The Timeless Realm
Death returned before sound.
The void of the Timeless Realm was darker this time, as if something inside it had aged. Gin Chan lay on the obsidian floor, eyes unfocused, feeling the weight of a dozen deaths press down like lead. Each return should have been easier. But this time, it wasn't.
"You're late," Death muttered.
Gin flinched. The voice slithered across the stillness like oil on water. When he managed to lift his head, Death was already there — lounging against the crooked frame of his rusted throne, boots scuffed, expression unreadable.
"I thought that last bullet would've made more of a mess. Something poetic, something final," Death mused.
Gin didn't answer. His limbs ached with phantom pain, the echo of his last death still tangled in his nerves. His mouth opened, but words stuck. Only breath came.
Death circled him, quiet for a moment. Then he crouched.
"You're afraid," he said, not accusing — simply observing.
Gin swallowed. "He's always ahead."
"Kang Seo-yul?" Death scoffed. "You're surprised the devil has plans?"
"I fight. I bleed. I die. And he's already on the next move before I resurrect."
"And yet," Death said, rising, "you keep clawing your way back. So why do you really fight, Gin?"
Gin stared at his hands. "Because if I stop… Yoon Seo dies."
"People die all the time."
"I don't care about all people."
Death raised an eyebrow. "At least you're honest."
He turned, the realm shifting with him — the stars above spiraling slowly like a dying galaxy. "You asked to fight monsters," he said. "Did you think it wouldn't cost you your soul?"
Gin said nothing.
Death sighed, voice suddenly lower. "You're not chasing a man. You're chasing a myth. He built his empire in the cracks of your world. And you—" he looked back— "you're becoming something worse than him."
Gin winced. "I'm not him."
"Yet."
A slow smile curled across Death's face.
"But storms don't beg for identity. They arrive. And you? You've finally stopped knocking."
Light shattered the realm like a mirror, and Gin fell.
---
His breath returned in a cold gasp.
White light. Bleach stench. Cold floor.
Gin's eyes snapped open to the sterile calm of a forensics lab. A low hum vibrated in the walls. Screens blinked in cycles of blue. Lab equipment sat in neat rows like soldiers at attention.
A name echoed in his head — Ji-Hwan. Thirty-one. A forensic analyst with no family ties, a background scrubbed so clean it squeaked. Social profile: dull. Psychological record: average. Employment record: unremarkable.
A ghost in a building full of the blind.
Perfect.
Gin stared at his reflection in the faucet — pale skin, hollow cheeks, dark-circled eyes. He barely looked alive.
That worked.
Within days, he slid into the rhythm of the crime division. He memorized badge swipes, work hours, clearance levels. The system trusted Ji-Hwan. He was invisible, just another quiet mind hunched over dead bodies.
But Gin wasn't silent.
He learned where the bodies were sent, who signed off on reports, and where the data feeds could be redirected. He began adjusting results — just slightly. A DNA mismatch entered here. A timestamp altered there. Autopsy results "lost" or "accidentally" misfiled.
One missing blood sample erased a link to a Syndicate cleaner.
A doctored toxin profile hid the real source of a public figure's death.
A single forged pathologist's note reframed a murder-suicide as a tragic accident.
And all the while, Gin moved like a ghost, altering Daehwa's memory with each report.
---
It started with questions.
A street vendor mentioned bodies found in patterns too clean to be coincidence. A homeless teen posted a blurry photo of a red slash marked on a tunnel wall — only to vanish three days later. A conspiracy podcast shared a file about an old fire from 2007 that never added up.
At first, no one believed it. Red Trace was a myth, they said. A story to scare Syndicate informants.
But the symbols returned. In alleys. On benches. Burned into metal near train lines.
"Red doesn't run."
Then came the messages — hidden in data packets, appearing as corrupted image files, rearranged lyrics in public playlist titles.
Those who knew how to listen began to hear a pattern.
A hacker named Milo connected the dots. He decrypted the digital fingerprints and shared it across shadow boards. A ghost was moving through the system. Purposefully.
In a sealed server Ruko had buried beneath a condemned power grid, Gin received a pulse.
"You're not the only ghost anymore."
Gin stared at it, fingers brushing the screen.
