Chapter 35

Hovering in the darkness where Hae-gun had been staring was a luminescent system window.

The skill description glowing on the translucent panel was both utterly alien and horrifyingly familiar. It was the legendary reward Seo Hae-gun had earned upon clearing the Tower of Time in the previous timeline…

And the very ritual that had consumed the man’s flesh and soul to cast Eui-rim three years into the past.

The more Eui-rim absorbed the system text, the more violently his stomach churned. Thinking of Hae-gun trapped in this bunker for an entire week, doing nothing but staring at this prompt, made his chest ache with unbearable sorrow.

Forced execution of the skill due to penalty incurrence.

Is that why every clue he left me was so oblique? Why he spoke as though casually reminiscing about bygone battles, disguising critical survival strategies as idle advice?

The final, chaotic seconds of their parting flashed behind his eyelids.

Looking back, the end had come with terrifying speed. From the instant Hae-gun explicitly referenced the past, events had cascaded toward a brutal conclusion. As though reality itself were being erased, the world had shattered before they could exchange a proper farewell.

He didn’t activate the skill because he reached his physical limit as a vessel.

Seo Hae-gun had uttered those forbidden clues deliberately, fully aware that giving Eui-rim the truth would incur the fatal system penalty.

Concluding his life with that quiet plea to come find him, the man had chosen a sacrificial suicide.

Suffocating grief pressed down on Eui-rim’s chest like a lead slab. The phantom memory of Hae-gun smiling in that apocalyptic bunker flickered relentlessly before him.

Squelch!

Before Eui-rim could turn toward him, the vision accelerated toward its horrific climax.

The familiar, pulsing sanguine membrane engulfed the corridor, consuming Hae-gun’s mangled form.

Squelch!

With every fragment of flesh claimed by the membrane, the stench of iron grew sickeningly thick. Fueled by Hae-gun’s blood and core, the ritual blazed with blinding crimson light, shaking the bunker as the one-eyed shadows awakened.

And the instant Seo Hae-gun’s physical body was completely consumed—

A final status window materialized in the empty space where he had sat.

The one-eyed shadows, which had been chanting devour him, turned their collective gaze toward Eui-rim. Their cyclopean eyes gleamed with ghastly luminescence. Circling the pool of Hae-gun’s spilled blood, they snarled with primordial fury.

[Wretch ed broth er]

[We will not for get this mo ment]

[To re turn to the Ori gin once more]

[We shall tear a part the soul that stole a por tion of you]

[And swal low your will to re turn to the pri mor dial cos mos]

Brother?

As the eldritch voices echoed into the abyss, darkness descended once more. The burning eyes of the shadows dissolved into blackness, and the phantom bunker melted away.

His consciousness drifted through a murky fog. Then, like a man surfacing from a fever dream, strong hands gripped his shoulders, shaking him back into reality.

“Eui-rim-ssi!” Hae-gun’s voice called out.

Opening his eyes against the blinding glare of sunlight, Eui-rim saw a face peering down at him. It was neither the hollow vessel nor the butchered martyr of the bunker… but a healthy, living Seo Hae-gun, intently checking his vitals.

“Where… are we…?” Eui-rim wheezed, his voice dry.

At the faint whisper, Hae-gun let out a slow, relieved breath. Running fingers through his windblown hair, he eased back slightly. “Can you stand?”

“Yes… Give me a second,” Eui-rim murmured.

The violent transition from vision to waking reality left him intensely disoriented. Horrific afterimages from the bunker still burned across his vision, triggering a wave of nausea.

Drawing slow, steadying breaths, Eui-rim pushed himself up from the ground, Hae-gun catching his elbow to steady him.

Leaning against a basalt wall, Eui-rim took in his surroundings. An open pasture reminiscent of a pastoral ranch stretched beneath a cloudless azure sky, framed by endless low stone walls. The landscape was unnervingly serene.

Scanning the tranquil meadow, Eui-rim asked, “What happened?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Hae-gun countered. “Why on earth did the gate drag you inside?”

“I don’t know. The seal broke, and an iridescent light pulled me across the threshold,” Eui-rim replied.

“Did you notice anything unusual before it unsealed?” Hae-gun asked.

“Mmm…” Eui-rim hesitated, searching his memory.

While he wasn’t sure if it qualified as an omen, he had undeniably spotted that bizarre marking.

The hourglass etched into the gate.

The moment those black specks began flowing through the triangles, the gate had swung open.

When Eui-rim explained what he had seen, Hae-gun’s expression darkened instantly. “An hourglass?”

“To be precise, it looked like this,” Eui-rim said.

