and a floor strewn with debris reasserted a grim sense of reality.
All around them lay the signboards of abandoned vendor stalls and countless shards of shattered glass.
Sticky puddles had collected here and there, and fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling sparked and flickered intermittently.
The aftermath of reality colliding with nightmare lay exposed in horrific detail.
And at the center of it all—beyond the faint red mist rising like a heat haze—a single human figure came into sight.
The sight made Hae-jun's heart lurch into a furious beat.
The figure stood leaning against a shattered pillar in an open space beyond the passage, like a small plaza.
In the flashbang's fading glare, the silhouette revealed a man clad in a heavy tactical vest.
A faint patch on his shoulder read "ROOK-8."
Around him, several portable beacon devices blinked with faint lights.
They were the reality anchors he had planted.
"Se-... Seo Do-gyeong?" Shin Yeon-hwa gasped, barely daring to say his name.
At that moment, through the crackling static, the voice that had gone silent suddenly came through again.
"...Rook-8... Seo Do-gyeong... respond... location..."
Everyone's heart felt like it dropped at once.
They had heard it, without a doubt.
It was faint, but it was the voice of a survivor still fighting to hold on.
Hae-jun forgot to breathe for a moment.
The transmission from Seo Do-gyeong that had previously only crackled briefly over the radio was now ringing out here in real life, right before their eyes.
Shin Yeon-hwa took a hesitant step forward, as if unable to believe her eyes.
It hadn't even been a full day since they'd deployed, but she had already been weighed down with guilt for losing Seo Do-gyeong.
The instant she saw him with her own eyes, Shin Yeon-hwa's heart pounded so hard she thought it might burst.
Her eyes brimmed with hot tears.
Lee Jun-seong grabbed her shoulder. "Don't drop your guard yet!"
At his cautious warning, Shin Yeon-hwa halted, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the figure ahead.
The entire team held their breath as they stared at the silhouette.
There was no doubt.
It was Seo Do-gyeong.
This was the moment their comrade—lost in the night of mist—finally emerged into reality.