Ahn Yeji heard the dead man three steps into the dungeon.
*Please. Please, someone. I can't find my daughter. She was right behind me. Please.*
The voice came from inside the walls. Not echoing off them — embedded in them, woven into the stone like mortar, a consciousness pressed into the dungeon itself. Faint, desperate, worn smooth by repetition.
Yeji stopped walking. The four other hunters in her party — her first dungeon run since awakening a week ago — kept moving, boots crunching on gravel, weapons drawn, eyes on the corridor ahead. None of them heard it.
"Did you hear that?" Yeji whispered.
Park Jihoon, the party leader and a B-rank swordsman with the patience of a saint and the arms of a blacksmith, glanced back. "Hear what?"
*Please. She was right behind me. Her name is Somin. She's nine. Please.*
"A voice. A man. He's looking for his daughter."
Jihoon's expression shifted from patient to concerned. "There shouldn't be anyone else in here. This dungeon's been sealed since the last clear attempt." He paused. "When was that?"
The party's analyst — a C-rank with an information-processing ability — pulled up the dungeon file on her tablet. "Last attempted clear: seven months ago. Full party wipe. All eight hunters confirmed dead. The dungeon was reclassified from C-rank to B-rank and sealed pending a stronger team."
Eight hunters. Dead. Seven months ago.
And one of them was still in the walls, looking for his daughter.
*Please. Someone. Anyone. I can't move. I can't leave. She was right behind me when the ceiling came down. Somin. SOMIN.*
Yeji pressed her hand against the dungeon wall. The stone was cold, damp, ordinary. But through her palm she felt something that wasn't temperature or texture — a vibration, a trapped consciousness pushing against its prison.
**[ABILITY ACTIVATED: REQUIEM]**
**[Spirit Detected: Song Minwoo — D-Rank Hunter (Deceased)]**
**[Cause of Death: Ceiling collapse, Floor 2]**
**[Time Since Death: 7 months, 12 days]**
**[Regret Binding: "Could not protect daughter during dungeon break near his home. She survived. He doesn't know."]**
**[This spirit is eligible for summoning. Summon? Y/N]**
Yeji read the notification with the clinical part of her brain — the part trained in psychology, in grief counseling, in sitting with people while they fell apart. The rest of her brain was screaming.
Hunters' souls didn't pass on when they died in dungeons. They got *trapped*. Stuck in the walls, the floors, the mana streams, preserved like insects in amber. Conscious. Aware. Repeating their final moments on an endless loop.
She'd awakened [Requiem] a week ago and heard whispers ever since — faint murmurs whenever she passed near a dungeon gate, like a radio picking up a frequency no one else could tune to. She'd assumed it was a minor perception ability. Background noise.
It wasn't background noise. It was the dead.
"Yeji?" Jihoon was watching her with the careful attention of a leader who'd seen strange abilities manifest in stranger ways. "What's happening?"
"There's a dead hunter in the walls," she said. Her voice was steady. Her hands weren't. "Song Minwoo. D-rank. He died in the last clear attempt. He's been here for seven months. Conscious. Trapped."
Silence from the party. Then the analyst, very quietly: "That's not possible. Souls pass on after death. The System—"
"The System lied," Yeji said, with a certainty that came from the voice still echoing through her palm. "They don't pass on. They stay. And he's asking about his daughter."
She looked at the notification hovering in her vision. *Summon? Y/N.*
"His regret is his daughter," she said. "He died thinking she was in danger. But she survived. He doesn't know."
"Yeji, what are you—"
"I can bring him out. I can summon his spirit." She looked at Jihoon. "I don't know what happens when I do. This is new."
Jihoon studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded. "Do it. If there's a man trapped in these walls, we owe him better than this."
Yeji pressed both palms flat against the stone, closed her eyes, and said: "Summon."
---
The wall cracked. Not physically — spiritually. A fissure of pale blue light split the stone, and through it a shape emerged. Not a translucent specter trailing chains. Song Minwoo's spirit materialized as a figure of compressed mana, translucent but solid, wearing the dungeon gear he'd died in, holding the sword that had been buried under tons of rubble.
