Captain Park Jae-sung had worked Association rescues for twelve years. He trusted his checklists more than he trusted hunches. When the call came in, he read the incident summary twice, then once more to the room.
"Solo entry. C-rank support. Name: Freya Seo-Hallrún. No response to pings since 05:32. Outer gate remains stable. Mana variance abnormal. Last known position logged near the northern interior wedge." He closed the tablet. "We go in by the book. Entry in five."
They geared up in a cleared patch of ground facing the B-rank gate. The oval of green light held steady between two twisted pines, the surface rippling once every few seconds. The perimeter crew had already set anchor wards and a sterile zone. A technician pointed at the display on a tripod. "Spikes and dips every three to four minutes, sir. Not like a boss cycle. More like circulation."
"Copy," Park said. "Seung-woo, you're on instruments. Doyoon, point. Juri second. Minsuk shields, Soo-min yellow band, Minho with the rear packs. We mark every fifty meters. If the map goes noisy, we backtrack to last clean mark."
They crossed the threshold at 08:11. The shift hit like a pressure change. The forest inside the gate was dense and damp. Roots interlaced underfoot. Fungi glowed along tree trunks with steady blue light. There was a faint vibration under the soles of their boots not tied to any footfall.
Lee Doyoon lifted one hand and crouched. "Tracks," he said. He set a small prism in the soil. It beeped once and threw a thin spray of light over the ground. "Human. Light step. Single set. Same boot pattern as the photo in her file. Heading north-northwest. Pace moderate."
Park checked his watch. "If she went in at 05:07 and held that pace, she's deep. Move."
They advanced in a staggered line. Han Juri loosed a line from her wrist spool to the last marker at each bend and gave it a tug. The line glowed faintly, linked to its origin by a mana thread in case the forest shifted. Minsuk kept his tower shield slightly raised; it hummed with a faint defensive tone as it cut the air.
Fifteen minutes in, two bark-plated boars nosed out of the underbrush. Juri angled left, gave a hand sign, and released a pair of barbed bolts. They hit high behind the shoulders. The boars squealed and stumbled. Minsuk stepped in and finished both with swift thrusts. The bodies steamed for a few seconds, then slackened as if the mana had left them.
"Local constructs," Soo-min said. "Not an organized spawn."
They logged the encounter time and direction. Seung-woo adjusted the sniffer on his harness, watching the numbers on his chest display. "Mana density rising. Root activity at plus twelve percent."
"Define root activity," Park said.
"Vibrations and growth rate. It's moving under us. Not a lot. Enough to register."
They continued. At every fifty meters, Park dropped a disc that clicked and rooted itself into the soil with three pins. The disc lights cycled green, then steady white. If the path distorted, the network would draw a straight line out. It wasn't perfect, but it reduced the chances of being turned around.
At 08:34, Doyoon raised a closed fist. Everyone stopped. He pointed ahead. Through a break in the trees lay a hollow. The canopy opened into a round space about thirty meters across. The ground changed from roots to slick stone crossed with thick, ribbed tendrils.
Juri whispered, "Central node."
In the far arc of the hollow, vines hung heavy in front of rock. Something behind them glimmered faintly. Doyoon edged forward and cut a curtain of vines with a hook knife. Park joined him and held his lamp low.
An archway stood carved into the stone. It was narrower than the outer gate. The film stretched across it looked thinner, almost translucent, and white rather than green. The air around the arch was cooler by a few degrees. On Seung-woo's meter, the mana line spiked and flattened into a plateau.
"Secondary structure," Seung-woo said quietly. "Signature matches gate surface. Different wavelength. We log this and do not enter."
Park swept the lamp left and right. There were no scuffs on the floor near the arch, no tool marks, no signs a team had worked here. That matched the report: no one else had come in.
"Eyes open," he said. "We clear the hollow."
Minsuk angled his shield to cover the arch. Juri circled left, keeping three meters from the stone. Doyoon checked the tree line. Soo-min moved to the center, scanning for bodies with her medical sensor. It clicked faintly and showed nothing. Then Doyoon pointed down.
A smear of blood ran along one ribbed root and ended abruptly on the stone. Park crouched and touched it with a gloved finger. It was tacky, not fresh but not dry. There were two more drops half a meter away. Then nothing.
"No trail," Doyoon said. "It stops."
Soo-min's sensor began to pulse. She pivoted and took three quick steps toward the right-hand quadrant of the hollow. "There," she said. "Faint signal."
They followed her to a shallow depression in the stone about two meters from the vine curtain. Freya lay on her side, knees slightly drawn, one arm angled under her. Her hair was stuck to her face with sweat and dirt. Her skin had the flat look Park associated with massive blood loss. The front of her shirt and jacket were black with dried blood; the chest area had collapsed fabric where something had punched through and then torn out.
