The shadows beneath Min-ho's hospital bed writhed with restless hunger, responding to the wolf's words like iron filings drawn to a magnet. He pressed his palms against the sterile sheets, willing them to stillness, but the darkness had developed an appetite of its own—feeding, growing, whispering secrets in languages he didn't recognize. Through the narrow window, Seoul's neon glow painted everything in harsh blues and reds, casting geometric patterns across the linoleum floor, but the corners of his room remained stubbornly black, deeper than physics should allow.
*Show me,* he whispered to the wolf, the words barely disturbing the antiseptic air.
The response came not in voice but in sensation—a tugging at the base of his skull, like invisible fingers threading through his thoughts and pulling at memories he'd forgotten he possessed. The shadows pooled and shifted, flowing like liquid obsidian, and suddenly Min-ho could *feel* them. Every dark corner in the medical wing. Every space where fluorescent light failed to penetrate. Every pocket of darkness throughout the building's seven floors. And in those spaces, something ancient stirred with recognition.
His phone buzzed against the nightstand, the vibration unnaturally loud in the silence. A message from the Hunter Association: *Mandatory E-rank gate assignment tomorrow. Report to Gangnam District Office, 0800 hours.* Min-ho's stomach clenched like a fist. Three days of recovery, and they were already throwing him back into the grinder. But maybe that was exactly what he needed—a chance to test these new abilities somewhere the Association's surveillance cameras couldn't follow, where their sensors couldn't detect the impossible.
The next morning arrived gray and oppressive, Seoul's sky heavy with the promise of rain that would turn the city's perpetual haze into something approaching misery. Min-ho stood outside the district office, watching other E-rank hunters mill about with the resigned expressions of people heading to particularly unpleasant jobs. Most were young like him, fresh out of awakening centers with barely enough mana to light a cigarette, their gear still creased from packaging. A few older faces dotted the crowd—hunters whose bodies or spirits had been ground down to E-rank over the years, carrying scars both visible and hidden.
"First time back after an injury?" The voice belonged to a girl about his age, her hunter's license hanging from a bright pink lanyard that seemed aggressively cheerful against the morning's gloom. She had short-cropped hair the color of dark honey and eyes that held more warmth than most hunters bothered to maintain after their first few gates. "I'm Lee Su-jin. Awakened about two months ago."
"Kang Min-ho." He studied her gear—standard E-rank equipment, but meticulously maintained. Her sword's leather grip showed the wear patterns of countless practice sessions, and her hands bore calluses from weapon training, not just the soft palms of someone who'd bought their way into the Association. "What gave it away?"
"You keep flexing your sword arm like you're testing whether the tendons still remember their job." Su-jin shouldered her pack with practiced ease, adjusting the straps with the unconscious efficiency of someone who'd learned the hard way that poorly distributed weight could mean death. "Plus, you've got that look people get when they're wondering if they still remember how to not die horribly."
Despite everything—the wolf's whispers, the creeping cold in his veins, the way shadows now bent toward him like flowers following the sun—Min-ho found himself almost smiling. "That obvious?"
"Trust me, I've had plenty of practice with that particular expression. Wore it myself for the first month." She gestured toward the gate that had materialized in the parking lot behind the office—a shimmering tear in reality about the size of a doorway, its edges crackling with pale energy that made the air taste of copper and ozone. "E-rank ice cave. Should be mostly sprites and maybe a few frost wolves if we're unlucky. Nothing that should test whatever you're worried about too hard."
The familiar chill of gate entry washed over Min-ho as they stepped through, that momentary sensation of the world turning inside-out, reality folding like origami before snapping back into a new configuration. They emerged into a crystalline cavern that stretched beyond the reach of their flashlights, ice formations jutting from walls and ceiling like frozen lightning, each surface reflecting their lights into prismatic rainbows that danced across the cavern floor. The air bit at exposed skin with teeth of pure winter and turned their breath to visible clouds that dissipated slowly in the still air.
*Ice,* the shadow wolf murmured appreciatively, its voice carrying undertones of hunger that made Min-ho's spine prickle. *Another element to claim. Another power to devour.*
Min-ho pushed the voice aside, focusing on Su-jin as she consulted a small device that beeped softly in the frigid air, its screen casting blue light across her concentrated features. "Mana detector's showing multiple contacts deeper in," she reported, her voice professionally calm despite the way her breath misted. "Nothing too strong, but they're clustered together. Probably a nest."
