The shelter stank. It always reeked of blood, sweat, and the acrid smell of burnt flesh from awakeners pushing their powers too hard. But today was worse. Today it smelled like death.
It had been one hundred years since the first Rift opened.
Back then, people thought it was a hoax, a miracle, a hallucination. One day, the sky tore open over the city, and monsters poured through like water from a broken dam. Within hours, it was clear this wasn't a movie or a dream. It was real.
Humanity panicked. Then, humanity adapted.
Scientists discovered that some people had awakened, gaining superpowers: combat abilities, healing, tracking, magic. The awakened were rare at first, maybe one in ten thousand. But they were enough. They could fight the monsters. They could push back.
Within a decade, the world had reorganized. Governments became obsolete. Guilds took over, organizations run by the strongest awakeners. They managed dungeons, coordinated hunts, and organized society around the new reality. Cities were fortified. Technology was maintained because technology was survival electricity, the internet, hospitals, supply chains, all still functional, just re-purposed for a world with monsters.
People adapted too. They took jobs in guilds, becoming hunters, retrievers, and support staff. They scavenged dungeons for crystals and gems dropped by defeated monsters. The economy shifted from money to power. The strong thrived. The weak found niches or died.
For one hundred years, this was just life.
Then, ten years ago, things got worse.
The Rifts started multiplying. They weren't just appearing in one place and staying there; they were spreading, becoming unstable. The gates that usually connected to specific dungeons started opening randomly. The monsters grew stronger. The situation became desperate.
Eun sat in her corner, knees pulled up to her chest. It was the spot she always picked far enough from everyone that they didn't bump into her, but not so far that it looked suspicious. She'd gotten good at being in a space without taking up space. Almost invisible.
This shelter had once been a subway station, back when the city was functioning normally. Now it was the last operating shelter in the entire region. Everything above ground had been abandoned. The last skyscraper the guild had occupied twenty stories, with reinforced walls and defensive systems had fallen three months ago when the Rifts got too active.
Around her, people were running and shouting, voices echoing off the tiled walls. Someone had yelled about an hour ago: "The S+ ranks are coming back. They closed the rift. The final rift."
S+ ranks. The highest tier of awakened humans. There were only six left in the entire world six people with power so immense they were treated like weapons of last resort. The guild had sent them on what everyone knew was a suicide mission: to seal the last dungeon, to close the final Rift actively generating monsters.
Eun knew what that meant. She'd lived through enough hunts and guild operations to understand the mathematics. When you sent your six strongest people, usually none of them came back.
But Eun had learned not to expect good outcomes. In a world where power determined survival, outcomes were rarely good for people like her.
She'd been working when everything went wrong. She had a salvage job for the guild, gathering supplies from the ruins of the old city anything useful: scrap metal, electronics, cloth, tools. It was work that didn't require awakening. Work for the powerless.
She'd been returning from a salvage site when the Rift went berserk.
The ground had shaken like an earthquake, but wrong like reality itself was breaking. The sky had torn open: a massive, black, horrible, and vast rip in the air. And things had started pouring through. Not the normal monsters they expected, but bigger, angrier things that burned with unnatural power.
People panicked. Eun panicked. She ran like everyone else, but not fast enough, not smart enough. She got trampled by other people fleeing. Someone grabbed her arm, trying to pull her up, then let go when they realized she wasn't awakened. Wasn't useful. Wasn't worth saving.
She made it to the shelter barely, and they locked the doors. They sealed everyone inside who was awakened or valuable, leaving everyone else outside to fend for themselves.
She was the only non-awakened person still alive when they finally opened the doors again.
The metal door of the shelter groaned open. a horrible sound.
Then people started pouring in, and Eun couldn't look away.
They were bleeding. All of them. Some had bandages soaked through with blood. One had half his face burned black from a power attack. Another was limping so bad she was sure his leg was broken. They came through in waves of survivors of the final hunt. Broken bodies. Broken spirits. The remnants of humanity's greatest warriors.
"Get them down!" someone yelled. "Get them to medical!"
The floor filled up with bodies. Eun pressed herself against the wall, trying to take up even less space than usual. This wasn't her place. She didn't belong in the middle of this.
She saw Aunt Susie shuffle in. The old woman was small and bent over, her hands already glowing that weird green color. Healing power. E-rank, but valuable. After a hundred years of awakening, a good healer was worth her weight in crystals.
"Come on," Susie was saying. "Let me see the wounds."
She knelt next to someone with a crushed leg. Her hands started glowing brighter. Eun watched the leg straighten, the bleeding slow. The guy screamed anyway, but at least he'd keep his leg.
Aunt Susie moved to the next person, and the next. Her hands kept glowing, but Eun could see the light getting dimmer and less bright, like a battery running out.
Then Aunt Susie coughed.
Not a normal cough. The kind where your whole body shakes. Blood came out of her mouth a lot of it. Red and thick on the white medical coat.
She fell to her knees.
"Susie!" Someone tried to grab her. "Susie, you have to stop!"
"I can still—" Aunt Susie choked. More blood. She wasn't getting up.
The man she'd been healing started groaning again. There was no one to help him anymore.
Heavy footsteps. Fast.
Eun looked up and saw a man's face. Marcus. One of the guild's combat awakeners, and he looked like he was about to break. His eyes were wild. His hands were shaking.
He looked at Eun.
Then he was moving toward her.
"You," he said. His voice was low and angry.
Before she could move, his hand was on her. He grabbed her collar and lifted her off the ground. The world spun.
Then he slammed her down.
Her face hit concrete. Hard. She heard something crack inside her head. Pain exploded through her cheek and jaw sharp, bright pain that made her vision go white. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
"Get up!" Marcus was shouting. He was lifting her again. "Why are you sitting there?"