Soo-min dropped to her knees. "Airway." She turned Freya gently, bracing the head and neck. "No breath sounds. Wait." She leaned in. "No, there's a movement. Shallow. Very shallow."
"Pulse?" Park asked.
Soo-min pressed two fingers to the carotid, then the wrist. She shook her head once. "No palp." Her voice stayed level. "Minsuk, trauma pack. Minho, the red kit. Doyoon, lamp steady."
Park looked at the arch, then at Freya, then at the ground between. There was no drag mark, no shoe scuff, no splatter trail. The blood on her clothing was heavy. The stone under her was blood-stained, but not enough to match what he could see on her. It was as if she had appeared there, bled a little more, and stopped.
Soo-min cut the shirt open and peeled it back. The wound was a circular puncture dead center of the chest, the diameter of a man's wrist. The edges were clean. There were no burn marks, no tearing, no secondary lacerations. In a normal gate, punctures were messy. This one wasn't.
"Through-and-through," Soo-min said. "Entry anterior. I don't know if there's exit posterior. Minsuk, roll to side. Gentle. Doyoon, head. Three, two—"
They rolled Freya just enough to check the back. There was a matching exit wound lower than the entry. Blood had run to the sides and down along the ribs. The bleeding had slowed. Either the pressure had changed, or there wasn't much left to lose.
"Occlude," Soo-min said. She pressed an occlusive seal from the red kit over the front wound, then a second over the back, smoothing both with firm hands. "Juri, hand pump. I want negative pressure maintained until we move. Minho, oxygen. Simple mask for now. Seung-woo, I need core temp."
Park stood up and scanned the treeline again. The forest at the edge of the hollow was still. His earbud clicked as the perimeter watch checked in. "Captain, your network shows you stationary. Status?"
"We found the subject. Alive. Critical. Secondary structure present. Mark this location as black; no entry authorized."
"Acknowledged. Do you require a second team?"
"Negative for now. Hold."
Soo-min slid an IV into Freya's left forearm. The vein was collapsed; she switched to the external jugular with efficient hands. Clear fluid dripped down the line. She taped the cannula and glanced at her monitor. "BP unmeasurable. Heart electrical activity minimal. No organized rhythm. Agonal respirations."
"Can you move her?" Park asked.
"If we don't, she dies here," Soo-min said. "We'll move with the seals on. We can't decompression-needle in this environment with unknown particulates. She needs a surgical unit."
Park nodded. "We go out the way we came. Juri, you're on pump until we clear the treeline. Minsuk, carry with Minho. Doyoon, point. Seung-woo, record that arch from here and set a triple beacon. Do not approach it."
Seung-woo unpacked three small posts from his harness and affixed them in a triangle around the arch at a distance of ten meters. He tapped each. They hummed and threw low bands of light, marking the hazard in the Association's internal layer. He took four still photos with his wrist camera: wide shot, left oblique, right oblique, and close-in of the film surface. The close-in came out slightly blurred; the white film seemed to fuzz the focus at any distance under two meters.
"Done," he said.
"Move," Park ordered.
Minsuk slid his arms under Freya's shoulders and hips, feeling for balance. Minho supported the legs. They lifted as a unit on Soo-min's count. Juri kept one hand on the manual pump attached to the back seal and the other on the oxygen mask. Doyoon led them past the first marker disc, eyes up. Park moved backward, shield open, facing the arch.
Nothing moved as they left the hollow. The feeling underfoot—subtle root motion—continued, but did not increase. They reached the first marker. Park bent and pressed the recall button; the disc's pins retracted and it popped free into his palm. He clipped it to his belt and waved the team onward.
They kept steady pace and breath count. Juri called out the pump's pressure at ten-second intervals. Minho watched the oxygen line to prevent snag. Minsuk kept Freya level. Twice, bark-plated boars approached and then veered away. Whether it was the group size or the smell of blood, Park did not know. He did not press the question.
At 08:56, they reached the ninth marker. The gate shimmered through the trees. Park keyed his earbud. "Perimeter, this is Rescue One. We are inbound with a critical. Prep trauma bay. Alert ER. Subject requires thoracic intervention and full mana cleanse conditions."
"Copy, Rescue One. Trauma team en route to gate. ER notified."
They crossed the threshold at 09:01. The light changed. The outside air felt thin and bright after the weight inside. A medical team ran forward with a stretcher. They slid Freya onto it on Soo-min's count, kept the seals in place, and moved straight to the tent.
Park followed to the flap and stopped. He did not enter trauma bays unless asked; he stayed out of the way and waited for the initial report. He removed his helmet and wiped his forehead with a cloth. There was a smear of dried blood along the visor rim. He set the helmet on a crate and looked back at the gate.
