YooJin jumped back, his hand securely around the scroll as his eyes continued to stare at the face beneath the water.

The grin it sported was wide and eerie and its eyes were white and pupil-less. It was an expression that looked familiar but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it in just that moment.

A hand suddenly wrapped around his elbow and he jumped again, trying to yank his arm back but the grip tightened in response.

He turned quickly around and was startled to see the alpha staring past him at the bodies that were, until a moment ago, floating lifelessly on the surface of the water.

The alpha pulled him back toward the doorway as they both watched the two bodies stand, their joints awkwardly moving, almost creaking, as though they had not moved in years.

When finally they stood up and turned toward them, YooJin could see that they were indeed the same faces of the alphas they had left in the room but just like with the face in the water, their mouths were wide in that same disturbing smile and their eyes completely white.

“Damn,” TaeHyun whispered.

“What are they?” YooJin asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Something caught his eye in the water and YooJin looked down. The thing that looked like him was swimming up to them with his face angled uncomfortably upward, smiling up at them. It sent chills down his spine.

“We’ve got to go,” said YooJin, grabbing the alpha’s sleeve and pulling him back.

As they passed the door, his eyes caught a glimpse of the monster reliefs upon the lattice wood and he realized suddenly why it was that the expressions on the lookalikes were so familiar.

His eyes quickly roamed the carvings until he found a spot where the face had been in their world only to find that it was not there. Instead a blank, uncomfortable emptiness sat where the face had been previously.

He looked up just in time to see his likeness come out from beneath the water.

TaeHyun’s eyes widened and YooJin grabbed his hand, jolting him out of his shock and began to swim as fast as they could through the water.

The sounds of splashing followed them as they made their way back down the hallway.

“Do something,” YooJin sputtered at the alpha, who cursed.

“I – I can’t.”

YooJin’s hold on the alpha’s hand tightened when he turned to look behind him. The creatures’ approach was slow but they were steadily gaining on them. “Aren’t you a hunter? Isn’t it your job to fight these things?”

“If I could, I would,” he replied with clenched teeth, “my mana is unstable.”

“Just try,” he hissed.

The alpha cursed then snapped his hands and made a motion in the air with his finger that YooJin recalled seeing Nao do before. But nothing happened.

The alpha cursed again in frustration.

YooJin turned back to see that the creatures were slowly increasing their pace, wadding toward them awkwardly as though mimicking their motions, the strange grinning expression on a face that was otherwise his sending chills down his spine.

He didn’t know what would happen if the creatures caught them. There was a chance that they were harmless and yet, his body vehemently rejected the thought.

His mind raced and raced. Why couldn’t the alpha do anything? He recalled the doctor telling him something… something about stabilizing… mana… using pheromones.

He turned to the alpha as his mind rapidly developed a plan. He had never finished sex ed and he had never had any experiences with alphas so he still didn’t know much about pheromones. But he knew enough to know that pheromones could be transmitted through glands.

Somehow the creatures were closer now despite the fact that he and TaeHyun were wading through the water as quickly as they could. Their movements still seemed awkward but they were significantly more effortless in the water than they were.

Glands… Where were the glands located? Think!

Then he remembered those few doctor’s visits of them checking his armpits during the pheromone tests…

He grabbed TaeHyun’s hand just as they were about to reach the place where they had first fallen into the dungeon. 

“What is–?” said TaeHyun as YooJin wedged the alpha’s hand beneath his arm and rubbed it back and forth in its groove. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You need my pheromones, right?” said YooJin, rubbing harder.

“That’s not–” the alpha replied, as he tried to yank his hand back, baffled by YooJin’s thought process.

“Wait! I heard about glands in the mouth–”

TaeHyun’s eyes widened as YooJin pulled him closer. “What the hell are you–” the alpha began when YooJin grabbed the same hand that was wedged between his arm and chest and ran his tongue over it.

“What the hell?” TaeHyun yelled, yanking his hand back.

“See if it worked!” YooJin yelled, his eyes darting back to the monsters that were now only a foot away from them.

The smile had not moved an inch on their faces and now that YooJin could see them more closely, he noticed that their skin was more claylike than actual skin and their smiles seemed to have been carved on.

He heard the alpha curse softly under his breath before flicking his hand out once more.

Suddenly, a bright purple light burst in front of them. It was the same type of swirling light Nao had produced in the ‘ghost’ dungeon.

With nimble fingers, TaeHyun pulled out a large, wide, black sword, free of all embellishment except at the end of the hilt, which looked like a flat stylized flower. Without a single moment of hesitation and with a speed that made YooJin temporarily breathless, he raised the weapon and brought it down hard into the floor, parting the water into two walls that touched the tall ceiling.

Before YooJin could even blink, the alpha ran through the split and struck the monsters down in one. Two. Three. Strokes.

All of them fell motionless onto the floor simultaneously.

A moment later the walls of water fell back down on either side of them, once again flooding the hallway.

YooJin swayed violently with the waves for a moment before righting himself. He felt something knock into his right arm and he looked down only to find himself staring at the floating body of his strange claylike copy.

His eyes widened as cracks began to form on its face and a second later it disintegrated into the water.

“What the–?” he whispered and he looked up, his eyes immediately searching for TaeHyun.

The alpha was standing a few feet away from him, the water about him littered with a beige-ish gray residue.

The sword that he still clutched in his hand suddenly disappeared and the alpha then looked up and met his eyes.

“TaeHyun,” called a voice suddenly from above them and YooJin’s head jerked up to see three pairs of eyes staring down at them.

“What the hell?” said Nao, his eyes wide with surprise as he knelt by the hole. “A dungeon? Here?”

YooJin watched as the doctor exchanged a grim look with an elderly woman he had never seen before. He then looked back down at them. “I’ll set up a portal to get you out,” said Yoon, moving away until YooJin could only see the sleeve of his robe.

YooJin felt the skin on his arm rise and quickly looked down the hallway. There were no movements and the water was still once again but he couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that something was watching them.

The doctor returned to their line of sight. “It’s not opening,” he said, a slight note of concern in his voice.

YooJin turned and met TaeHyun’s gaze.

“Let me try it,” said Nao and his face too disappeared from sight.

He returned a moment later, looking back down at them. “It’s really not opening.”

“What do we do then?” YooJin called out.

“We can get a rope and–” Nao suggested when the old woman stopped him.

“It won’t work,” she said softly. Her voice was deep and commanding.

“Do you know what this is?” asked Yoon, turning to her.

She shook her head. “I do not but I have experienced something similar when I was a child. A dungeon like this is very old and requires blood magic.”

They all watched as the old woman produced a knife from her robe.

“Chief, let me,” said Nao, stepping toward her but she shook her head.

“Let an old woman do it. You are far too young to tie your soul to a place like this.”

She then ran the blade across her open palm before forming a fist over the hole. Three large bright red droplets fell between YooJin and the alpha, dispersing instantly into the water and turning it black before clearing up once again.

“Ready TaeHyun!” came the doctor’s voice from above them.

TaeHyun reached over and grabbed YooJin by the waist. YooJin turned, a question on his face, when again, he felt the floor beneath him break open.