The air in Grimwalt always carried the scent of damp earth and distant rain, but here, at the foot of the Obsidian Crag, it smelled of ozone and char. Shotaro Koyanagi—Tadao to his family, a name he was trying to shed—watched the ashes of the black dragon drift on the thermal currents rising from its corpse. Each floating speck of soot felt like a mark of his own inadequacy.
Four thousand Dial. A week's worth of comfort. The number echoed in his head, a taunting prize his mother had claimed with a single, effortless spear of light. He kicked a blackened bone fragment, sending it skittering across the scree.
"Cheer up, Tadao! We're rich!" Rin's voice was a buoyant counterpoint to his gloom. She hefted her freshly polished axe onto her shoulder, the black-and-white blade catching the sun. The repairs from the blacksmith, Kadyr, were impeccable; the weapon seemed to hum with a new, subtle energy.
"Rich because Mama one-shotted it," Shotaro muttered, not looking at her.
"Team effort," Etsuo said, her tone gentle but firm. She landed softly beside him, her transparent wings of light dissolving into golden motes. Her hand came to rest on his shoulder. "We all played our part. You were the distraction."
"The bait, you mean," he corrected, shrugging off her touch. He couldn't meet her eyes. They were always so full of warmth, so understanding, and right now that understanding felt like pity. He saw the way Kadyr had looked at her in the shop—a mix of awe and something else, something possessive that made Shotaro's skin crawl. His mother had emerged from that back room flushed and… disoriented. She'd bought him the short sword without even haggling. Something had happened. Something she wouldn't talk about.
"Don't be like that," Fumiko chided softly, adjusting her glasses. Her staff was tucked in the crook of her arm. "You're getting stronger every day. Your Thief Dash is much faster now."
"A dash isn't a fireball," he shot back. "It isn't a giant axe cleaving through scale. It's just… running away slightly better."
The walk back to the frontier town of Grisel was silent, save for the crunch of their boots on the path. Shotaro trailed behind, watching his family. His mother walked with her usual serene grace, but her gaze was distant, occasionally dropping to her own hands as if seeing them for the first time. Rin was practically vibrating with energy, swinging her axe in idle arcs, testing its new balance. Fumiko was lost in a book of basic water magic she'd picked up at the guild, murmuring incantations under her breath.
They're adapting. They're growing. They got these… these gifts from that stupid goddess, and they're blooming. He felt like a weed in a garden of roses, stunted and out of place. The "Skill XXX" listed on his status screen was a mystery, a blank space with a cryptic name that yielded nothing no matter how he focused on it. For them, it seemed to be a source of strange, sudden competencies. For him, it was a joke.
The Grisel Guild Hall was a cacophony of noise and smell—stew, ale, sweat, and the sharp tang of polished metal. Adventurers clumped around wooden tables, their voices a roar of boasts, gossip, and haggling. The Koyanagi family's return turned heads, as it always did. Whispers followed them.
"The Light Wing herself…"
"Saw the smoke from the Crag. Took down an elder black, I heard."
"And her daughters… formidable."
The comments never included him. He was part of the scenery, the scrawny kid tagging along behind the legends.
Derrick and Fynn were at their usual corner table, tankards in hand. Derrick's broadsword was propped against the wall, and Fynn's staff leaned on the bench. Their eyes, however, weren't on their drinks. They tracked Rin and Fumiko with a focused intensity that made Shotaro's fists clench. The memory of his humiliating defeat in the sparring match, and the "dinner" that followed, was a raw, open wound. His sisters had returned late that night, tired and unusually quiet. They'd offered no details, and Etsuo had forbidden him from asking. The secrecy was a poison in their shared space.
"Well, if it isn't the heroes of the hour," Fynn called out, raising his mug. His smile was all charm. "Heard you dealt with the cliffside nuisance. The Guildmaster will be pleased."
"Just doing our job," Rin said, but she didn't stop at their table. She walked past, though Shotaro saw the slight, almost imperceptible tilt of her head towards Derrick.