He looked exactly like his hunter registration photo: mid-thirties, stocky build, kind eyes. Except his eyes were wild with seven months of unprocessed terror.
"SOMIN!" He materialized mid-scream, his sword swinging at phantoms only he could see. "SOMIN, WHERE ARE—"
"Mr. Song." Yeji stepped in front of him. His sword passed through her — spirits couldn't harm the summoner, she knew instinctively, the way she knew all things about [Requiem]: deeply, suddenly, like remembering something she'd always known. "Mr. Song. Stop. Listen to me."
The spirit froze. His eyes focused on her — the first real, present thing he'd seen in seven months.
"You can see me?" he whispered.
"I can see you. I can hear you. My name is Ahn Yeji, and I'm a hunter. Mr. Song... you died. Seven months ago. The dungeon collapsed on your party."
"I know. I know I'm dead. I've been—" His voice cracked. "I've been in the walls. I could hear the dungeon. The monsters. I couldn't move. I couldn't leave. I could only think about—"
"Your daughter. Somin."
"She was— there was a dungeon break near our apartment the week before my raid. She was caught in the evacuation. I signed up for this dungeon to pay for her medical bills. And then the ceiling came down, and I—" He was shaking. A dead man, trembling with grief. "Is she alive? Please. Is she alive?"
Yeji looked at the System notification:
**[Regret Binding: "Could not protect daughter during dungeon break near his home. She survived. He doesn't know."]**
"She's alive," Yeji said. "She survived. She's okay."
Song Minwoo's spirit went very still. The mana that made up his form flickered — brightening, steadying, as seven months of held grief began to break open. Tears ran down his translucent face.
"She's alive," he repeated.
"She's alive."
**[Spirit: Song Minwoo — Regret Partially Resolved]**
**[The spirit's anchor has weakened. Two options available:]**
**[1. RELEASE — Free the spirit permanently. Song Minwoo passes on to the afterlife.]**
**[2. COVENANT — Offer the spirit purpose. If accepted, Song Minwoo becomes a permanent summon, retaining his combat abilities and fighting under your command.]**
**[Note: Covenant requires mutual consent. The spirit must choose to stay.]**
Yeji read the options to Minwoo. She read them honestly, without persuasion or pressure, the way a counselor presents choices to a patient.
"You can go," she said. "You've earned rest. Somin is safe."
Minwoo was quiet for a long time. Then he looked at the dungeon around them — the dungeon that had killed him, that was about to be challenged by a new party, that held god knew how many other trapped souls in its walls.
"How many others are in here?" he asked.
Yeji extended [Requiem] deeper into the dungeon. The voices hit her like a wave:
*Help me. I'm stuck. I can't breathe. Where's my team? Why can't I move? It's dark. It's dark. It's dark.*
"Seven," she said. "Seven more spirits. From your party and previous clears."
Minwoo gripped his sword. It solidified in his spectral hand, mana crystallizing into a weapon that glowed with blue light.
"Then I'll stay," he said. "I couldn't protect my daughter. I couldn't protect my party. But I can protect you while you free the others."
**[COVENANT FORMED: Song Minwoo]**
**[Spirit Rank: D — Combat Spirit]**
**[Abilities Retained: Iron Slash, Guard Stance, Taunt]**
**[Loyalty: Absolute]**
**[Summoner's Spirit Slots: 1/3]**
Minwoo took position at Yeji's right side — a tank in life, a guardian in death. The other hunters stared at the spectral swordsman with expressions ranging from awe to unease.
"So," Jihoon said carefully. "You summon dead hunters."
"I free trapped souls," Yeji corrected. "Some choose to stay and fight. Some choose to move on. It's their choice."
"And the voices in the walls?"
Yeji listened. The dungeon whispered with seven trapped voices, each one a person who'd died here and been denied rest. Beyond this dungeon, across the world, thousands of dungeons held thousands more.
"I hear all of them," she said. "And I'm going to get them out. Every last one."
She walked deeper into the dungeon with a dead man's ghost at her side and the voices of the trapped calling her forward.