Using a sharp stone, Eui-rim sketched the two touching triangles into the packed dirt. Hae-gun studied the emblem intently, his brow furrowing. “There wasn’t a single sigil on the stone when I crossed through. That makes no sense.”

“You saw nothing?” Eui-rim asked.

Hae-gun gave a brief nod. His expression held neither deceit nor evasion; he looked genuinely baffled by the anomaly.

“When Moonhyuk returns, we’ll ask him as well,” Hae-gun said.

“Ahn Moonhyuk came in with us?” Eui-rim asked.

“Yes. He went ahead to scout the perimeter. He should be back shortly.”

Hae-gun’s confirmation only deepened Eui-rim’s confusion.

If the two of them entered normally, the gate was accessible. Why was I the only one dragged in by force?

“What about Moonseong Guild?” Eui-rim asked.

“They couldn’t follow,” Hae-gun replied. “Just as Yuk Do-hwan claimed, an invisible barrier repelled them at the threshold.”

“That’s bizarre. Reassigning administrative rights shouldn’t cause the dungeon itself to physically reject challengers, should it?”

“It shouldn’t,” Hae-gun agreed grimly. “That’s what makes this so unsettling.”

Raid rights were purely bureaucratic instruments meant to mediate jurisdiction between guilds. A dungeon barrier rejecting awakeners with a system prompt citing ‘lack of authorization’ was unprecedented in either timeline.

“More than that,” Eui-rim pointed out, “the fact that the dungeon’s internal terrain has mutated so drastically is alarming.”

“…You’re right,” Hae-gun acknowledged, looking around.

Waking in an open pastoral valley rather than the architectural interior of Utopia was baffling. It diverged so completely from known survey logs that they might as well have crossed into an entirely different dungeon.

“Here. Take this for now,” Hae-gun said, reaching into his coat.

“What is it?” Eui-rim asked.

“What does it look like?” Hae-gun replied.

Eui-rim held out an open palm, and a solid weight settled into his hand. It was the 1.2-billion-won Black Sapphire bracelet he had agonized over on the plane.

“No matter how I looked at it, this seemed like the optimal choice, so I brought it along,” Hae-gun said casually. “Even if it feels heavy, consider it weight training. With some luck, it might raise your Strength stat.”

Though spoken with a smirk, Hae-gun’s fingers lingered around Eui-rim’s wrist as he fastened the clasp. The steady warmth radiating from the man’s skin offered a tangible anchor against the lingering horror of the bunker vision.

“…” Eui-rim looked down at the dark gem, his pulse slowly steadying.

Can I truly afford to let my guard down and assume that nightmare is over?

If the timeline was truly rewritten, why was I forced to witness those final moments?

It could not be dismissed as a hallucination. What he had experienced was genuine history from the previous timeline, seen through an external observer’s perspective. Nothing else could explain why every detail remained so searingly distinct.

The forbidden skill Hae-gun had studied as a dying vessel. The deleted status profile after his sacrifice. And the venomous, echoing curses of the one-eyed shadows.

Every memory felt as visceral as if it had happened moments ago, churning his stomach.

At that instant, accompanied by a low auditory chime, an unfamiliar prompt manifested. A grayish status window flickered through static interference before stabilizing before his eyes.

One Who Crossed the Timeline. And…

“Part of the Fragment…?” Eui-rim murmured aloud.

“Hm?” Hae-gun turned.

The question had slipped out louder than intended. Meeting Hae-gun’s curious gaze, Eui-rim’s jaw tightened as a staggering realization clicked into place.

Wasn’t 〈Fragment of the Origin〉 among the traits Seo Hae-gun possessed before he died?

Dizziness swept through Eui-rim’s skull. Pressing the heel of his palm to his brow with a stifled groan, he heard Hae-gun ask if he was all right. Eui-rim waved a dismissive hand, afraid that if he opened his mouth, incoherent secrets would spill out.

Right then, a sudden prickle ran down his spine. An inexplicable sense of dissonance urged him to look up.

Meeting his gaze were familiar navy-blue irises looking down with concern. Those eyes, which usually conveyed calm authority, caught the shadows with an inner luminescence.

…Wait.

Why are his eyes dark navy? Weren’t they a clear, luminous blue-gray in the previous timeline?

The realization that he had overlooked such an obvious discrepancy was jarring. Had he not just witnessed the dying Hae-gun in the bunker, he might never have connected the difference.

Looking back, Hae-gun’s eyes had possessed that deep navy hue for years in the previous timeline as well. They had shifted to that pale blue-gray only after a specific, unknown turning point.