The Ghost in the Empty Hall
Just as Lee Gil-jung clicked his tongue in frustration, the elevator doors opened and a group of men in black suits poured out.
“Chief, the Abyss Investigation Team has arrived.”
“I have eyes, you idiot.”
At the front of the group stood Choi Su-min, the Team 10 chief of the Abyss Investigation Team, with sharp eyes and a perfectly tailored suit.
Lee Gil-jung stepped forward first and offered a brief handshake.
“I’m Lee Gil-jung, chief of the violent crimes unit for this district. Thanks for coming out so early.”
“Choi Su-min, Team 10 chief of the Abyss Investigation Team.”
As soon as the formalities were over, Lee Gil-jung began his briefing.
“We got a report from the neighborhood about a loud explosion and responded immediately, but when we got inside, this is what the scene looked like. We tried to search carefully for anything that might help the investigation, but we didn’t find much. As you can see, there aren’t any CCTV cameras on this floor either, so there’s no footage at all.”
“Hmm.”
Choi Su-min brushed past his report and stepped inside the police line.
Her gaze moved methodically over the corridor walls, tracing the ferocious slash marks that had gouged them like the claws of some giant beast. It was obvious that Awakers had fought here in a life-or-death struggle.
But something about it felt wrong.
There were no signs of forced entry from outside, no shattered windows. There were no traces of escape either—nothing to suggest anyone had fled through the emergency stairs or the elevator after the fight, or even in the middle of it.
All that remained was a brief burst of violence in the middle of this narrow corridor.
“The thing is, we can’t find any sign of them leaving at all—”
“Shh.”
Just as Lee Gil-jung was about to voice his frustration, Choi Su-min wordlessly raised a hand and covered his mouth.
It was a silent order to stop interfering with her read of the scene.
Choi Su-min absorbed the evidence with her eyes and kicked her mind into motion. As if she were projecting a virtual reality before her, she reconstructed the situation by reverse-engineering the angle and force of the sword aura that had torn into the walls.
One person left these marks. But who on earth were they fighting? And why are there no traces of the other side at all?
If the opponent had thrown up a magical shield or deflected the blows with a weapon, there should have been rebound traces in the opposite direction.
But the scene was strangely one-sided, as if someone had stood here alone, flinging sword aura at an invisible ghost.
She crossed the half-broken heavy steel door and headed into the office beyond.
It was a space fitted out with top-of-the-line interior design, a wine bar, and even a long conference table.
Inside’s spotless. Not a speck of dust. That’s even stranger.
With the chaos outside separated by a single wall, the office’s silence felt unnaturally distinct. This was absolutely not a normal situation.
What, did somebody get high and start dancing with a sword in an empty hallway?
She had spent years in the Abyss Investigation Team dealing with the bizarre crime scenes left behind by countless Abyss criminals, but this was the first time she had seen a scene severed so artificially from the rest of the world.
At that moment, team members from the Abyss Investigation Team, who had been scanning the corridor with specialized forensic gear, approached her with stiff expressions.
“Chief, if there was a fight, there should at least be a trace of organic matter like blood or saliva. But there’s nothing. Zero. No traces at all.”
Choi Su-min’s brow furrowed.
A battle with not a single drop of blood...
She stood again in the middle of the corridor and ran the simulation once more.
In this cramped enclosed space, they took a barrage of indiscriminate skill attacks powerful enough to be at least B-class, and they dodged without even bothering to defend? If it were me...
As an A-class Awaker, she compared the scenario to her own abilities.
I also have a top-tier movement skill, so if the timing were perfect, evading wouldn’t be impossible. If the timing were perfect... hmm.
The conclusion did emerge.
And yet a chain of questions kept tightening around her throat.
But why is there nothing after that?
If they had managed to avoid such overwhelming attacks, there should have been an immediate counterattack—or at the very least, some clear trail of escape.
Did they really just slip away like smoke after dodging the strike?
If they’d unleashed that much force, there should still be traces left behind as they gave chase... What the hell happened in this fight?
The more she ran the simulation, the deeper the scene sank into an endless maze.
It was a sealed room where the laws of physics and common investigative sense seemed completely overridden, as if someone had simply taken a pair of scissors to the space itself and cut it cleanly out of existence.
“Let’s pull out. For now, I don’t think there’s anything more we can learn here.”
Choi Su-min let out a weary breath and turned around.
Dragging out the scene any longer would be pointless.
“Go over this Changho Building from top to bottom. Dig up everything—every office tenant, every owner—and report back.”
She gave the subordinate a short, sharp order, then climbed into the back seat of the investigation vehicle to return to headquarters.
As soon as the door shut, she leaned back hard against the seat and pressed at her throbbing temples.
“Haa... Chief’s going to tear into me again.”
Lately, she had already been earning a steady accumulation of black marks from her superiors because they still couldn’t get a grip on the string of Abyss-related crimes.
And now she had to go back with a report about this ghostlike mystery—no culprit, no victim, not even a single smear of blood.
The headache crashed over her like a tidal wave.
