The air changed first.
Not colder.Not warmer.
Older.
The moment Tae-Hyun crossed the threshold, the subtle harmony that always existed inside W-03 thinned into silence. The lights above flickered once, as if uncertain whether they were meant to function at all, then settled into a muted glow that barely touched the floor.
Eun-chae stepped in behind him.
The door slid shut with a softer sound than expected.
Too soft.
It felt less like being sealed in… and more like being forgotten.
"This place smells like dust," she murmured.
"It's filtered air," he replied quietly. "Dust doesn't survive here."
"Then why does it feel like it does?"
He didn't answer.
Because he felt it too.
The sealed sector was not abandoned. It was preserved. And preservation carried a different kind of weight — the kind that pressed against the chest, reminding the body it had entered somewhere that remembered things.
The corridor stretched ahead in a gentle curve. The walls bore faint seams of inactive panels, their surfaces scratched by time or something pretending to be time. No hovering interfaces. No flowing data. Just smooth metal and thin lines of light embedded near the floor like a path someone had once needed and later decided to hide.
Their footsteps echoed.
Not loudly.
But clearly.
"This wing isn't connected to the central hum," Eun-chae said after a few seconds.
He nodded. "It's isolated."
"No," she corrected softly. "It's detached."
The distinction lingered between them.
Halfway down the corridor, the lights dimmed again.
Not a malfunction.
A reaction.
Tae-Hyun felt it ripple through the hum inside him — a faint internal resonance that hadn't surfaced since the archive. Something in this sector recognized his biological signature the way a locked door recognizes the right key even after years of disuse.
A panel along the wall brightened faintly.
Then another.
Eun-chae tilted her head. "Did you just wake the building up?"
"I didn't do anything."
"You walked," she replied. "Around here, that counts."
He almost smiled.
The first chamber opened without them touching anything.
The doors parted with a slow mechanical sigh that sounded different from the rest of W-03 — heavier, less precise, as if the machinery had been built in a time when elegance hadn't been the priority yet.
Inside, the room was vast.
Circular.
Its ceiling arched high above, ribbed with structural beams rather than seamless light panels. In the center stood a platform surrounded by dormant equipment — skeletal frameworks, inactive cables, suspended rings that resembled halos frozen mid-descent.
Eun-chae stepped closer.
"This isn't a lab," she whispered.
"No," Tae-Hyun said, his voice low. "It's a cradle."
The word left him before he consciously chose it.
He didn't know how he knew.
But the moment he spoke, the platform responded.
A faint ring of light ignited along its edge.
Then another.
Eun-chae inhaled sharply.
"You really are the worst person to bring into hidden places," she muttered. "You keep turning them on."
He glanced at her. "You walked in too."
"Yes," she said. "But I don't come with ancient system permissions apparently."
He stepped onto the platform.
The hum inside him aligned instantly.
Not expanding.
Recognizing.
Around them, the dormant rings trembled slightly, then began to glow one by one, each halo lighting with a pale, ghostlike luminance that cast soft shadows across the chamber walls.
And then—
Sound.
Not mechanical.
Not digital.
A voice.
Fragmented. Distant. As if played through layers of memory rather than speakers.
"…stability threshold… hold…"
"…pattern integrity… do not sever…"
Eun-chae's fingers tightened at her sides.
"That's him," she said.
Tae-Hyun didn't answer.
The voice continued, fractured by static and time.
"…if I become this… I will not remain…"
The words cut abruptly.
Silence flooded back in.
The halos dimmed slightly but did not extinguish.
Eun-chae stepped closer to the platform, her gaze fixed on him.
"That wasn't a record," she said softly. "That was an imprint."
He exhaled slowly.
"Yes."
"And it recognized you."
He nodded once.
Because denying it felt pointless now.
A second door opened at the far end of the chamber.
This one did not sigh.
It unlocked with a crisp click.
Beyond it lay a narrow passage lined with darkened screens. As they approached, the displays flickered awake one by one, revealing fragmented logs, neural diagrams, partial recordings.
Faces.
Names.
Dates that belonged to years W-03 never mentioned.
And at the center of them all—
Designation: D-01.
Eun-chae swallowed.
"They archived him like a prototype," she murmured.
"No," Tae-Hyun replied quietly. "They archived him like a foundation."
The distinction was worse.
At the end of the passage, they found a single console still fully functional.
No dust. No corrosion. Just a smooth interface waiting with eerie patience.
Eun-chae looked at him. "This is a terrible idea."
"Yes."
She placed her hand on the surface anyway.
The console lit.
A question appeared in pale text.
ACCESS CENTER?
Eun-chae hesitated. "This feels like a trap."
Tae-Hyun studied the words.
"It's not asking for clearance," he said.
"It's asking for intention."
She exhaled softly. "That's worse."
He met her eyes.
"Do we want to know?" she asked.
He looked back at the corridor filled with preserved voices. At the dormant cradle. At the silent halos still glowing faintly in the chamber behind them.
"Yes," he said.
She pressed ACCEPT.
The floor vibrated lightly beneath their feet.
Deep within the sealed sector, systems that had not been active since the first Devil's Heir stirred fully awake.
And somewhere far above them, in a control room Director Han had not visited in years, a dormant indicator blinked red for the first time since the day a body failed…
and a pattern refused to die.