"No, look at this."
"I am looking. That's the problem."
Jaehyuk pinched the paper between two fingers.
It was warm.
Not from his hand. From the floor.
The vendor slip should've been cold. It should've smelled like ink and dust and cheap glue, like every other receipt in every other neutral zone market. Instead it had a faint metallic bite to it, like blood on old coins.
He handed it back to Somin.
She frowned at it, then at him. "It says we got three healing tinctures, two ration packs, and one mid-tier antidote."
"Read the serial number."
Mira leaned against the stall frame, arms folded. "You're doing the thing where you get creepy over paperwork."
"Read it."
Somin squinted. "Uh... 55-17-B?"
"Now read the crate."
She turned.
The crate behind the stall had been stamped with the same serial. Only the crate was empty.
Completely empty.
"That's weird," Somin said.
Mira's jaw tightened. "No. Weird is one crate. This is the fourth one."
Jaehyuk looked down the row.
Empty vendor stalls.
All of them.
Fabric awnings hung limp in the stale air. Price tags still swung from strings. Steam should've been rising from the noodle stand two rows over, but the pot sat black and dry. A little bell by the trinket booth kept twitching in the draft and never rang.
No smell of broth.
No oil.
No spice.
Just wax, dust, and something sour under it. Something damp, like cloth left in a sealed room too long.
"Where are the vendors?" Somin asked.
"That's what I'd like to know," Jaehyuk said.
A man at the end of the aisle barked a laugh. "Gone. Like everybody else."
He was missing two fingers on his left hand and wore the badge of a mid-floor salvage team. His voice scraped like a file on bone.
Mira looked over. "You saw them leave?"
The man shrugged. "Saw a stall. Saw a register. Saw a receipt. Then the clerk wasn't there anymore."
Somin blinked. "You mean they walked away?"
"No," the man said. "I mean I looked up and there was no one behind the counter. I was still holding the coin."
He held up a palm.
Empty.
Mira pushed off the stall frame. "You sure you're not just trying to keep the slot for yourself?"
The man gave her a flat look. "I'm sure because my partner went to trade for map paper and didn't come back."
Silence hit the aisle.
Not quiet. Silence. Heavy and thick, like a wet blanket thrown over the market.
Jaehyuk listened.
Boots on tile. A cart wheel creaked somewhere far away. A cough from behind a curtain. No merchant chatter. No bargaining. No laughter.
Neutral zone markets were supposed to be loud.
That was the point.
Floor 55's midway bazaar sat under Tower protection, one of those places every guild agreed not to poison, burn, or ambush if they wanted the route to stay open. It wasn't safe, exactly. Nothing in the Tower was safe. But it was stable.
It was where climbers traded shards, cached records, bought maps, and pretended the war on the upper floors didn't reach this far.
It smelled like grease and metal in the old timeline.
Now it smelled stale.
Watched.
Jaehyuk tapped his index finger against his thumb once.
Mira saw it. "Don't start."
"Too late."
He crouched beside the empty crate.
The lock had been broken cleanly. No scorch marks. No blade gouges. Just a tiny groove in the latch, as if someone had pressed on it with a nail until it yielded.
He touched the groove.
Dry.
Then cold.
Then wet.
He pulled his hand back and rubbed his thumb on his pants.
Somin noticed. "What was that?"
"Nothing good."
Mira glanced down the aisle. "We came here for records. Where's the records desk?"
"Two rows over," the salvage man said. "There was a clerk. A woman with gold glasses. She took our request, said the archive copies would be ready in ten minutes."
"And?"
"And when we came back, she gave us someone else's file."
Somin frowned. "Someone else's?"
The man laughed again, but there was no humor in it. "A dead man's route report. Wrong name. Wrong floor. Wrong reward stamp. My partner tried to correct her. Then the clerk looked at him like she'd never seen him before."
Jaehyuk stood. "Where is your partner now?"
The man's mouth opened.
Closed.
"I don't know," he said.
Mira stared at him. "What do you mean you don't know?"
"I mean I walked to the bar for two minutes and came back and he wasn't there. His bag was on the chair. His tea was still hot."
Somin swallowed. "That's not possible."
"Welcome to Floor 55," Jaehyuk said.
She looked at him. "That's not funny."
"I wasn't joking."
The stall bell twitched again.
This time it rang.
Tiny sound. Soft. Sharp.
Every head in the aisle turned.