The perimeter tech walked up and held out a printed readout. "Sir, the interior probe you sent earlier lost signal at ninety meters," he said. "The pattern after that is strange. We got a burst of interference at 07:13. Then nothing. When you hit the hollow, our external scanner picked up a second oscillation just before your call. Two wavelengths."
"Two gates," Park said.
"That's our assumption," the tech said. "Secondary structure inside the primary. We've got your beacon markers in the layer. We can lock it down."
"Do it," Park said. "Lock and restrict. Blacklist the coordinate from all routine dispatch. Report to Section Chief Ryu with my notes. And make sure the photos Seung-woo took are tagged and encrypted."
The tech nodded and left. Park looked down at his tablet and typed his field summary. He listed times, distances, team positions, environmental observations, injury description, interventions, and exfil. He wrote "secondary gate observed; no entry" and marked it with a restricted flag. He did not speculate on how Freya had moved from wherever she had been injured to the spot on the stone. He had no evidence to support any theory.
Inside the tent, he heard the clipped rhythm of a trauma team working. The words reached him in fragments. "Tube…" "Clamp…" "Charge…" "Again…" The tones of the monitors rose and fell. Soo-min came out five minutes later with her gloves stained to the wrist. She peeled them off and tossed them in a biohazard bin.
"Status?" Park asked.
"They got an electrical rhythm," she said. "It's not strong. She's ventilated. They're moving her to the hospital now. They'll transfer within five."
He nodded once. "Good work."
Soo-min sat on a folding chair and rested her forearms on her knees. "That wound was clean," she said. "Not like claws or a spike from a beast. Circular. Uniform. If you told me a branch did it, I'd ask how a branch makes a hole like that."
Park thought of the white film across the narrow arch and the silence of the hollow. "I'm not going to tell you anything," he said. "Not yet."
She didn't push. She looked toward the gate instead. "We don't send a second team inside the secondary, do we."
"No," Park said. "We don't. We mark it and wait. If Section wants it, they'll bring in an S-rank and a vault team. Until then, it's not our problem."
They watched the medics roll the stretcher out of the tent toward the waiting ambulance. Freya's face was partly obscured by the oxygen mask and the tubing. The sheets covered most of her, but the bulk of the occlusive dressings stood out under the fabric. The ambulance doors shut. The siren did not sound. They moved off without it.
Park signed the chain-of-custody line on the patient transfer form. The perimeter guard gave him a second form for the hazard flag. He verified the coordinates and added a warning line: "Secondary structure evident. Do not engage without R-level authorization."
At 09:27, he called Section Chief Ryu. "We found the subject alive in critical condition," he said as soon as the line opened. "She was located inside the primary gate, near a secondary structure—a double dungeon. We did not enter. We've placed beacons and a lock."
Ryu was quiet for a beat. "Double dungeons are rare."
"I'm aware," Park said.
"You'll send the report with your media."
"It's already on your desk."
"Good," Ryu said. "We'll take it from here. Keep your team on hold until I review. No detail sharing outside the chain."
"Understood."
Park ended the call. He gathered his team at the shade tarp next to the supply truck. He ran the debrief quickly: what worked, what didn't, what to fix on the next run. He didn't invite speculation on the secondary gate. He did remind them not to talk about it anywhere outside the internal channel.
"Questions?" he asked.
Minho raised a hand. He was new, first year on rescues. "Sir," he said, "the blood under her was not enough. If she bled that much, there should have been a trail."
"There wasn't," Park said.
"Then how—"
"Not our question today," Park said. "We did our job. That's enough."
They broke down the shade and stowed gear. The outer gate continued to ripple, unchanged. The forest beyond it waited, silent on the monitors. The three hazard beacons around the inner arch pulsed at a steady interval on the team's tablets, each ping acknowledged by the layer server.
At 10:02, Park stood alone at the perimeter tape and looked into the green oval. He saw the path they had walked and the shadowed bend where the hollow lay. He thought of the neat circular hole in the woman's chest and the fact that she was breathing without a pulse.
He wrote one last line in his private notes, a file that would not leave his device until he chose to send it.
"Subject was found near a secondary gate with injuries inconsistent with known primary dungeon fauna. No evidence of transit from injury site to recovery site. Recommend containment and limited disclosure."
He saved the note, locked the tablet, and turned away. He had other rescues on the board and a team to rotate.
Behind him, the gate held steady. The forest inside did not move. The marks they had left on the roots would vanish within hours. The beacons would keep blinking until someone high enough decided what to do.
Park did not plan to be that person. He had done what he could: bring a body out alive and keep the rest from becoming a footnote. It would have to be enough.