I didn't move first.
The silhouettes did.
Slow. Deliberate. Every step pressing on the warped air like they were bending reality around them.
And then—the thing inside me stepped forward.
Not me. Not my conscious will. Something older, sharper, alive in a way that made my skin crawl and my chest tighten.
I felt it everywhere. My limbs, my heartbeat, my thoughts—all snapped into a singular rhythm. Not instinct. Not awareness. Pure response.
The largest figure stepped close, towering over me. The air between us shimmered, heavy, almost liquid. Its hand stretched out toward me.
And that's when my body moved.
I didn't think. I didn't plan. I didn't even breathe consciously. My muscles tightened. My feet slid, my hands lifted, and everything happened before I realized I was moving.
I struck first.
Not like a human strike. Not like something measured or careful.
A pulse. A shove of force that bent the air in a cone from my chest outward.
The silhouette staggered back. Not knocked over. Not even slowed. But the pressure… the pressure around it snapped. The world around me warped. The floor cracked. Dust swirled, lifting into miniature tornadoes as reality itself seemed to stretch.
The humming in my chest became louder. I realized it wasn't a sound—it was a resonance. My body resonating with space itself.
I struck again. My hands moved almost independently. Fists, elbows, a sweep of my legs—each motion precise, yet wild, powered by something I hadn't known existed.
The stranger's eyes widened, jaw tight.
"I've never seen anyone—anyone—do that on the first awakening!"
The silhouettes circled, faster now, pressing in, warping the hallway, bending the air.
I felt them. Every one of them. Their intent, their hunger, their awareness of me. But the thing inside me—I—was faster. Sensing, predicting, reacting, anticipating.
I felt every molecule in the room as if it were part of my own body. The wall, the floor, the air—they weren't separate. They answered me.
And I realized: I wasn't fighting them. I was becoming them.
A sharp scream tore from one of the figures. Not sound. Not vocal. A distortion that rattled the edges of my perception.
I blinked. The world slowed. The stranger staggered, grabbing a support beam to steady himself.
"Control it!" he shouted. "Whatever's inside you—control it!"
I tried. I really tried.
But the thing inside me wasn't mine to control anymore. It was older, bigger, sharper. It knew the silhouettes. Knew what they would do before they did it.
And it reacted.
The largest figure lunged, and space folded beneath it. It wasn't moving fast—it was moving wrong. And my body, without my thinking, twisted around the attack. My hand pressed out—and the air split, not like wind, but like solid, bending like soft metal. The figure faltered, recoiled, its momentum broken.
The other two advanced. I struck again, and the resonance in my chest exploded outward, bending the hallway, warping the walls. Dust and plaster lifted like smoke. The stranger was thrown back a step, eyes wide, silent awe and terror mixing.
I realized, in that instant, that the thing inside me… wasn't just instinct.
It wasn't just awareness.
It wasn't just a memory.
It was everything.
Everything I had been, everything I could be, everything I was meant to be—and it had decided, fully, that tonight, I would survive.
The silhouettes staggered back. Not destroyed. Not broken. But cautious. Respectful. Aware.
And then I heard it—soft, patient, unmistakable.
"…finally awake…"
My chest heaved. My vision sharpened. My hands glowed faintly, almost imperceptibly, the air around them shimmering like heat haze.
The stranger stumbled closer. "Arin… what the hell… are you?"
I didn't answer.
I didn't need to.
Because the world had already answered for me.
And the hunters—they weren't just hunters anymore.
They were prey.