Nothing moved behind the noodle stand curtain. The market lanterns hummed. A draft slid under the awning and lifted a strip of cloth. The place smelled suddenly of wet stone.
Mira drew her sword.
"Whoever's there, come out."
No answer.
Jaehyuk stepped closer to the counter and looked under it.
Dust.
A broken chopstick.
A smear on the floor.
He leaned in.
The smear had shape.
Not blood. Not ink.
Fingers.
Somin whispered, "Jaehyuk."
He straightened. "Back up."
Mira didn't move. "Tell me what you saw."
"Someone was dragged."
The salvage man swore under his breath. "By who?"
"No prints."
"That's impossible," Somin said again, quieter this time.
Jaehyuk looked at her.
Her voice had changed.
Not the words. The tone.
It was the way people sounded when they wanted the impossible to stay impossible.
"Nothing's impossible here," he said.
Mira's eyes moved over the stalls, fast and sharp. "This started after the reset notice."
Jaehyuk froze.
"What reset notice?"
The salvage man raised his brow. "You didn't get it?"
"No."
"We all got it," he said. "Floor 55 Reward Alignment Recalculation. Then a note about neutral corridors being 'revalidated.'"
Somin blinked. "That sounds like admin language."
"It is," Mira said. "And I hate that it sounds like my guild's documents."
Jaehyuk's throat tightened.
He hated that too.
The Tower's language had patterns if you listened long enough. Combat notices were blunt. Skill notices were cold. Admin notices sounded human in the worst way. Like someone with soft hands and clean nails had decided to ruin your life with a stamp.
He reached into his coat and pulled out the folded bulletin he'd been carrying since the lobby.
Floor 55.
Neutral Exchange District.
REWARD TERMS UPDATED.
RECORD DESK TEMPORARILY MOVED.
Tower protection active.
That last line had made him uneasy when he'd first read it.
Now it made his teeth itch.
"Tower protection active means no fighting," Somin said. "Right?"
Mira snorted. "That's what it means on paper."
The salvage man pointed toward the center plaza. "Then explain that."
A crowd had formed around the reward pillar.
Not a big crowd.
A careful one.
People kept a half-step back from the stone pedestal, as if the air around it had a bad smell.
Jaehyuk walked toward it, and the sound of the market changed under his feet. The tile was slightly slick here. Not wet. Oily. Like someone had wiped it down with something meant to preserve flesh.
He didn't like that thought.
He liked it less when he saw the reward screen.
[FLOOR 55 CLEAR REWARD]
• 3,000 shards
• Mid-tier weapon box
• 1 record copy from archive cache
At the bottom, in smaller letters:
• Personal resonance bonus: +1 skill orb
Mira read it over his shoulder. "That's normal."
Jaehyuk stared at the last line.
"No, it's not."
Somin frowned. "Why not?"
"Because this floor doesn't give personal resonance bonuses."
The crowd near the pillar murmured.
A woman in a blue coat stepped forward and lifted a hand. "Mine said the same."
Her voice was rough. Throat damage, maybe old acid exposure. She looked exhausted. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and her fingers kept opening and closing like she couldn't quite feel them.
"What did you get?" Mira asked.
The woman held up a shard slip. "A fishing hook."
Somin stared. "What?"
"I cleared a record run with a six-man team. The reward box gave me a fishing hook."
One of the people in the crowd barked a laugh. It died fast when nobody joined in.
Jaehyuk took a step closer.
"Show me."
The woman hesitated, then handed him the slip.
He took it.
The Tower ink on it was still wet.
Item ID: RWD-55-412
Reward: Hook, iron, utility grade.
He looked at the woman's face.
"What was your reward supposed to be?"
"A map fragment."
"And?"
"And this." She held up the hook between two fingers.
It was small. Rusted. Bent at the tip.
It smelled like river water.
Not market goods. River water.
Somin wrinkled her nose. "That's weird."
"Yes," Jaehyuk said.
Mira drew closer. "Misfiled reward?"
"Misfiled or changed," he said.
The woman rubbed at her wrist. "The clerk told me to be grateful."
"Which clerk?"
She frowned. "The gold glasses one."
Jaehyuk felt the air go colder.
Gold glasses.
Same as the archive desk report from the salvage man.
"What did she look like?" he asked.
"Normal," the woman said. Then, after a beat, "No. Not normal. Her smile didn't reach her face."