All through the night, the police and the Abyss Investigation Team—known as the Eosu-dae—had swept through Changho Building like a storm.
This place, the stronghold of Cheolsu-pa, had been a roaring madhouse just hours earlier with shouting and sirens; now, with the morning sun climbing, only a heavy, suffocating silence pressed down on the building like a lid.
At the first-floor entrance, police tape had been strung up in disarray.
Click, click.
The sharp sound of heels broke the dead stillness.
With dawn breaking, the red light of sunrise stretched long behind her.
She was a woman in jeans and a dark black leather jacket.
Her beauty was arresting enough to catch the eye at once, but the atmosphere she carried was so cold it sent a chill down the spine.
“What a goddamn mess.”
Her brows pinched slightly.
She lightly vaulted over the police line barring entry and stepped into the building.
She didn’t hurry.
At an unhurried, almost leisurely pace, she took in the interior one floor at a time, starting from the first.
And finally, she reached the twelfth-floor corridor.
Her steps came to an abrupt halt.
Great crescent-shaped sword marks had horribly gouged the corridor walls and the marble floor.
They were the traces of her child’s skill, Moonlight—the child she had saved and raised.
And yet it was grotesque.
Even with the evidence of such a brutal struggle laid bare, there wasn’t a single drop of blood in the corridor, not even a corpse.
The woman let her indifferent eyes skim over the twisted wreckage, then walked into the boss’s office, where the door had been torn clean off its hinges.
Inside, a luxurious wine bar filled one wall.
As though she were the true owner of the place, she moved with easy familiarity to the most expensive bottle of red wine, pulled it down, and uncorked it.
She poured the wine slowly into a crystal glass.
Drip, drip.
The only sound in the cold, empty office was the eerie trickle of wine.
She sank into the finest leather sofa as if it were her own, then gazed at the morning sun rising beyond the window.
“Who erased the child I worked so hard to raise...?”
It was a flat, emotionless mutter cast into the void.
Then it happened.
The thick shadow pooled at her feet began to ripple, slowly undulating like boiling water.
“We don’t have any information, ma’am. We’re only guessing it might be Ghost.”
At the hoarse voice rising from the shadow, the woman gave the wineglass a light swirl and let out a snort.
“Ghost? No. That gloomy bastard might hate my guts just as much as I hate his, but if he came for me, he’d go straight for my throat. He wouldn’t butcher my people this sloppily. That’s not his style.”
Her voice held absolute certainty.
If it had been Ghost, the assassin said to stand at the summit of the world, he wouldn’t have bothered with a noisy little scene like this. He would have gone for her throat in one clean stroke.
“Then perhaps we should wait quietly and gather information from the Abyss Investigation Team in time.”
At the shadow’s suggestion, the woman took a sip of wine and laughed coldly.
“Kang Jin-ho of the Abyss Investigation Team? Hah. That son of a bitch moving? As if that stiff-ass bastard would lift a finger because a back-alley outfit like Cheolsu-pa vanished. He doesn’t even twitch unless the stakes are bigger than that.”
At her sneer, the shadow rippled again in that unnatural way before answering.
“He’ll move. A few days ago, there was that ‘ghost incident’ in Yacha-pa... It seems to be fairly deeply connected to this Cheolsu-pa case.”
“Yacha-pa? Sounds like something happened there too.”
“Yes. A few days ago, while they had gathered in force in preparation for war with Heukwol-pa, the boss, the senior leadership, and dozens of their members reportedly turned to dust and vanished all at once.”
The woman’s fingers, tracing the rim of the wineglass, paused mid-motion.
In her eyes, bored a moment ago, a sharp glint flashed to life.
“Turned to dust?”
“Yes. Apparently not even blood or corpses were left behind—they simply evaporated completely. It’s very similar to what happened when Cheolsu-pa’s leadership disappeared.”
The woman shifted her weight forward, lifting herself away from the back of the sofa.
“Is that so? Then the iron mask and the kids under him vanished too—turned to dust and disappeared without a trace.”
A low laugh slipped between her red lips.
“Interesting. Very interesting.”
There was not a trace of anger in her voice—only thick, unmistakable delight, despite the fact that her own people had been slaughtered.
She spoke gently to the wavering shadow, but the command beneath her words was absolute.
“Take every scrap of information Kang Jin-ho digs up and bring it back to me. I want him.”
“Understood.”
“What they did to my children is unforgivable... but if I stuff that arrogant bastard into the empty space they left behind, he’ll make a delicious toy.”
The woman drained the rest of her wine with elegant poise.
Her gaze sank, deep as an abyss.
“Ah, and keep tracking Ghost’s movements too. It won’t be easy to pin him down, but still.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The moment the shadow finished speaking, the woman dropped the empty wineglass toward the darkness at her feet.
Swish—
There was no crack of impact.
Instead of shattering with a clear ring, the glass was swallowed soundlessly by the black shadow, as if it had fallen into a swamp.
And then the woman herself, still reclining in the same pose, dissolved completely into the deep darkness on the floor as though she were sinking into it.
Only the faint scent of wine remained, drifting through the empty office before fading away with the silence.
---