They moved carefully through the cavern, boots crunching on frost-covered stone that sparkled like crushed diamonds. Min-ho kept his sword loose in its sheath, hyperaware of every shadow that danced in their flashlight beams, the way darkness seemed to reach toward him with eager tendrils. The darkness here felt different from the hospital—wilder, hungrier, untamed by human presence. Ancient ice reflected their lights in fractal patterns that seemed to shift and writhe when he wasn't looking directly at them, as if the cavern itself were alive and watching.
The attack came without warning. A blur of crystalline blue erupted from an overhead ice formation, razor-sharp claws aimed directly at Su-jin's exposed neck, moving with the lethal grace of a creature born from winter's cruelest dreams. Time seemed to slow as Min-ho watched her stumble backward, her foot catching on a hidden patch of black ice. She was going to fall. The ice sprite's claws would find their mark, would open her throat like a flower blooming red against the pristine white.
Without conscious thought, Min-ho's shadow surged forward. Not his body—his *shadow*, stretching across the cavern floor like spilled ink, defying every law of physics as it rose up to catch the sprite mid-leap. Dark tendrils wrapped around the creature's limbs with impossible strength, holding it suspended in the air as its crystalline form thrashed and chittered in fury, its voice like breaking glass.
Su-jin hit the ground hard, rolling to avoid the sprite's snapping jaws even as Min-ho's shadow held it fast. Her eyes went wide as she took in what was happening—the impossible reach of darkness that extended from Min-ho's feet to wrap around their attacker like living rope.
"How are you—" she started, but Min-ho was already moving.
He drew his sword and leaped, using his shadow as a springboard to launch himself upward with inhuman grace. The blade caught the sprite between its crystalline shoulder blades, and the creature dissolved into motes of blue light that scattered like frozen stars across the cavern ceiling. As it died, Min-ho felt that familiar tugging sensation in his chest, the system reaching out with greedy fingers to claim what had been defeated.
**[Contract Available: Ice Sprite]**
**[Accept? Y/N]**
*Yes,* he thought, and immediately regretted it.
Cold flooded his veins, but not the simple chill of winter air. This was the cold of absolute zero, of spaces between stars, of things that had never known warmth and never would. It settled into his bones like a parasite and made itself at home, and with it came something else—a creeping emptiness in his mind, like rooms in a house suddenly going dark one by one.
He tried to remember his seventh birthday party. The memory flickered and faded like a candle in wind, leaving only the vague impression that something important had happened when he turned seven. His mother's face wavered in his recollection, features blurring until he couldn't quite recall the color of her eyes or the sound of her laugh.
"Min-ho!" Su-jin's voice cut through his confusion like a blade through silk. She was standing now, brushing ice crystals from her jacket with sharp, agitated movements, but her gaze remained fixed on the shadows that still writhed around his feet like faithful pets. "What the hell was that? E-ranks don't have shadow manipulation. Hell, most B-ranks don't have shadow manipulation."
The shadows reluctantly retreated, pooling back into their natural positions as if they'd never moved at all. But the damage was done. Su-jin had seen everything, and the calculating look in her eyes suggested she understood exactly how impossible what she'd witnessed really was.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Min-ho said, his voice steadier than he felt. Frost gathered at his fingertips now, responding to his emotions the way the shadows had begun to, crystallizing his breath into visible lies. Two elements. Two contracts. And with each one, pieces of himself seemed to slip away into darkness like sand through an hourglass.
Su-jin stepped closer, her breath misting in the frigid air, her hand resting casually on her sword's hilt. "Don't lie to me. I saw your shadow move independently. I saw it grab that sprite like it was solid." Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. "And unless I'm very much mistaken, you just got a lot colder. Literally. The temperature around you dropped at least ten degrees."
Before Min-ho could respond, his phone buzzed with an emergency alert that made his heart skip. Then Su-jin's did the same. Then every hunter device in the gate began screaming warnings in unison, their displays flashing urgent red messages that made Min-ho's blood freeze in his veins: **ANOMALOUS AWAKENING DETECTED. MULTIPLE LOCATIONS. ALL HUNTERS REPORT IMMEDIATELY.**
*It begins,* whispered the shadow wolf, and for the first time since their contract, it sounded almost afraid.