Somin stared at the reward pillar. "Maybe she was tired."
"No," Mira said. "Tired people don't make your rewards wrong."
A shout rang from the north aisle.
"Mine's gone!"
Heads turned.
A younger climber came stumbling through the crowd, pale and sweating. He was clutching a sealed envelope. His hands shook so hard the paper rattled.
"My route copy's gone," he said. "It was in here. I had it. I had it a second ago."
"Show us," Mira snapped.
He ripped the envelope open with his teeth and dumped it out.
Three blank sheets fell onto the floor.
Blank.
No map. No stamps. No notes.
The crowd backed away from him.
The boy stared at the pages like they had betrayed him personally.
"No," he whispered. "No, I paid for that."
The salvage man muttered, "Same thing happened to Jin."
"Who?" Somin asked.
"My partner," he said. His jaw flexed. "If that's his name now."
Jaehyuk turned fast. "Now?"
The man looked at him, confused. "What?"
"You said 'if that's his name now.'"
"Did I?"
Jaehyuk watched him.
The man frowned, rubbed the back of his neck, and looked suddenly sick.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know why I said that."
Somin's face had gone white. "Why does everyone keep saying they don't know where people went?"
Mira answered before Jaehyuk could. "Because this place is eating records."
"Records don't get eaten," Somin said.
"Then explain the blank pages."
No one answered.
The market bell rang again.
This time the sound came from three stalls over.
Then another.
Tiny bells. One by one.
A chain of them, like someone walking through the aisles and brushing each hanging charm with a finger.
Jaehyuk didn't turn his head.
He listened.
There.
Soft cloth movement.
A breath near his left ear.
A smell of boiled ginger and metal.
He pivoted.
Nothing.
Just the empty tea stall. Steamless pot. Cup overturned on a dry mat. The curtain behind it still swaying from a touch that wasn't there.
Mira's voice dropped. "Tell me you saw that."
"I heard it."
Somin whispered, "I smell something."
"What?"
She swallowed. "Soap."
Jaehyuk looked at her. "Soap?"
"And..." Her nose wrinkled. "Old clothes. The kind that got packed away with cedar."
A non-visual smell. Good. Bad. Better than panic.
Then he smelled it too.
Soap.
Cedar.
Wet wool.
A person who'd been washed and stored and brought back out too long after they should've stayed buried.
The market crowd had gone rigid.
Nobody was moving now. Not even the loud ones.
The bells stopped.
At the center of the plaza, the reward pillar flickered.
A Tower window opened in the air above it.
Not a normal one.
This one was pale gold instead of blue.
Archive access.
Jaehyuk felt Mira's attention snap to it.
"That's new," she said.
"Nothing in here should have archive access," he muttered.
The window expanded.
A line of text appeared.
REWARD CORRECTION IN PROGRESS.
Another line followed.
RECORD MATCH FAILED.
Somin looked between the words and Jaehyuk. "Is that bad?"
"Yes."
Then the crowd parted.
Not because anyone pushed through.
Because something came out of the middle.
A man stumbled forward from behind the reward pillar and nearly fell to his knees.
He was barefoot.
No weapon.
No pack.
No guild tag.
His hair was matted at one side, dried with something dark near the temple. His shirt hung loose on him, torn at the collar, and his skin had that washed-out look people got after a long sickness or a very bad floor.
One of the climbers gasped.
"Minjae?"
The man blinked.
He stared at the speaker with dead, unfocused eyes.
"I..." he said.
His voice was wrong.
Not broken.
Wrong.
Too even.
Too calm.
Like it had been borrowed.
"I don't know that name."
Somin made a small sound in her throat. "Jaehyuk?"
He didn't answer.
The returned climber looked around the market as if he were seeing it through fog. His gaze slid over the stalls. Over the crowd. Over the reward pillar.
Then it stopped on Jaehyuk.
He smiled.
Not Minjae's smile. Not any smile Jaehyuk had ever seen before.
Too many teeth.
Too little warmth.
And when the man spoke again, his eyes were a stranger's gray.
"You," he said, voice soft as damp cloth. "I know you."
Jaehyuk's hand went to his weapon.
The man tilted his head.
"Why do I know you?"
The reward pillar flashed.
RECORD MATCH FAILED.
RETRYING WITH ALT SOURCE.
And the stranger in Minjae's body took one more step forward, eyes fixed on Jaehyuk like he was the only thing in the market that had ever been real.