The bus arrived late.
The sky hadn't even started to lighten yet, and the city looked like it hadn't slept. Taesung stepped off near the Graylight outpost with a bag over his shoulder, half-full of things he wasn't sure he'd need—work gloves, a worn thermos, the folding knife he'd had since school.
It was just past 5:40 a.m.
Six was the meeting time.
The building lights were already on.
He pushed open the door. This time, there were more people inside—five or six sitting in the waiting area, all looking like they hadn't eaten or smiled in a while. They were older than him. Rough hands, tired postures. One guy had a scar running across his neck. Another was missing three fingers.
No one said anything.
Jisoo stepped out from the hallway at exactly 6:01.
"All right," he said, clapping once. "Let's go."
The van smelled like dust and burnt coffee. The road out of Seoul was quiet, just the occasional truck heading somewhere cold. Harin's voice echoed in his memory.
"Don't talk unless they ask. Watch first. Move second."
He sat in the back row.
Jisoo was up front with the driver, a woman named Kyung who didn't speak at all. One of the other salvage crew kept humming under his breath, some old ballad with no words.
They passed the checkpoint just after 6:40.
Security barely looked up.
Another day, another low-tier Rift cleanup.
To them, it was background noise. Safe enough for underfunded guilds to scrap through.
Not dangerous.
Not headline-worthy.
Just one of the smaller cracks in reality that hadn't collapsed yet.
The Rift site was in a shallow valley behind an industrial yard—half-frozen mud, broken fence, a shack with a sign that said "No Entry Past This Point — Cleared Zone 3."
But Rifts didn't always care what was cleared.
Jisoo pointed at the vest bag on the back seat. "Gear up. Five-minute walk in."
Taesung strapped on his salvage vest. Nothing reinforced. Just canvas and mesh with a few pouches for tools and tags. He clipped a marker stick to his belt. Watched the others do the same.
"Team formation is simple," Jisoo said as they approached the Rift zone. "Stay behind lead. Watch your corners. Anyone sees a movement, call 'ping.' If I say 'fall,' you hit the dirt. Got it?"
A chorus of nods.
Taesung just said, "Got it."
The Rift looked like a tear in the ground, maybe the size of a small truck flipped on its side. No glow. No pulse. But it was still wrong—the way the air folded, the way sound dulled at the edges.
Jisoo stepped through first.
Then the others.
Then Taesung.
Inside the Rift, it was cold.
Not cold like the wind. Cold like memory. Cold like silence that had teeth.
It looked like a cavern stone floor, shallow tunnels, slick walls.
Dead beasts littered the space. Remnants from a raid two days ago.
Mottled creatures with shattered limbs, split armor plates, dried black ichor.
Taesung swallowed.
Not fear.
Just awareness.
He followed the others, step for step. They used simple signals tap on the shoulder, point to the left, move. One of them, the guy with the scar, crouched near a corpse and started pulling shards of crystal from its spine.
"Mark it," he muttered.
Taesung placed a small blue tag near the body, pressed the seal. It beeped once.
They moved on.
It was an hour before anything shifted.
A twitch.
Then a sound—barely a click—deep in one of the offshoot tunnels.
Everyone froze.
Jisoo raised a hand.
"Ping," someone whispered.
They waited.
Nothing.
Jisoo crouched, eyes narrowed.
Then a shape limped out of the darkness.
Half-dead.
But not all the way.
A fragment beast, barely holding itself together. One eye missing, leg twisted at the wrong angle, but still breathing.
It hissed.
Moved.
Jisoo didn't hesitate.
One step forward strike.
His blade buried in the thing's neck.
It dropped.
He turned back to the crew. "This is why we don't get cocky," he said, voice low. "Move the body. No loud sounds."
Taesung helped lift it, hands sticky with fluid he didn't want to identify.
He didn't flinch.
They exited the Rift two hours later, packs heavier with salvage.
No one spoke much.
Jisoo gave them the breakdown in the van. "You'll get your credits by tonight. If you want regular placement, sign the roster. We screen for temper and panic. You didn't panic. That's something."
Taesung nodded. "Thank you."
Jisoo just looked at him. "You're weirdly calm, you know that?"
"Maybe I just haven't had enough time to realize I should be scared."
Jisoo cracked a small smile. "Or maybe you're just built different."
That night, after a shower and two painkillers, Taesung sat by his window.
The city lights were blurry from the steam on the glass.
He opened his system menu again.
Still no stat readout.
Just a blank under his skill category.
Null Read.
But now…
Now there was a new tab.
[Data Sync Delayed – Awaiting First Combat Record]
He stared at it.
No numbers.
But something had changed.
Maybe the system hadn't ignored him.
Maybe it was just… waiting.
And maybe, so was he.