Fenrik didn't move for a long time.
Morning light filled his room, warm and normal, spilling across the floor like nothing had ever happened. The ticking of the wall clock felt too loud, too steady—like it was mocking him.
Dungeon.
Bed.
6:01 a.m.
He lifted his right arm slowly.
No axe.
Just skin.
Faint, almost invisible markings ran along his forearm, disappearing when he shifted the light. Fenrik touched them carefully. They didn't hurt. They didn't glow.
But they were there.
"So it wasn't a dream," he murmured.
His left eye felt… strange.
Still blind.
But deeper than before, like something was awake behind the darkness.
Fenrik swallowed and stood up.
College was hell.
Not because of bullies.
Because of sleep.
Fenrik walked through the gates of Kurogane College feeling like his bones were filled with sand. His body was here—but part of him felt like it was still walking those endless stone corridors.
"You look awful."
Fenrik turned. Aiko Mizuhara stood there, adjusting the strap of her bag. She was one of the few people who ever spoke to him without laughing.
"Didn't sleep?" she asked.
Fenrik hesitated. "Something like that."
Aiko studied him for a moment. "You should take care of yourself. You look… thinner."
He forced a small smile. "I'll live."
She didn't look convinced.
As she walked away, Fenrik noticed something odd.
For just a split second—
Her shadow moved half a step slower than she did.
Fenrik blinked.
It was normal again.
"…Great," he muttered. "Now I'm hallucinating too."
Throughout the day, it kept happening.
Not big things.
Small things.
A classroom clock ticking twice on the same second.
A hallway seeming longer than it should be.
Reflections lagging ever so slightly.
Fenrik gripped the edge of his desk, breathing steadily.
The dungeon didn't let go, he realized.
It followed me back.
When his phone buzzed, he flinched.
Unknown Number.
His heart skipped.
He opened it.
Did you feel it last night?
Fenrik's fingers went cold.
He stared at the message, rereading it again and again.
Who sent this?
Before he could reply, another message came.
Never mind. Wrong person.
The chat vanished.
Deleted.
Fenrik sat frozen.
"…I'm not the only one," he whispered.
That night, Fenrik didn't resist.
He turned off the lights and sat on his bed, waiting.
Midnight passed.
Nothing happened.
1:00 a.m.
Still nothing.
Fenrik frowned. "So it's not exact?"
The markings on his arm warmed suddenly.
The room dimmed—not darkened, but thinned, like reality losing focus.
Fenrik clenched his jaw.
"Okay," he said quietly. "I get it."
The world folded.
He stood in the dungeon again.
Same cold stone.
Same silence.
But something had changed.
Torches lit on their own this time, one by one, lighting a different corridor than before. The dungeon wasn't random.
It was guiding him.
Fenrik followed.
As he walked, he noticed carvings along the walls—figures holding different weapons. Not monsters.
People.
Some stood tall. Some knelt. Some were carved mid-fall.
Eleven figures.
Fenrik stopped.
"…Eleven?" he murmured.
One carving stood unfinished.
A wolf-shaped shadow behind a human figure.
Fenrik's chest tightened.
"That's me."
The dungeon didn't deny it.
Far away, something shifted—like a door closing somewhere deeper.
Fenrik exhaled slowly.
"So there are others," he said. "You just won't tell me who."
The axe did not appear.
But the markings on his arm pulsed once.
Agreement.
Fenrik straightened.
"Fine," he said. "Then I'll find them myself."
As if in response, one of the carvings cracked slightly.
Not breaking.
Opening.
A sign.
Not of danger—
—but of direction.
Back in the real world, the moon slipped behind clouds.
And far away, in another place entirely, someone else woke up with a weapon that did not belong to their world.