I glanced inward, toward the place Erin always seemed to hover at the edge of my mind. He was silent, distant, like the echo of a voice muffled beneath deep water.
"Do you know anything about this?" I asked softly, trying to bridge the space between us.
"No." His answer was as brief and final as a breath, leaving no room for explanation.
"You're a bit gloomy today." I tried again, hoping he'd say more. But like morning dew chased off by the wind, he vanished without another word.
My focus returned to Gelemia. The walk south still stretched ahead, or maybe time itself slowed and thickened inside these halls. After our final stop in the restrooms, we wandered through the long corridors, crossing paths now and then with Alteker crew—some just passing through, some locked in their own endless duties.
There was a stillness to their routine, though I wondered if it was actually boredom dressed up as calm. I couldn't say for sure. For a fleeting moment, the whole world felt peaceful. The only sound was the steady rhythm of our steps tapping against the metal floor, joined by the gentle rustling of thoughts that never quite settled.
"You seemed pretty… excited to see Adonis," I said, tossing out the tease with half a smile, half genuine curiosity, watching Gelemia carefully.
She nearly tripped, her expression flipping like a fan blade gone rogue. "Huh? Of course! Your brother—he's seriously a national treasure to me. Honestly, he's the reason I joined Alteker at all."
I arched an eyebrow as high as I could. "Don't tell me Adonis brainwashed you."
"Oh, please, not a chance! What sort of maniac do you think your brother is?" she shot back, her lips twisting in mock outrage. If I had to guess, in her mind his name was spelled out in neon letters.
Sometimes I wondered if her entire memory was just wall-to-wall Adonis, crowding out everything else, maybe even her nightmares were just endless training sessions with her hero.
"You might not realize it," Gelemia whispered, pitching her voice lower as if sharing classified secrets, "but Adonis and Ashsa are kind of a big deal around here. You wouldn't believe how many Alteker members nearly walk into walls trying to sneak a look when those two pass by."
I wasn't surprised. From the way everyone's eyes clung to Adonis earlier, it felt like I was parading through the undersea corridors with a celebrity. All that was missing were spotlights and a mob of autograph hunters.
"They aren't just easy on the eyes, you know," Gelemia added, her cheeks tinged with something between pride and embarrassment. "These last few months, the two of them have become famous in Alteker. They get assigned wherever the stakes are highest, never slacking off for a second. And, well… their looks are just an unfair bonus."
That's just your opinion.
She waved me off. "It's really not just me. Anyway, they've been getting special assignments straight from the North Captain himself. That's why they were both tapped for the patchwork project—fixing the leaks in the orcicea dome up north."
I paused for a moment. "So, they're not stationed in the north permanently?"
"That's not it!" Gelemia quickly adjusted her glasses. "Their headquarters are still here, but things up north are all out of sorts after the breach. That sector needs the best backup they can get, so that's why they've both been sent in that direction."
"So… does that mean Ashsa's up north with Adonis too?" I asked, surprised and a little concerned.
Gelemia shook her head, her hair catching the corridor's gleam. "Not exactly. Ashsa was assigned a different mission. He's out on an expedition, sent by direct order from the North Sector Captain to check out an old dungeon no one's ever explored before. This time he's got a special team with him."
The news made me exhale sharply. "A dungeon? That sounds dangerous."
Everyone knew venturing into a dungeon wasn't a job for the faint-hearted. Even the bravest Alteker guards would hesitate. Usually, expeditions focused on treasure hunts or research, but the risks were nothing to take lightly.
"Of course it's dangerous," Gelemia replied without missing a beat. "That's exactly why Ashsa was picked. He earned his reputation for tackling the hardest tasks without losing his nerve. But don't worry, this one's just a preliminary survey. They're not diving into the heart of the place yet, just doing an initial check."
Her words lingered for a moment, mingling with the footsteps of other Alteker staff echoing down the corridor. Suddenly, the distance between me and my brothers felt wider than this entire hallway.
"You're studying up on the surface, aren't you? So, explain something to me—what exactly is a dungeon?" I asked, my curiosity sharpening with every word. It was one of those terms people threw around like everyone was born knowing.
Gelemia snorted, giving me a look that was almost cutely offended. "You think I had to go topside just to learn about dungeons? Before you can even call yourself an Alteker, you have to pass basic training. A dungeon is… well, think of it as the birth defect of the world tree. A tear, an anomaly, the result of calculations that went sideways. According to our team's research, dungeons show up where mana refuses to dissolve properly, clumping together until it makes a miniature world inside this one."
She paused to breathe, eyes scanning me like a professor expecting a bright answer. "They say time moves differently inside. A single minute out here can stretch into a week in there. That world bends the rules—sometimes everything feels like an illusion, sometimes it's all brutally real."
I tried to picture it, my mind conjuring images of rotting chambers, roots crawling down the walls, and time slipping sideways instead of forward. "So… a dungeon is the world tree's own glitch?"
Gelemia nodded, adopting the authoritative tone of an instructor. "Exactly. A rendering flaw, so to speak. The contents inside vary, and the older a dungeon gets, the nastier the threats inside. If left alone, it'll start bleeding into the real world, like a cancer slowly devouring everything around it."
My thoughts quaked with unease. If dungeons were truly the world's own spawn, did that mean I too existed somewhere on the blurry edge between what's real and what's anomalous? Was I a fragment of that abyss, or a traveler passing between worlds?
"You're oversimplifying by thinking that way," Erin's voice slipped into my consciousness, quiet and thin as rusted wire. "Gelemia's description barely scratches the surface. A dungeon is a world within a world, a mystery whose deepest layers can't be unraveled just by reading Alteker manuals. You're far more than some dungeon-spawned creature. Look at how you walk, how you question, how doubt takes root inside you. Imaginary beings don't wonder about themselves like that."
Despite the sly irony threaded through his words, I felt a strange wash of pride.
"At least, that's what our instructors drilled into us during training. Even I don't know which parts are true secrets and which are just idle rumor—but I guess it's all right if you know," Gelemia added with a small, awkward laugh.
I tried to act indifferent, but inside, unease crawled sharply under my skin. If this really was military classified, had I just crossed a line I was never meant to step over?
Our journey toward the southern sector had grown stranger with every step. By my count, we'd been tracing these corridors for almost fifteen minutes. The first five had been filled with the chatter and footsteps of Alteker personnel, voices buzzing beneath the constant hum of the lights. But soon after, the world seemed to contract like a leaky balloon—hallways turned eerily empty, human voices fell away, and the air thickened with silence that felt far denser than anywhere else in headquarters.
By all logic, shouldn't things be busier the closer we got to a sector's heart? Here, though, it was the opposite. Only our footsteps echoed, accompanied by the faint rasp of ancient machinery, as if the engines had grown fixated on counting time by themselves.
"This is… the gate," Gelemia whispered, a strange note in her voice.
I reached for the door handle with her, feeling the pressure behind it, heavy and expectant, as if something waited inside that no field guide could prepare you for. Slowly, Gelemia pushed the door open. A darkness thicker than moonless midnight seeped from the room beyond, rising to greet us like a secret waiting for its first breath. The moment we stepped forward, the light from the corridor seemed to choke and snap out abruptly, as if the very air inside strained to reject the touch of brightness.
I held my breath. My heart hammered louder than it should. Was this the headquarters' version of a welcome party?