I never thought much about life. Not because it was too deep to understand—but because mine barely felt like one.
I existed in a small room made of cracked walls, the kind that peeled paint like shedding skin. A bed without a mattress, a table with uneven legs, electricity that came and went like it was a visitor and not a right. I wasn't poor enough to ask for help, but never lucky enough to escape. Just a young adult drifting through days like they were gray clouds—noticeable but pointless.
No dreams. No goals. Just work, eat, sleep, repeat. A perfect machine designed to accomplish nothing.
I remember that night clearly, though I didn't know it'd be my last. Rain hammered the roof like it was trying to break inside. I sat on the floor, eating noodles that tasted like salt and disappointment. My phone screen glowed with job rejections, debts piling like trash, and a message from a landlord reminding me that existence had a price.
Nothing dramatic happened. No betrayal, no love lost, no villain of destiny. Just a twenty-something nameless person breathing in a world too busy to notice.
I thought people needed a purpose to die. Turns out, death needs no reason.
I felt a pressure in my chest, like something was squeezing me from inside. Slow, heavy. My vision blurred. Heart attack? Maybe. I didn't know. I didn't care. I didn't dare to scream. There was no one to hear it anyway.
No last words escaped me—what would I even say?
I didn't fight. I didn't resist. It didn't feel worth it.
A cold numbness crawled through me, claws digging into my ribs until everything stopped hurting. My hand fell off the phone screen as if deciding to rest before I did. And just like that, my existence shut down quietly, routine even in death.
No grand farewell. No cinematic rain. Just darkness.
When consciousness returned, it wasn't like waking up. It was like drowning upward. Air stabbed into my lungs like needles, raw and burning. My body shook violently, as though every part of me had to remember being alive. I tried to scream, but only a shrill wail escaped, high-pitched and rough.
Light hurt. Sound hurt. Breathing hurt.
Hands—rough ones—grabbed me. A voice snarled something strange and sharp. Another one shouted back. Torches flickered in the dim cave like dying stars. Then warmth, thick and humid, surrounded me. It smelled like mud, blood, and rot. Something pressed against my head, wiping mucus and slime from my skin.
That's when I felt it.
My body was too small. My limbs short. Teeth sharp like needles, gums aching. My skin wasn't skin anymore. It was coarse, wrinkled, and tinted a sickly gray-green.
I didn't understand the language snapping above me, but it wasn't animal-like. It was structured—harsh, fast, full of meaning I couldn't yet decode.
Four goblins stood around the small creature, their faces twisted—not with tenderness, but instinct. Goblins did not celebrate birth. They measured survival.
One goblin, older, scars crisscrossing his chest, examined the newborn with an appraiser's cold eyes. This was Karag, the tribe's elder and war-leader.
"He lives," Karag declared in their rough tongue. "He has strong lungs. That is enough."
The mother lay exhausted on a slab of hide. She pushed the newborn with the back of her hand, forcing it to root for milk. Survival was taught from the first breath.
The child fed. Not because he knew what to do, but because hunger commanded him.
I didn't know anything. I didn't understand anything. But I felt everything.
The hunger.
The cold.
The instinct.
My body moved before thought did. I latched onto milk, choking on it, coughing, latching again. Something inside me wanted life harder than I ever had before. Not because I dreamed of a future. Not because I wanted revenge, glory, or a second chance.
Just because my body refused to die again.
That alone was enough.
As milk hit my stomach like fire, a faint ripple tingled through me. Not a voice. Not a system. Just a whisper of sensation, like the world acknowledging me.
[Instinct Awakened]
I didn't know what it meant. I only knew that for the first time, living wasn't a question—it was an order.
The life I never fought for before… had decided to fight on its own now.