He threw her down again. Her head snapped back. Worse pain this time. She tasted blood.
An old man's hand touched Marcus's shoulder. Old Man Chen. Former guild member, now just old and tired with one arm missing.
"That's enough," Chen said quietly.
Marcus turned to him, still furious. "She's useless! She doesn't DO anything! She just takes food and water and—"
"I said that's enough."
Marcus stared at Chen for a long moment. Then he let go of Eun's collar.
She hit the ground. Her jaw shifted wrong when she landed. She could feel it. Something was badly broken.
She tried to say thank you to Chen, but it came out garbled. Her mouth wasn't working right.
Marcus spit on her.
It hit her face, warm and wet.
"My son," he said. His voice was different now quieter, but worse somehow. Worse than the shouting. "My son lost his arm three months ago. Saving someone like you. He was A-rank before. Good awakener. Then he dropped to D-rank because of what happened. Two weeks ago, he died fighting a spider. A regular spider. Because he was too weak."
His voice broke. He was crying now, tears running down his face, mixing with sweat and rage.
"That's your fault. You're the reason he's dead."
He walked away. Left Eun bleeding on the concrete.
Hours passed. Or maybe it was just minutes. Time felt weird.
The shelter started to organize itself. The guild's operational structure kicked in. People who could move helped carry the dead to a corner, covering them with cloth. People cleaned the blood off the floors with the disinfectant they couldn't spare. But it had to be done. The shelter had protocols. Systems. Even in collapse, society tried to maintain order.
Director Kim stood in the center of the main hall. She'd been a guild administrator before everything went wrong. Now she was the closest thing they had to a leader.
"Gather around," she called out. "We need to organize tasks based on awakened abilities."
People gathered. There were maybe two hundred people in the shelter. All awakened except for one: Eun.
Director Kim started assigning. "Those with combat abilities: monster patrol. Defend the perimeter. Shifts of four hours. Those with hunting or tracking abilities: resource gathering runs outside. Those with utility abilities: scavenging, repair work, maintenance." She paused. "The rest children, the elderly, pregnant women, the non-awakened and you maintain the shelter. Cook. Clean. Medical support. Inventory."
She didn't look at the non-awakened as she said it, treating them like equipment she was assigning to stations.
"We're low on supplies," she continued. "I need the logistics team to do a full count. Food. Water. Medicine. Everything. I want numbers by nightfall."
Some people left to do the count. The shelter quieted down a bit, less chaotic. People knew what their jobs were now.
Eun sat against the wall where she'd been left, jaw throbbing, not moving.
An hour later, the storage team came back. Director Kim gathered everyone again.
"We have two weeks of food if we ration carefully," the logistics lead, Park, said. "Maybe three if we cut portions significantly. Water is better; we have the tanks. Medicine is limited. We're almost out of antibiotics. Bandages are running low."
Director Kim's face was tight, cold. She stared at the numbers for a long moment, and Eun could see her doing the math in her head. Two hundred people. Two weeks of food. That was the equation. The problem with no good solution.
"Two weeks," she repeated quietly. "With almost two hundred people."
She was quiet for a long time. Everyone was quiet. Everyone understood. Starvation. Slow death. The kind where you watched people get weaker and weaker until they just stopped.
"We need to make cuts," Director Kim said finally. Her voice was flat. Clinical. Like she was discussing logistics, not deciding who lived and who died. "We can't afford to feed people who don't contribute. That's not cruelty. That's survival mathematics. We survive, or we don't."
Murmuring started through the crowd. Some people nodded. Others looked away. But no one spoke up. No one challenged her. Everyone understood the logic, even if it made them sick.
"We need to vote," Director Kim said. She looked around the gathered people. Her eyes finally landed on Eun, sitting against the wall, her face broken and bleeding.
"All those in favor of exiling non-essential personnel those without awakened power or combat skills?"
Hands went up. One after another. A wave of raised arms.
"All opposed?"
A few hands: Chen's, the young medic who helped Susie sometimes, a couple of other people. Not many.
"Then it is decided," Director Kim said. "All non-awakened personnel are hereby exiled from the shelter, effective immediately. We do not have the resources to maintain them. This is a survival decision."
A survival decision. That was how they would justify it, Eun realized. Not cruelty. Not abandonment. Just logic. Just survival. Just the mathematics of a world where only the useful lived.
She turned away from the shelter and started walking.
Her feet just carried her forward, into the dark. Away from the only place that had been even a little bit safe. The ground was broken concrete with weeds coming up through the cracks. In the distance, she could hear roaring sounds of monsters. Things that had once been animals before the Rift had twisted them into weapons.
She kept walking anyway. One foot in front of the other. The cold bit at her exposed skin. Her broken face throbbed with every step. The pain was immense as universe unto itself. But she didn't cry out. Couldn't. Her jaw wouldn't cooperate.
She didn't know where she was going or what she was supposed to do now. She just knew she had to keep moving. Had to get away from that metal door and the people behind it. Had to find somewhere else to be, even if that somewhere was just dead in a ditch somewhere in the dark.
The night was black. So black she could barely see the ground in front of her feet. But she walked into it anyway and didn't stop. Didn't look back. Didn't let herself think about what she'd left behind in that shelter . the only life she'd known for almost a decade.
Marcus's words echoed in her head. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
Maybe he was right. Maybe if she'd just had some kind of power, any power at all, Min-jun would still be alive. Maybe if she was useful, if she'd been awakened like everyone else, she wouldn't be walking alone into a forest full of monsters.
But she wasn't useful. She wasn't awakened. She was just Eun. Non-awakened. Invisible. Useless.
And now she was alone in the dark, with only the sound of her own breathing and the distant roars of things that wanted to kill her.
She kept walking anyway.