YooJin blinked and slowly released the breath he had been holding.

Only a moment ago, he had jumped into the tawny flames, and now he was standing in the burning building but... the air about him was cool to the touch.

"What?" he whispered to himself in disbelief.

Despite the disorder he had seen while gazing through broken walls and shattered windows from the outside, the interior was completely flawless... Not a single sign of disarray, not one sign of struggle. The tables were upright, papers neatly stacked, shoes organized in their cubbies, windows intact... like a perfect picture, a perfect diorama. 

Everything was as it should have been.

Except...

Where were the children? Where were the teachers? Where was EunHa?

"EunHa! Eunha!" he yelled suddenly into the horrifyingly still perfection.

But no answer came.

Something wasn't right. And YooJin began to run.

First, he ran past the school registry. He recalled briefly having been there just a little over a week ago when they had called him in to discuss his sister's undisciplined behavior and narcolepsy. He recalled the director's exasperated, angry expression, recalled hearing her say that if the government hadn't forced her hand, she would have never allowed any bothersome, unworthy omega admissions.

YooJin had desperately wanted to reply to her words right then and there but had held his tongue. His sister was a bright child, far far brighter than he had ever been, even the school had admitted so when she had passed the entry exam within the top one percentile in the nation.

He hadn't been her guardian for long but he wanted nothing more for her than a stable and bright future. And Sunnyday Kindergarten, being one of the few elite academies around the nation, would have secured such a future.

That was, until she had been tested an omega exactly one month after admission. Then shortly following that, EunHa had suddenly started falling asleep randomly, no matter where she was or what she was doing.

This had led to a series of trials for YooJin. Having no family and thus, no one to watch her during the night, he had been forced to take jobs only during the day but her dangerous propensity of falling asleep anywhere meant that he was often called out of work by the school, leading to his eventual termination from all three of his jobs.

It wasn't as though he had liked the jobs. He honestly couldn't care one bit about working at a convenience store or delivering food. But he had needed the money, needed it still.

For a moment, YooJin felt a small thread of resentment well up within him but immediately stamped it out. 

It wasn't EunHa's fault, he told himself as he continued to run past classroom after classroom, staring into each one for any sign of life.

She was as unlucky as he was, having been born into their family, having been born as omegas.

"EunHa!" he yelled again. "EunHa!"

Again no response.

But suddenly YooJin stopped in his tracks, there had been no response to his call but he could clearly hear something, not an answer but a random noise...

The sound of a pen rolling on the floor.

He ran once more, this time toward the direction of the sound, his feet thudding loudly against the polished concrete floors.

It continued far longer than it should have, leading him to an area of the building he had never been to. The adjoining elementary school. 

He stopped when his gaze landed on something unusual, something he had not expected to see in the middle of the school hallway.

A wall.

An ancient looking, tawny brick wall, covered in dark forest moss and vines. Brilliantly colored flowers stared back at him from its cracks and broken, extended crevices.

His eyes widened. How? How could something like this be here?

He took a step toward it and heard a loud CRACK from below.

Startled, he looked down and for a moment, all he could do was stare, his eyes homing in on the broken pieces of a mechanical pencil that peeked out from beneath his shoe. The plastic casing was pink and a bright orange flower adnored the clip.

He recognized it immediately.

A muffled scream suddenly came from somewhere around him.

He looked about desperately, seeing nothing and noone, before realizing that the scream was coming from behind the wall.

He pressed his ear against the brick and could hear a faint sound from behind it. Another high pitched, brilliant scream.

A scream he recognized.

"EunHa!" he yelled, banging on the wall with his fists. He struck it harder, again and again, until he could feel the edges of his palms start to chafe.

Another scream.

This time, he slammed his body against the wall. A jolt of pain ran from his shoulder and spread instantly to the rest of his body.

Suddenly the building shook as an explosion came from somewhere behind him.

He froze then quickly turned around. The air behind him was covered in dust and debris and he was, at first, unable to peer through it.

But when the dust finally settled, he was able make out three distinct shapes.

A moment later, as the shapes moved closer, they solidified into three tall men.

The men paused only a few yards away from him, standing nonchalantly as if posing for some strange photoshoot. Their presence out of place in a nursery school hallway.

A dark, royal blue cloth covered the face of the man who stood directly in his line of vision. His build was slim and he wore an elegant, ancient male outfit no longer worn in the country in a color just slightly darker than the cloth about his head, intricate silver-threaded designs spanning its breadth.

The man on his left stood a few inches shorter and wore similar robes except in a dark sage green and its designs were embroidered in a soft dusty pink gold. His uncovered face revealed a wide, excited smile.

The third man, who stood taller than either of his companions, neither covered his face nor wore any old, nearly forgotten garments. His attire was modern, an expensive, unembellished suit and luxurious, unadorned shoes. His face was beautiful, his build broad and athletic, but none of that really mattered because YooJin's mind was focused on only one detail.

The fact that he recognized that face...

It was the face of the alpha whom he had run from earlier that day.

"Well damn, a literal wall," said the man with the wide grin, staring at the foreign structure before him. "I never thought I'd see the day."

Neither of the two responded. The alpha YooJin recognized met his gaze for a moment before nodding to the one in blue.

Another muffled scream came from behind the wall and YooJin took an involuntary, startled step forward when he felt a large arm grasp him around the waist and pull him back.

