Chapter 71 - Chapter 70: The Underground Zone (3)

The vortex in Yongsan opens wrong.

Not wrong like was wrong, that had been beautiful and unsettling in equal measure. This is just wrong. The portal shimmer that usually looks like heat haze on a summer road is darker at the edges. The air around it doesn't smell like ozone the way vortexes usually do.

And the crazy part? It smells like nothing.

Which shouldn't be possible. Yeon Yujun has been in enough vortexes at this point to know they all smell like something. The Graveshell smelled like copper and burnt stone. smelled like flowers that weren't quite flowers. Even the industrial eastern vortex had the dark matter smell to it.

This one has nothing. Just absence, where a smell should be.

Gim Haesung's nose twitches beside him.

"That's... new." she mutters in discomfort.

"It really is," he agrees.