The gate to Sector C groaned open with a mechanical whine, steel grinding against steel. The smell hit first—something between damp earth and decaying flesh. Ethan had learned long ago not to flinch. If you flinched, you died.
Four of them walked through the threshold, weapons at the ready.
Ethan moved in silence, twin daggers strapped to his back, eyes scanning the dense, mist-choked terrain beyond the gate. The Wild Zones weren't like the rest of the world. The laws of nature twisted here. Trees grew too tall, too fast. Shadows moved even when the wind didn't. And Beasts waited in the fog, intelligent and hungry.
"Stick to the plan," growled Kain, the squad leader. His armor was scarred and worn, but his tone screamed authority. "No heroics. We're here to sweep low-levels, gather cores, and leave. If something above our grade shows up, we pull out."
"Unless the rookie screws it up," one of the others muttered.
Ethan said nothing.
They moved deeper into the Rift. The mist clung to them like wet skin, muffling every footstep. Occasionally, glowing eyes blinked from behind twisted branches. Ethan could hear his heartbeat in his ears.
His hand twitched beneath the glove.
The mark hadn't burned in weeks, but he still felt it there. A quiet pulse. Like it was waiting.
---
Twenty minutes in, they found their first Beast.
It was low-grade—doglike, lean and skeletal, with too many teeth and milky eyes. It snarled and lunged without thought. Kain stepped forward, cleaving its head off in one clean motion.
"Keep moving," he said, wiping the blood from his blade.
They found three more like it—feral, weak, and disorganized. But Ethan couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
These Beasts weren't guarding territory. They were fleeing from something.
Running.
He crouched beside one of the bodies, frowning. The creature's hide was scored with deep claw marks—fresh ones, too big to be self-inflicted. Ethan ran a finger over the gash. The skin was burned around the edges.
"Hey, Cross," snapped one of the team. "Quit poking corpses. You're wasting time."
Ethan stood slowly, gaze lingering on the tree line.
"…We need to move carefully."
The man laughed. "What, the E-Rank thinks he's in charge now?"
But before anyone could argue further, the wind shifted.
A guttural screech tore through the air—far deeper than anything they'd faced.
The trees rustled violently, and from the mist emerged a shadow far larger than any of them expected.
A hulking figure stepped forward, half-wrapped in tattered cloaks of fur and bone. Its body was humanoid but grotesquely stretched, armored in obsidian scales that shimmered unnaturally in the light. Crimson eyes locked onto them with chilling focus.
Kain's face went pale. "That's not a wildspawn…"
"No," Ethan whispered. "That's an evolved-class."
The Beast lunged.
---
Chaos exploded.
The ground cracked beneath its feet. Kain was the first to strike, blade drawn, shouting for the others to fall back. The creature batted him aside like a fly. He crashed into a tree, bones snapping audibly.
Ethan dodged a second swipe and rolled to the side. The air shimmered around the Beast—it was radiating heat, steam curling from its limbs. One of the other hunters tried to hit it with a magic bolt. It barely flinched.
This wasn't just a mutated creature.
It was intelligent.
And it was testing them.
Ethan gritted his teeth. His daggers wouldn't do much against that hide, but maybe—just maybe—he could draw it away from the others. He sprinted to the left, hurling a knife into the Beast's shoulder. It embedded shallowly.
The monster turned its gaze toward him.
Then it stopped.
Ethan froze.
The creature's eyes narrowed… not in pain, but in recognition.
"You…"
The voice echoed in his head like a whisper, alien and ice-cold.
Ethan staggered back. "What—what was that?"
The mark on his hand burned beneath the glove.
For a moment, the world tilted. His vision warped, and he saw flashes—flames, eyes, his mother's blood-soaked face—and a claw reaching for him.
The same claw.
The same eyes.
This wasn't just a Beast.
It was the one from that night.
---
"RUN!" Ethan shouted, voice raw.
The team was already scattering. Kain didn't move—he was unconscious. One of the others was down, screaming as the Beast crushed his leg.
Ethan's instincts took over.
He grabbed Kain's limp arm and dragged him, ignoring the pain in his muscles. The Beast didn't follow. It simply watched.
Mocking.
"I'll find you again," it whispered. Not aloud. In his mind.
The gate came into sight.
Reinforcements were arriving—Guild Hunters in black armor, charging with enchanted lances. The monster didn't wait. With a roar that shook the trees, it vanished back into the mist, leaving only scorched earth behind.
---
An hour later, Ethan sat in the infirmary, eyes unfocused.
He didn't speak to anyone. He barely listened to the doctors stitching up his arm. The mark had stopped glowing, but it throbbed—alive.
It knew him. It spoke to him.
And worse—it had spared him.
Why?
The Guild would cover this up, just like last time. They'd say it was a rogue mutant. That the squad leader made a mistake. But Ethan had seen the truth:
That thing had remembered him. From ten years ago.
From the night his parents died.
And it was still out there.
Waiting.
Watching.