Jiyon’s hideout was nothing special.

A gutted karaoke room above a closed hostess bar in Mapo-gu. He’d reinforced the walls with white noise machines and signal jammers. The windows were covered with black trash bags and adhesive blackout foam.

Perfect for quietly handling things that shouldn’t exist.

He sat on the carpeted floor, back against a stained sofa, as the knife lay between them on a towel like a corpse waiting to wake up.

It hadn’t moved.
It hadn’t spoken.

But it was thinking.

He could feel it.

The cloth around it was soaked. Not with blood, with condensation, cold and oily. The blade was rejecting reality itself, like it couldn’t settle into being here. Even the air tasted wrong.

Jiyon unwrapped it slowly.

The dagger gleamed once.

Not like metal.
Like memory.

Smooth, black, curved slightly inward — the blade had no edge you could see, but a sharpness you could feel in your molars. Like it was slicing something you hadn’t offered.

He touched it with two fingers.

[Soul-Cutting Blade: Synchronization Failed]
[Warning: Host Signature Not Recognized]

That was expected.

[Item Memory Locked: Compatibility Threshold Not Met]

That wasn’t.

Jiyon narrowed his eyes.

The blade wasn’t supposed to have locked content. Not at this stage. In the old timeline, it had bonded to Park Hamin immediately, begun whispering names, offering power in exchange for “letting go.” It had killed him in less than two weeks.

But now?

Now it was waiting.

He tapped a command on his System interface. Probed the metadata.

Owner DNA Signature: Seong_HM-88204 (Park Hamin)
Override Flag Detected. Synchronization conflict in progress.

…Would you like to reroll compatibility? Y/N

Jiyon sat back and exhaled.

So. That was it.

The item still wanted its original owner.

Even after Hamin’s memories were gone.
Even after the bid was hijacked.
Some part of the blade still remembered who summoned it.

That was new.

That was not okay.

He reached for the cloth, wrapped the blade again, and stuffed it into a lead-lined case he kept behind a loose tile in the wall. It hissed as the lid clicked shut.

Not in anger.

In something closer to disappointment.

Jiyon stood, wiped his hands, and turned toward the mirror above the karaoke bar’s drink shelf.

For a moment—just a flicker—he swore he didn’t see himself in the glass.

Just the knife.

Lying there, unheld.
Waiting.

The notification tone was soft. Two notes. Barely audible under the hum of the blackout fans.

[New Message – Unknown Sender]

Jiyon didn’t check it right away.

He was meticulous. He waited until he’d sealed the hidden compartment, reset the room’s EM scrambler, and scrubbed any residual aura from the case. The Soul-Cutting Blade still felt like a silent scream in the floorboards, but at least now it wasn’t bleeding into the walls.

He finally picked up the phone.

No number. No handle. Just a glowing thread of gold-pixel static where a username should be.

Sender: Choi Myung-sik

Jiyon didn’t move for a full five seconds.

Because of that name?
That was impossible.

Choi Myung-sik had been a Tier IV Support B-Class bidder. He was one of the first humans to successfully negotiate with a divine-class Auction Entity. In his third year of bidding, he'd gone public — launched a healing cult, branded himself a messiah.

Until he made a losing bid.

In Jiyon’s old timeline, Myung-sik’s final moment had been livestreamed from atop a church tower in Busan, screaming as his lungs were auctioned off, mid-breath.

There had been no coming back from that.

And yet—

Message Received: 02:42 AM

“We saw that.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

That was it.

No signature. No threat.
No explanation.

But it hit like a hammer anyway.

“We.”

Not “I.”

The plural was what stopped Jiyon cold.

Because it meant Myung-sik — or whatever was wearing his name—wasn’t alone.

He checked the metadata.

No traceable IP. No packet origin. The message had slipped through like it came from inside the System’s own broadcast channel.

Which meant one of three things:

1. Someone had gained admin-level access.

2. A non-human bidder was playing dress-up.

3. The System itself was beginning to glitch.

Jiyon smiled slowly.

Not out of humour. Out of habit. That slow, serpentine reflex that came from knowing he was still ahead, just barely.

He didn’t respond.

Not yet.

But he opened a new file on his phone and typed two words.

[Contingency Thread: Myung-sik]
Status: Dead? Watching. Dangerous.]

Then he deleted the message, wiped the data logs, and powered down the phone.

Whoever was watching would expect panic.
They’d expect doubt.

He wasn’t giving them either.

He went back to the sofa, crossed his arms behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.

Let them watch.

He was just getting started.

Morning bled in through the blackout paper.
Thin grey light, bleeding at the corners of the room like the world trying to peek in.

Jiyon didn’t sleep.

He never could, after bidding.

Not in the first life. Not in this one.

Some things the System changed.
Others, it just scarred too deeply.

The blade remained locked in its lead-lined case beneath the floor. The message from “Myung-sik” was gone. But it lingered in the air, like the taste of static after a power surge.

We saw that.

He’d run the words over in his head a dozen times. Not because they disturbed him, but because they didn’t.

It meant they were watching.
Which meant they didn’t know everything.

And that… was leverage.

Jiyon sat up, stretched once, and opened his terminal.

His Auction interface glowed faintly. Still golden. Still passive.

[AUCTION STATUS: Bidder-Class: Human | Tier: I | Eligible For: Buyer-Only Mode]

Normally, that meant he could only buy. Not sell. Not listed.

But who said “normally” mattered anymore?

He tapped open a developer stub he’d copied from a glitched packet back in Year 4 — a bugged bid form designed for testing private auctions between rogue users.

It wasn’t meant to exist.
It had no UI. Just a string injection point.

Jiyon typed slowly, deliberately:

[NEW LISTING: “The Voice of a Dead Man”]
[Tier: Undefined]
[Effect: Unknown]
[Starting Bid: Observation Only]

No item attached. No metadata. Just bait.

He hit submit.

[ERROR: Unauthorized Action. You are not a Seller.]
[Warning: Attempt Logged.]

…Overridden.
[Listing Queued.]

Jiyon leaned back.

There. Let them see it. Let the dead man forward the message.

He hadn’t come back to be subtle.

He’d come back to make the System break itself trying to understand him.

His screen flickered once.

Not gold.

Not red.

But something else — a flicker of violet, like a bruise in digital light.

[ADMIN OVERRIDE DETECTED. BID INTERFERENCE FLAGGED.]
[A Response Has Been Scheduled.]

He smiled.

Finally.

Someone was coming.