The second Trial did not begin with an announcement.
There was no warning.No voice echoing through the hall.No countdown.
Seo Jun realized it had started only when the lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the warehouse in an instant, thick and complete. The torches along the walls extinguished simultaneously, plunging the space into silence so deep it felt artificial.
Seo Jun froze.
Breathe, he told himself. Observe first.
The concrete beneath his feet was cold, damp. Somewhere far above, water dripped at irregular intervals. The sound echoed strangely, distorted by distance and structure.
He closed his eyes.
No, wrong.
Tae Seong's voice surfaced in his memory, sharp and unforgiving.
Never surrender a sense unless it's already been taken from you.
Seo Jun opened his eyes again, letting them adjust. Shapes began to form not clear, but present. Shadows layered on shadows. Movement hiding within stillness.
Then he felt it.
Not fear.
Pressure.
Like a hand resting on the back of his neck.
He shifted just as something cut through the air where his head had been.
Metal whispered past his ear.
Seo Jun dropped, rolled, and came up with his knife raised, heart hammering but mind steady. His attacker didn't press forward immediately. Whoever it was they were waiting.
Testing.
So this is the second Trial, Seo Jun thought. Hunted.
A voice echoed faintly through hidden speakers.
"Second Trial: Endurance."
Seo Jun's jaw tightened.
They came in waves.
Not all at once never that sloppy. One attacker at first, fast and silent, forcing Seo Jun to react. Then another, striking from a blind angle. Then nothing. Minutes of silence designed to erode focus.
Seo Jun learned quickly that panic was death.
He began to listen not just with his ears, but with his body. Subtle changes in air pressure. The scrape of fabric against concrete. The faintest shift in shadow.
His knife moved when it had to. No wasted motion.
A strike to the wrist.A kick to the knee.A shallow cut across the shoulder not lethal, but decisive.
The attackers withdrew when disabled. Not killed.
Kill last, his father had said.
Seo Jun followed the rule instinctively, though each encounter pushed him closer to the edge.
Time blurred.
Sweat soaked his clothes. His muscles screamed. A shallow cut burned along his ribs where he'd been too slow too human.
At some point, the pain stopped mattering.
Not because it vanished.
Because something else took priority.
Memory surfaced.
Not images.Not voices.
Movement.
His body began to anticipate attacks before they happened. A half-step left. A shift of weight. A turn executed without conscious thought.
Seo Jun realized, distantly, that he was no longer reacting.
He was leading.
An attacker lunged from behind a pillar.
Seo Jun pivoted, blade rising
and stopped a hair from the man's throat.
Both froze.
The attacker's breath hitched. His eyes widened not with fear, but recognition.
Seo Jun felt it too.
This was different.
The silence stretched.
Then the attacker lowered his weapon and stepped back, retreating into the dark without a word.
Seo Jun stood there, knife trembling slightly in his hand.
Why didn't I finish it?
The answer came immediately.
Because you didn't need to.
That thought did not feel like his own.
The lights snapped back on.
Seo Jun flinched, blinking as harsh white light flooded the warehouse. Bodies were scattered across the floor not dead, but injured, unconscious, defeated.
He stood in the center of it all.
Breathing slow.Posture steady.Eyes sharp.
Seven elders watched from the elevated platform.
Han Min Jae leaned forward slightly, interest no longer hidden.
"So," he said calmly, "the blood remembers."
Seo Jun didn't respond.
Tae Seong emerged from the shadows behind him.
"You pushed too hard," he said quietly.
Seo Jun finally turned. "They would've killed me if I hadn't."
"Yes," Tae Seong replied. "And now they won't."
A pause.
"But you crossed a line," his father continued. "Did you feel it?"
Seo Jun hesitated.
"…Yes."
Min Jae smiled faintly. "Good. That means you're still aware of it."
Another elder spoke. "How long can he hold it back?"
Min Jae's eyes never left Seo Jun. "That depends on whether the blood obeys him or claims him."
The third Trial was announced before Seo Jun could recover.
"No rest," Min Jae said. "That, too, is intentional."
A door at the far end of the warehouse opened.
Beyond it waited a wide chamber circular, tiered, carved into the underground itself. Symbols etched into the floor glowed faintly, old and deliberate.
"This Trial," Min Jae continued, "is not physical."
Seo Jun stepped forward despite exhaustion clawing at his limbs.
"What is it, then?" he asked.
Min Jae's voice softened.
"Identity."
The door sealed behind him.
The symbols flared to life.
And the world shifted.
Seo Jun stood alone on a battlefield that did not exist.
The ground was soaked dark. The air smelled of iron and smoke. Bodies lay everywhere assassins, soldiers, men whose faces he didn't recognize but somehow knew.
At the center stood a figure.
Tall.Still.Holding a blade stained black.
Seo Jun's chest tightened.
He didn't need an introduction.
Muk Hyun turned slowly.
His eyes were not cruel.
They were empty.
"You hesitate," Muk Hyun said, voice calm, ancient.
Seo Jun swallowed. "I don't want to become you."
Muk Hyun studied him.
"That is why you might survive," he replied.
The battlefield began to collapse inward, like a closing fist.
"Choose," Muk Hyun said. "Legacy, or self."
Seo Jun clenched his fists.
"I choose both."
Muk Hyun's lips curved almost a smile.
"Then bleed for it."
The vision shattered.
Seo Jun collapsed to one knee back in the chamber, gasping.
The elders watched in silence.
Tae Seong was already at his side.
Seo Jun looked up, eyes burning not with pain, but resolve.
"I won't disappear," he said hoarsely. "I won't become a ghost of history."
Min Jae nodded slowly.
"The Trials will continue," he said. "But now the underworld knows something it feared."
"What?" Seo Jun asked.
Min Jae's answer was quiet.
"That Muk Hyun's blood does not merely kill."
"It chooses."