When Keller opened his eyes, the world looked wrong.

He was lying on cracked pavement that shimmered like glass, reflecting a skyline that shouldn't exist. Seoul—at least, it looked like Seoul—spread out around him, but the towers leaned at impossible angles, their edges bending toward the sky like molten metal frozen mid-drip. The air was thick, humid, humming with a low vibration that pressed into his chest with every breath. He pushed himself up, wincing as a sharp ache flared through his ribs. His comms were silent. His glove—dead.

"Keller to Lin… Hana… anyone?" he rasped, but the only answer was the soft echo of his own voice bouncing through the distorted streets.

The city didn't move, but something inside it did. A shadow rippled across the nearest building, too fast to follow, too large to be human. Keller's pulse spiked. He forced himself to stand, scanning his surroundings. Broken signs in Hangul flickered above him—coffee shops, convenience stores, places he'd walked past in the real world—but their lights blinked in reversed colors, like someone had inverted the city's soul.

He began to walk, one hand on his sidearm, the other dragging against a wall to steady himself. The texture wasn't right. The concrete felt warm, like skin under a fever. He yanked his hand away, swallowing bile.

"Seam resonance… I'm still inside," he muttered. "This isn't Seoul. It's an echo."

A sudden gust tore through the street, carrying faint whispers that sounded like traffic, laughter, music—all the sounds of a city alive. Keller turned in a slow circle. The whispers sharpened, layering over one another until they formed words.

"You could have stopped it…"

"He trusted you…"

"Why did you let him fall?"

Keller froze. The voice wasn't random—it was Lin's, or something that had learned how to wear his voice. He drew his weapon, aiming at the empty street. "Not real," he hissed. "You're not real."

But the Seam had no interest in logic. The buildings ahead rippled again, and for a moment he saw them: Lin, standing on the fractured bridge, reaching for him as the collapse began; Hana's scream; the white light that swallowed them all. He saw it on repeat, faster, slower, looping like film melting in a projector.

Keller stumbled back, gritting his teeth. "Stop it!"

The illusion froze. The street ahead went silent again—too silent. Then, from the reflection in the glass storefront beside him, he saw a figure standing where he had just been. Tall. Unmoving. Its face hidden behind a mask of white static.

He turned, gun raised—but nothing was there. Only the warped reflection remained.

He looked closer. The reflection smiled.

"Hell," Keller breathed, lowering the gun. "You again."

The suited figure's voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere. "Not again. Still." The static flared brighter in the reflection, the outline of the figure sharpening. "You never left me, Keller. You brought me with you."

"I don't carry monsters," Keller said flatly.

"You are one."

The words landed like knives. The air around him cracked with faint red veins of light—the same Seam energy that had devoured the bridge. Keller backed away, feeling the hum rise in pitch. "You want me to break," he said quietly. "That's what you feed on, right? Fear, guilt, weakness?"

The voice chuckled. "I don't feed. I mirror."

The reflection lunged.

Keller fired.

The bullet shattered the glass, but instead of breaking, the shards hung suspended in the air, spinning slowly. Each shard reflected a different image of him—angry, terrified, laughing, bleeding, dead. They whispered back at him in overlapping tones.

"You left him."

"You always leave them."

"That's what soldiers do, isn't it?"

"Enough!" Keller shouted. He swung the gun again, but the world twisted before he could move. The street folded inward, gravity buckling as if the city had been rolled like paper. He fell, tumbling through what should've been solid ground, and landed hard on a subway platform—one he recognized. Line 2. Hapjeong Station.

Only this time, the tracks were filled with liquid light.

He forced himself to stand, sweat dripping down his temple. The city illusion above was gone; now, he was deep underground. The air vibrated, heavy with the scent of ozone and iron. Far down the tunnel, lights flickered in rhythm with his heartbeat.

A voice—softer this time—drifted from the darkness.

"Keller…"

He froze. That wasn't the Seam's mockery. That was Lin.

He swallowed hard. "Lin? Hana? Where are you?"

No answer. Only the faint echo of his name again, distant and trembling. He followed it, boots splashing through puddles of liquid light. Every few steps, the tunnel shifted—graffiti rearranging itself, advertisements whispering in reversed Korean, the sound of trains approaching that never arrived.

"Keep moving," he muttered to himself. "Focus. Find the tether. Find Lin."

The corridor opened into a vast underground concourse that shouldn't exist—pillars stretching into infinity, the ceiling a sky of black glass showing a reflection of a different city entirely. Keller stopped, breath catching. Above that mirrored surface, he saw another version of Seoul, still whole, bathed in morning light. He could almost hear it breathing.

He lifted a hand toward it. His fingers met cold glass.

And then a hand pressed back from the other side.

Lin's face flickered into view—distorted, like a signal trying to break through interference. "Keller—can you hear me?"

Keller's throat tightened. "Lin! You're alive!"

"Barely. The Seam's collapsing faster than we thought. We can't hold this link long."

"Where are you?"

Lin's image shook, static bleeding around his outline. "Not sure. Feels like… parallel strata of the Seam. I think this layer you're in is a memory construct—it's using fragments of Seoul."

"Figures," Keller muttered. "It's been trying to get in my head since I woke up."

"Then don't let it. It's feeding on your guilt response. The more you believe what you see, the more it anchors you here."

Keller gave a harsh laugh. "Easy for you to say. I've got a whole damn city whispering my sins."

Lin's expression softened, even through the distortion. "Then stop listening to them."

The reflection behind Lin began to fracture, black cracks spreading across the mirrored sky. The Seam was destabilizing again.

"Keller—listen," Lin said urgently. "You need to find a convergence point. There's a core in each layer. If you can reach it, you can breach upward toward us. I'll try to stabilize the link."

"How do I find it?"

"You'll know," Lin said simply. "It'll feel wrong."

The connection flickered violently. The glass rippled between them.

"Lin! Wait—what about—"

The image cut out. The mirrored sky shattered completely, raining shards of false daylight onto the concourse. Keller shielded his head, then looked up—and saw something descending through the void.

A shape. Enormous.

It moved like liquid shadow, tendrils of light curling around its form. Its face—if it had one—was a void lined with static. The same figure that haunted him aboveground, now larger, clearer.

The suited entity's voice rolled like thunder. "You keep running toward the truth, Keller. But you'll never reach it without me."

Keller tightened his grip on his weapon, heart pounding. "Maybe not. But I'll die trying."

"Brave words," the figure said, leaning closer, its reflection splitting into a hundred forms. "You'll break before you find him."

Keller looked up into that endless face of static and flame, then smirked. "You don't know him like I do."

The Seam roared around him, light and shadow colliding, the city collapsing inward again—but this time, Keller didn't flinch. He charged forward, straight into the storm.

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