Startled, YooJin watched in silence as the man in blue pulled out a long curved sword, more than half the length of its bearer, seemingly out of thin air and with one arm, slashed its blade across the length of the wall in a singular graceful motion.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, all at once, the wall crumbled, the whole of it falling gracefully onto the ground, each brick somehow separating into its own individual unit.

YooJin released the breath he had not realized he had been holding.

"Clumsy as always," said the man with the wide mouth as he crouched and picked up a brick before examining it and tossing it aside. "The edges are always so uneven."

The one in blue did not reply as he stepped over the mound of bricks to the other side. He began to walk, not once turning back to look at them.

YooJin began to follow when the wide mouthed man suddenly turned to him.

"Oh?" he said in a voice that seemed more to mimic the act of surprise rather than actually feeling it. "A civilian. How strange!" He then jumped up to his feet and walked up to them until he stood right in front of YooJin. He was only an inch or two taller than him and his face suited that of an omega and yet... somehow, YooJin knew that it was an alpha who stood in front of him.

"How did you get in here, I wonder. A dungeon environment is toxic to non-Saerims." He cocked his head then looked past YooJin to the alpha who stood quietly behind him. "Hey TaeHyun, do you know this guy? You didn't at all seem surprised to find him here."

YooJin turned briefly to look at the alpha, but the latter's gaze was on the man with the wide smile. "We met earlier."

"Huh?" The man then turned to look back at YooJin and peered more closely at him. "If I remember correctly, you were supposed to meet a pretty omega, the one rumored to be your fiance. So... is this him? I mean I certainly wasn't expecting this to be your taste but he's not bad! More aligned to my tastes!" He reached over and suddenly smacked the alpha on the arm. "You dog! You should have told me that you like older omegas. I could have introduced you to a number of them before you tied the knot—oh."

He turned back, met YooJin's eyes, and immediately gave him an unapologetic smile. "My bad, haha, but you don't have to worry. Despite TaeHyun's popularity, noone ever sees him get along with any omegas. Everyone assumed that his dick just didn't work but who would have guessed that it was because he had such a cute omega waiting for him. That's how you got into the dungeon, huh? He shared his pheromones with you? You guys just had sex?"

He then slapped TaeHyun's arm once more. "You dog!"

"Nao," said the alpha in a low voice from behind YooJin. "Shut up."

The man Nao paused for a moment, staring between the two, before his face broke into another large grin.

YooJin raised his head, suddenly recalling why he was there, when another scream, now loud and audible, erupted from somewhere past the pile of bricks into a hallway that was covered in that tawny brownish hue.

He pushed at the arm that held him. "Let go of me!"

But the alpha TaeHyun's grip was firm.

"Don't worry about it," said Nao jovially, wrapping his arm around YooJin's shoulder and pulling him away from his captor. "Sera can handle it alone. 'Ghosts' are really nothing for us."

Ghost?

Nao then began to walk them toward the pile of bricks, stepping over it carefully into the tawny hue. "Do you have a kid here or something?" he asked as he continued to slowly lead him further into the school. "I get why you are worried but really, there's nothing to be anxious about. 'Ghosts' rarely attack children, they are too pure, their energy too clean for them. Or at least... that's what they say. Eh," he suddenly shrugged. "Regardless, if we just run in there, we might actually screw something up so best we walk slowly."

Nao then led him toward the source of the sound. Their footsteps were slow and deliberate.

YooJin opened his mouth to ask just who they were when another blast erupted somewhere before them.

"What the hell?" Nao whispered, his expression suddenly tense.

Without another word, he and TaeHyun ran forward. YooJin didn't need any prompting to follow, his heart beating painfully against his chest.

More than before, he was growing nervous.

Explosions upon explosions erupted on all sides about them.

As he ran, YooJin looked into the classrooms to see blasts with no obvious origins shatter the walls, opening the rooms to the outside. He stared in confusion, his steps faltering, when he watched a ray of red sunlight, cast clearly from the strange skies above, stop impossibly at the edge of the crumbled, dark classrooms.

Shaking his head, YooJin increased his pace, noticing that the alphas were now far ahead of him. He was curious and he would ask about it later but right now, he simply needed to find his sister.

In a matter of seconds they reached the end of the hall and came to a halt in front of the doors that led into the auditorium. He remembered that he been here once before, just the once over a month ago at the school opening ceremony where they, unbeknownst to him, had EunHa memorize and recite one of the countries oldest poems in front of a large audience of alphas. He had later found out that it had been a political move by the educational department to garner support for omega admissions into elite schools like Sunnyday Kindergarten.

Without a word, TaeHyun pushed open the doors to the hall.

YooJin froze.

His gaze roamed the scene before him, unable to comprehend just what it was he was looking at.

"How?" he asked softly, his eyes trying to take in everything before him. "How... How is this possible?"

"Now that's more like it!" exclaimed Nao, ignoring his question as he perched an arm on his shoulder. He turned his head to look at YooJin and then smiled. "It's a rare sight for a civilian like you so take it all in while you can for I doubt you'll ever see something like this again."

YooJin was quiet for a long moment, his eyes still trying to take in everything in front of him. "Where... Where are we?"

TaeHyun stepped up beside them, his gaze forward, a grim expression upon his face as he answered.

"We're in a dungeon."