The resistance hadn't formed — but the spark was alive.
---
Beneath Daehwa's skyline, behind reinforced walls and soundproof glass, the Syndicate's core council — the Four — gathered.
Kang Seo-yul stood before them in a suit too clean to trust.
His eyes scanned the room without blinking. One by one. Measuring.
"Jae-min is dead," he said calmly.
He tapped a device. The holo-image flickered into view — a body strung like a broken marionette in an abandoned tunnel. Blood-slicked. Arms stretched. Eyes sewn open.
Gasps filled the room.
On the wall behind the corpse, scrawled in deliberate lines of blood:
"Storms don't warn.
They strike.
— Red Trace"
"He's baiting us," one of the Four said.
"He's humiliating us," another growled.
Seo-yul watched them. "The Judge was bait. The trap failed. The footage leaked. He knew where to hit. And Jae-min? He was our cleaner. Our shadow. Now he's art."
He paused.
"I believe one of you is leaking."
The room went still.
Silence stretched.
"We've built our empire on control. If one thread frays…" He turned, voice sharp. "We burn the whole cloth."
He detailed new protocol: biometric sweeps, loyalty tests, internal surveillance. No one exempt.
Even them.
"And to the public," he added, "we offer something bright. A new initiative. Anti-Terrorism Unit 9."
Smiles twitched.
"They'll think we're protecting them. While we hunt the ghost."
As he left the room, the silence deepened.
The Syndicate had stopped laughing.
---
In a tunnel
The tunnel was older than memory.
Built before the war. Abandoned during reconstruction. Rumored to be used by the Syndicate to discard evidence no trial could afford to acknowledge.
Now it was a shrine.
Jae-min, once a ghost killer, now hung exposed — suspended by piano wire, spine bent backward unnaturally. His body was cleaned, posed. As if made for display.
Investigators arrived in silence.
They didn't take pictures. They just looked. And the message behind him:
> "Storms don't warn.
They strike.
— Red Trace"
It wasn't rage.
It was warning.
Precision, not fury. The signature of someone who wanted to be seen now — not as a shadow, but a threat.
A rumor passed among the cleanup crew: the ghost wasn't hunting anymore.
He was declaring war.
---
Threadwork
The safehouse was a ruin disguised as a school.
Paint peeled from the walls. Broken desks piled like forgotten bones. But on one wall, pinned and webbed by red thread, was a war map.
Photos. Charts. Syndicate accounts. Death certificates. Surveillance screenshots.
In the middle — Kang Seo-yul. Crossed twice in black ink.
Ruko leaned against a half-broken desk, sharpening his blade. A healing scar traced his collarbone — last week, a Syndicate drone nearly spotted him on a recon run.
"Tell me something," he said. "When do we stop playing chess with ghosts?"
Gin didn't look up. "When the king falls."
"You don't think you're turning into him?"
"No," Gin said, pinning a new photo. "He builds shadows. I rip off masks."
Ruko chuckled bitterly. "You left a corpse hanging like a warning."
"It worked."
They stood in silence.
Then Gin picked up a marker. Underneath Seo-yul's photo, he wrote:
> "The storm gathers.
And when it breaks, no god will be spared."
---
It started with a flicker.
A surveillance alert. A silent ping Gin coded weeks ago into Daehwa's camera relays.
One vehicle. No plates. White van. Moving at controlled intervals. Bypassing checkpoints.
Pattern matched to Syndicate courier protocols.
Inside: two heat signatures.
One restrained.
Gin's blood froze.
He enlarged the feed. Zoomed on side mirrors. Thermal scan matched Kim Joe's shoulder width and stance pattern — he knew it too well.
Then a third data point struck — the route. Not random. It was the same escape route used when Yoon Seo was previously extracted from a Syndicate facility.
"Ruko," Gin called, voice sharp.
Ruko was already moving. "Where?"
"District Nine. They're running another transfer."
Ruko loaded his pistol. "You think it's her?"
"I don't know," Gin whispered. "But I'm not losing her again."
He zipped his coat, slid the data drive into his pocket, and moved for the door.
Outside, the wind shifted. Heavy. Electric.
A low rumble crawled through the sky.
And then, distant thunder.
---
Sorry I'm posting late my bad