The night did not return to normal.
Even after the light pillar vanished, even after the trembling faded, the air remained tense—like the world itself was holding its breath.
Han Islat stood still, chest rising and falling unevenly. Sweat clung to his forehead even in the freezing wind. He felt… watched. Touched. Branded.
The earth beneath him still glowed faintly, like embers refusing to die.
He swallowed hard.
"Why… me?"
No one answered.
But the silence felt heavier than words.
Han knelt beside the faintly pulsing fissure. A thin strand of light drifted upward, brushing his fingertips like a feather. It didn't burn. It didn't hurt. It simply… existed, resting against his skin.
And in that moment—
he felt something slip into him.
Not a voice, not a thought.
A sensation.
A cold, distant truth.
You are marked.
Han jerked his hand away instinctively, but the feeling remained. Like a stain beneath the skin.
He stared at his palm. Nothing had changed. No symbols, no glow. Yet he could not shake the sensation that something ancient had left its imprint on him.
He didn't understand it.
He didn't want it.
His heart pounded.
"Why does this keep happening to me…? Why do I survive? Why am I chosen for things I never asked for?"
His voice cracked slightly.
He hated how weak it sounded.
A faint crunch echoed behind him.
Han spun, hand reaching instinctively for a broken piece of metal he kept hidden under his coat.
A small shape stepped into view.
Not a monster.
Not a human.
A child.
A girl, barely ten, wearing tattered clothes and clutching a cracked lantern. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the faint afterglow of the rift.
"You're… alive," she whispered, as if shocked such a thing was possible.
Han blinked, confused.
"You shouldn't be here," he said. "This place is unstable."
"I followed the light," she murmured. "Everyone saw it. They said it was a god waking up."
Han flinched.
A god.
That word again.
He wasn't sure if it comforted him or terrified him.
The girl stepped closer.
"What did you see?" she asked softly, her voice trembling with both fear and awe.
Han hesitated.
He didn't want to answer.
He didn't even know how to answer.
But the girl looked at him like someone desperate for hope.
"It… spoke," he finally said.
Her eyes widened.
"What did it say?"
Han looked away, jaw tightening.
"Something I don't know how to answer."
Before the girl could speak again, a distant horn echoed from the settlement. A warning signal.
Something was approaching.
Han's instincts snapped into focus, all emotions drowning beneath a sharpened awareness.
He grabbed the girl's shoulder.
"Stay behind me."
A low rumbling spread across the ground, shaking loose dust from the ruins. The faint blue glow of the fissure flickered—reacting to the threat.
Han's heart tightened.
He knew that sound.
He had heard it too many times.
A Crawler Beast.
A misshapen, limbless creature that traveled underground, drawn to energy anomalies and vibrations.
The awakening earlier…
It had attracted it.
Han cursed under his breath.
Of all times…
Cracks spread across the ground as something massive tunneled beneath. The girl clutched his coat tightly, trembling.
"W-what do we do…?"
Han took a breath.
He had no weapons.
He had no armor.
He had no power.
Just a cursed body that refused to die.
He placed a hand on the girl's head gently.
"You run when I say."
"But—"
"Run. And don't look back."
The ground exploded.
A huge, serpentine maw burst upward, stone and dirt flying everywhere. Its mouth opened wide enough to swallow a horse whole, rows of jagged teeth twisting unnaturally.
The girl screamed.
Han shoved her back and jumped aside, rolling across the rubble as the beast snapped at him.
Pain shot up his leg when he hit a broken beam, but he forced himself to stand.
The beast roared—if the wet, gurgling sound could be called a roar. Its pale skin shimmered with a sickly sheen, its eyeless head twitching as if sensing him through vibrations alone.
Han gripped the metal shard in his hand.
This wasn't a fight he could win.
He knew that.
He always knew that.
But he still stepped forward.
Survival was his curse.
So he would use it to protect at least one life.
Even if it meant being torn apart.
Far away, in the distant city, Aurelius Dane paused mid-step in a quiet corridor. The moonlight painted his silhouette in soft silver.
He tilted his head slightly.
So gentle.
So calm.
"It's begun."
A faint smile curved his lips.
One that could warm the world—
or freeze it.
"Han Islat… do you know what it means to awaken something that has been forgotten by even the gods?"
He closed his eyes, listening to the distant tremor as though the world itself had whispered into his ear.
"Oh," he whispered, "how beautiful your suffering is."