"A lucrative job, I hope," Derrick added, his voice a low rumble. His eyes swept over Rin, a quick, appraising glance that lingered on the way her tooled leather belt sat low on her hips. "Good gear needs good maintenance."
"It's handled," Etsuo said, her voice cutting through the din with a sudden, unexpected sharpness. She placed herself slightly between her daughters and the two men. "Thank you for your concern."
The air at the table grew tense for a heartbeat. Then Fynn chuckled, breaking the spell. "Of course, Lady Etsuo. Always a pleasure."
As they moved to collect their quest reward from the guild clerk, Shotaro felt a peculiar, warm itch begin to bloom low on his abdomen, just above his pelvis. It was faint at first, a distracting tingle. He scratched at it absently through his tunic.
The guild clerk, a harried-looking man with ink-stained fingers, counted out the hefty stack of Dial coins with practiced speed. "Four thousand, as promised. The Guild thanks you for your service. The Obsidian Crag roads should be safe for traders for a few weeks, at least." His eyes held a genuine gratitude when he looked at Etsuo. "Your family is a blessing to Grisel."
Etsuo accepted the heavy pouch with a nod. "We are all just trying to find our way home."
The itch on Shotaro's stomach intensified, warming into a distinct, localized heat. It wasn't painful, but it was present, insistent. He glanced down, but his loose tunic hid his skin. Probably just a rash from cheap fabric, he thought, though they'd bought these clothes with guild earnings weeks ago.
That night, in the small, two-room lodgings they rented above a bakery, the silence was brittle. Rin was meticulously cleaning her axe, her movements unusually slow and deliberate. Fumiko was pretending to read, but she hadn't turned a page in twenty minutes. Etsuo sat by the small window, staring out at the moonlit street, her profile etched with a worry she refused to voice.
Shotaro lay on his thin pallet, the itch on his stomach now a persistent, pulsing warmth that seemed to beat in time with his heart. He tossed and turned, the coarse blanket irritating his skin. Finally, with a grunt of frustration, he sat up and pulled up the hem of his tunic.
In the sliver of moonlight falling through the window, he saw it.
Just below his navel, a patch of skin about the size of a gold coin looked… different. In the dim light, it appeared as a faint, wine-colored discoloration, a cluster of spidery, delicate lines like capillaries or the barest beginnings of a tattoo. He rubbed at it hard. It didn't smudge or fade. The skin wasn't raised or rough; it was perfectly smooth, but the mark was undeniably there. And it was warm to the touch, warmer than the surrounding skin.
What in the hells?
A jolt of something—fear, curiosity, revulsion—shot through him. He'd never had a birthmark there. This was new. Was it something from this world? A parasite? A magical affliction from the dragon's ashes?
"Can't sleep?"
He yanked his tunic down, heart hammering. Etsuo was watching him from her seat by the window, her eyes reflecting the moonlight.
"It's nothing," he said, too quickly. "Just… thinking."
"About the dragon?" she asked softly.
"About everything," he admitted, the words tumbling out. "About why we're here. About why you three get to be so strong. About what that 'Skill XXX' even is. About why you all come back from places smelling like…" He trailed off, biting his tongue. The words 'other people' hung in the air, unsaid.
Etsuo's gaze didn't waver, but a deep sadness settled into her features. "Tadao… Shotaro. There are things… happening. To me. To your sisters. We don't understand them either."
"The blacksmith," he accused, the memory of her flushed face and evasive eyes surging back. "What did he do?"
She looked away, out the window again. "He provided a service. A powerful one. There was… a cost. A favor." Her voice was barely a whisper. "It's not something you need to carry."
"You keep saying that!" he hissed, trying to keep his voice down so his sisters wouldn't wake. "You keep saying I don't need to know, I don't need to help, I don't need to carry anything! What do I need to do, then? Just sit here and be weak while you three pay 'favors' to people like Kadyr and… and go to dinner with creeps like Derrick and Fynn?"
From across the room, Rin's hands stilled on her axe. Fumiko slowly closed her book.
The room was dead quiet.
"What do you know about that dinner?" Rin asked, her voice dangerously flat.
