The Color of Blood and Regret

The gate shimmered like a heat mirage against the crumbling asphalt of the abandoned industrial district. Han Sol-Mi adjusted the strap of her healing kit and stared at the iridescent surface with the weary resignation of someone who had long stopped expecting good news. Behind her, the five other members of the Guild of Second Chances shuffled their feet, checked worn equipment, and tried not to look at each other. Park Doyun stood at the front, knees audibly popping as he shifted his weight. He was forty-two, but his joints felt seventy. The scar running from his temple to his jaw pulled tight when he spoke. "Standard trash gate. D-rank at best. We go in, clear the imps, grab the mana crystals if there are any, and we're out in two hours. Stay close, stay quiet." "You said that last time," muttered a man with a missing ear and a crooked sword. "And I almost got my other ear taken off." "That's because you wandered off to loot a corpse while we were still fighting," Sol-Mi replied flatly. The man glared at her. "It had a coin purse." Doyun stepped through the gate without another word. The others followed, grumbling. Sol-Mi was the last to enter, her fingers brushing the shimmering membrane as she crossed the threshold. The world twisted—a moment of vertigo, a sensation of falling sideways—and then she stood in a cavern of black stone and crimson moss. The air smelled of copper and wet earth. Faint light pulsed from crystals embedded in the walls, casting long, dancing shadows. "Form up," Doyun ordered. They moved into a loose circle, weapons drawn. Sol-Mi positioned herself in the center, hands glowing with a weak, green-tinted light. She was an E-rank healer. Her magic could close a shallow cut in about three minutes. A broken bone would take an hour. She was, by all accounts, nearly useless. And yet she was here, because no other guild would take her, and she needed the money to pay off her mother's hospital bills. They advanced through the tunnel. The walls narrowed, then widened into a chamber littered with bones—some animal, some not. Sol-Mi's stomach turned. She had seen death before. You couldn't be a healer, even a bad one, without seeing death. But there was something wrong about this place. The silence was too heavy. The shadows seemed to move at the edges of her vision. "Doyun," she said quietly, "I don't like this." "You never like anything," he replied, but his voice was tight. They reached a dead end. A solid wall of rock, veined with glowing red lines like a circulatory system. "Dead end?" someone asked. "That's not—" A sound. Deep. Resonant. Like a giant's heartbeat. The ground trembled. The red veins in the rock pulsed brighter, hotter, and then the wall split open with a grinding roar. Beyond it lay a corridor of polished obsidian, and at its end, a massive door carved with symbols that made Sol-Mi's eyes water. "That's not D-rank," Doyun whispered. "Everyone back. Now." They turned. They ran. The tunnel stretched behind them, longer than it had been before. The exit was a distant speck of shimmering light. Sol-Mi's lungs burned. She was not a sprinter. Her healing magic drained her stamina, and she had already used a sliver of it to stabilize the man with the missing ear when he tripped and gashed his hand. They reached the gate. Relief flooded through her—until she saw Doyun's face. He had stopped. He was staring at the gate's surface. It was no longer shimmering silver. It was red. Deep, arterial red, pulsing in time with the distant heartbeat. "No," someone breathed. The sound came again—the heartbeat—followed by the grinding of ancient machinery. The red light in the gate flared, and then the exit sealed shut with the sound of a closing vault. A heavy, final boom echoed through the cavern, and the shimmering surface turned to solid, impenetrable stone. Silence. Sol-Mi stared at the wall where the gate had been. Her hands were shaking. She looked down at them. Weak, green light flickered around her fingers. Useless. "We're trapped," the one-eared man whispered. Doyun said nothing. He pressed his palm against the stone and closed his eyes. When he opened them, his face was gray. "We're in a red gate," he said. "A high-level one." "How high?" He didn't answer. He didn't have to. Behind them, the obsidian corridor groaned, and something large began to move in the darkness.