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# Chapter Two:
The Stairwell of the Lost
The first step felt like sinking.
Ju Sung's boot touched the black stone stair, and the world shifted—subtle but undeniable. The cold deepened, sinking into his bones, whispering ancient warnings his mind couldn't understand but his body could. Every fiber of him screamed to turn back.
He didn't.
The staircase spiraled downward, far deeper than any dungeon map should have allowed. Walls of cracked obsidian bled faint trails of crimson light, like veins too old to carry blood but too stubborn to die.
Every few steps, the system glitched again.
> [Warning: Dimensional coordinates unstable.]
> [You are no longer within standard dungeon parameters.]
> [Progression locked until trial is completed.]
Ju Sung clenched his fists. The stairwell wasn't just taking him deeper—it was changing him.
Halfway down, he heard it.
Breathing.
Wet, ragged, shuddering gasps scraping the walls. Ju Sung drew his blade, scanning the shadows—but there was nothing. Just the stairs. Just the dark.
Until he saw the hands.
They clung to the walls—thousands of them—grey and cracked like dead stone, but twitching with life. Some were missing fingers, some were mangled, but all of them reached for him blindly, as if sensing his warmth.
He moved carefully. Slowly. One step at a time.
But no matter how silent he tried to be, the hands felt him. They gripped at the edges of his coat, his boots, his wrists.
And then the whispering began.
"You're not supposed to be here," they breathed, voices layered over each other like broken glass.
"Turn back."
"Die with dignity."
"Dead things should stay dead."
Ju Sung shook them off, forcing his way downward. Every whisper, every pull only made his determination harden.
They didn't understand.
He hadn't chosen this.
The world had already decided he was dead. It had buried him long before this dungeon ever called to him.
If he was a corpse, he would be the one to decide what rose from the grave.
At the base of the stairwell, a heavy iron door waited, covered in rust and pulsing faintly under the same broken crimson light. Inscribed across it were words in a language he didn't recognize—but somehow understood.
"Only those who have nothing left may enter."
Ju Sung hesitated, a flicker of doubt gnawing at him.
Did he really have nothing left?
Memories surged—his family's fearful faces, the cold rejection of the Guilds, the laughter of Hunters who saw him as less than nothing.
He set his jaw.
No. He had nothing.
He placed his palm against the door.
It burned.
Agony flared through him as the mark on the back of his hand blazed red-hot, searing deeper into his flesh. He gritted his teeth against the scream that tore at his throat, refusing to give the dungeon the satisfaction.
And then the door shuddered—groaning open with a sound like the earth splitting in two.
Beyond it was darkness.
And something waiting inside.
> [Trial One Initiated: "Face Thyself."]
A shape stepped out of the void.
It was him.
But not the broken, determined Ju Sung who stood now.
It was the Ju Sung he might have been—stronger, faster, glowing with the perfect, polished light of a true S-rank Hunter. A dream version. A lie.
The Doppelgänger smiled, confident and cruel.
Without hesitation, it raised its blade.
Ju Sung raised his.
He didn't need to be perfect.
He just needed to survive.
The first clash of steel echoed like thunder through the void—and the battle for his future began.
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