"I know you lost a bet for me and had to go," Shotaro said, defiant. "I know you came back late and wouldn't talk about it. I'm not an idiot."
Etsuo stood up, her form a silhouette against the moonlit window. "That is enough. We are a family. We are trapped here, together. We cannot… we cannot let this world twist us against each other." She sounded like she was trying to convince herself. "The 'Skill XXX'… it is a trigger. It makes us… suggestible. It makes things happen that we… that we might not…"
"Might not what?" Shotaro pressed, the strange warmth on his stomach pulsing.
"Might not choose," Fumiko finished, her voice small. She took off her glasses and cleaned them nervously. "When I was with Fynn… at the end… a voice in my head said 'Skill XXX, Task finished.' And then I knew how to cast a Wind Tornado spell. A spell I've never studied."
"And I got better with heavy armor and broadswords," Rin added, not looking at any of them. She traced a finger along the edge of her axe blade. "Right after…"
She didn't finish. She didn't need to.
A cold dread, deeper than any he'd felt facing the dragon, seeped into Shotaro's bones. This wasn't just about being weak. This was about being infected. They all were. Their power, the very thing that made them formidable and kept them alive, was tied to something shameful and secret. And he had the mark to prove it was his turn.
"I have something too," he said, his voice hollow. He lifted his tunic again, exposing the faint, wine-colored mark on his skin.
In the moonlight, his mother and sisters crowded around. Their faces, etched with concern and their own guilt, turned to horror as they saw the marking.
"That's… that's new?" Etsuo breathed, reaching out a hand but not touching it.
"It itches. It's warm."
"It looks like…" Rin squinted. "Like the beginnings of a tattoo. But it's under the skin."
"A curse," Fumiko whispered, the word hanging in the air like a death sentence. "Not a skill. A curse. And it's spreading."
The word seemed to make the mark on Shotaro's stomach throb in response. A sudden, intrusive image flashed behind his eyes—not a memory, but a vivid sensation of heat, of pressure, of being an observer trapped outside his own body, watching something he couldn't quite see. It was gone as quickly as it came, leaving him dizzy and nauseous.
"We need answers," Etsuo said, her maternal resolve solidifying, pushing back the fear. "We cannot live like this, jumping at shadows in our own minds. We were brought here by a goddess. We need to find her. Or find someone who understands whatever… this is."
"How?" Shotaro asked, the anger draining from him, replaced by a weary fear. "We're stuck in a starter town. The quest just says 'defeat the Demon King.' We don't even know where he is."
Rin sheathed her axe with a decisive click. "There's a place. I heard Derrick and Fynn bragging about it at the tavern, before… everything. A dungeon to the north, near the Frostbloom Mountains. They said it's a tomb for some forgotten saint, but that deep down, there's a sealed chamber with murals of 'the summoning.' They said it depicts people falling from a strange sky into this world." A fierce, determined light sparked in her eyes. "If there are answers about how we got here, maybe we can find something about why we got… gifted like this."
It was a lead. A dangerous, thin lead into an unknown dungeon, based on the boastful words of men they distrusted. But it was more than they had minutes ago.
Shotaro looked from his mother's worried face to Rin's defiant one to Fumiko's anxious expression. The strange warmth on his skin pulsed steadily, a silent, ticking clock. He was part of this now, bound to them not just by blood, but by this creeping, mysterious affliction. His quest for personal strength was suddenly irrelevant. This was about survival, about understanding the chains that were tightening around all of them.
He let his tunic fall, covering the mark. "When do we leave?"
Etsuo placed a hand on his head, a gesture that was both comforting and solemn. "We'll need supplies. Information. We leave in three days. No more solo excursions. No more… favors. We stick together." Her eyes held a warning for all of them. "And we tell each other everything, no matter how strange. Agreed?"
One by one, they nodded. The pact felt fragile, built on fear and shame, but it was a start. As they settled back into the uneasy dark, Shotaro stared at the ceiling, the phantom heat on his stomach a constant reminder. The fantasy adventure was over. The real nightmare, it seemed, was just beginning.