If you are going to have a surprise, this is the kind to have! That is a very lovely, active pattern and it does have some ladder-like features. I can see the "rungs" on the edge but do they extend across the ridge line to the upper half of the blade? If they are regularly spaced and appear across the entire blade then I would say they were definitely manipulating the blade to make it a ladder pattern. Count them to. They often come to near 40. I agree with Aleksey that the crossguard may be wootz as well.
After this one, you may be tempted to go etch all of your blades!
