The fluorescent lights of the Hunter Association's medical bay buzzed like dying insects above Min-ho's head, each erratic flicker driving sharp needles of pain through his skull like ice picks finding bone. Three days had crawled by since the massacre in the C-rank gate—three endless days of lying in this sterile white tomb while doctors poked and prodded at wounds that had mysteriously knitted themselves back together faster than human flesh should dare. The antiseptic smell seared his nostrils with chemical precision, but underneath that clinical assault lurked something else—the metallic tang of spilled blood that never seemed to wash away, no matter how many times he'd scrubbed his hands raw until the skin cracked and wept.
"Kang Min-ho?" A woman's voice sliced through the haze of his thoughts, crisp and professional as a scalpel cutting flesh. "I'm Inspector Yoo Hana from the Association's Investigation Bureau."
Min-ho turned his head slowly, wincing as his neck protested the movement with a symphony of grinding vertebrae. The woman standing beside his bed wore a tailored black suit that whispered of authority and government funding, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun that emphasized the razor-sharp angles of her face. Her posture spoke of military training—spine straight, feet positioned for quick movement, one hand resting casually near the concealed weapon he could sense beneath her jacket. But it was her eyes that made his stomach clench like a fist—intelligent, calculating, the kind that dissected lies and catalogued secrets with surgical precision.
"I know this is difficult," she continued, pulling out a sleek tablet and stylus with movements that suggested she'd done this dance a thousand times before. Her fingers moved with practiced efficiency across the screen. "But I need to go over the incident report one more time. There are... discrepancies that require clarification."
The word hung in the air like a blade poised to fall, its weight pressing against Min-ho's chest. He forced his expression to remain neutral, even as something cold and alien unfurled in the depths of his ribcage like smoke given form. *She knows.* The thought whispered through his mind in a voice that wasn't quite his own, carrying undertones of shadow and hunger that made his skin crawl with invisible insects.
"I already told the other investigators everything I remember," he said, proud that his voice emerged steady despite the tremor threatening to crack it. His fingers worried at the edge of the hospital blanket. "The shadow wolves were stronger than expected. My team... they didn't make it out."
Inspector Yoo's stylus tapped against her tablet in a steady rhythm that set his teeth on edge like nails on glass. Her head tilted slightly—a predator studying wounded prey. "Yes, about that particular detail. According to our comprehensive records, those shadow wolves were classified as mid-tier C-rank monsters. Standard pack hunters with predictable behavioral patterns." Her eyes fixed on his, unblinking as a snake's. "Your team leader, Park Sung-min, was an experienced C-rank hunter with over fifty successful raids under his belt. The other members were all D-rank or higher, seasoned professionals who'd survived encounters with far worse." She paused, letting the implication settle like poison in water. "You were the only E-rank in the group."
Min-ho's hands clenched the hospital sheets, knuckles white as bone against the pale fabric. The cotton felt rough beneath his palms, each thread a tiny anchor to reality. "I got lucky. Found a place to hide while they fought. Sometimes that's all survival comes down to—being in the right place when everything goes to hell."
"For six hours?" The question struck him like a physical blow, each word weighted with suspicion.
Six hours. That's how long the gate had remained active before the emergency response team arrived to find him unconscious among the corpses, blood painting abstract patterns across stone walls. Six hours that he couldn't fully account for, filled with fragments of memory that felt more like fever dreams than reality—shadow and starlight dancing together, contracts written in blood and darkness, a presence vast and terrible offering him power beyond imagining in exchange for... what? The details slipped away like smoke whenever he tried to grasp them.
"I must have passed out from blood loss," he mumbled, not meeting her gaze. His fingers found a loose thread on the blanket and worried it until it came free. "Head trauma can cause memory gaps, right? That's what the doctors said."
Inspector Yoo made a note on her tablet, the scratching sound unnaturally loud in the small room's oppressive silence. Her expression remained professionally neutral, but he caught the slight tightening around her eyes. "The medical team found something particularly interesting when they brought you in. Your mana signature has changed dramatically. It's stronger now. More... complex. Layered in ways that shouldn't be possible."
Ice flooded Min-ho's veins, each heartbeat pumping liquid nitrogen through his arteries. Mana signatures were like fingerprints—unique to each individual and supposedly impossible to alter without catastrophic magical intervention. If they'd detected fundamental changes in his...
*Tell her nothing.* The voice in his head surged stronger now, accompanied by the phantom sensation of claws scraping against the inside of his skull like fingernails on a chalkboard. *She seeks to cage us. To study us like laboratory specimens. To dissect what we have become.*
"That's impossible," Min-ho said aloud, though he wasn't entirely sure if he was responding to the inspector or the thing whispering poison in his thoughts. "E-rank hunters don't just suddenly get stronger. Everyone knows the rankings are fixed at awakening."
"No," Inspector Yoo agreed, her smile sharp as broken glass and twice as dangerous. "They don't." She tucked the tablet under her arm and straightened her jacket with military precision. "You're cleared for discharge, Mr. Kang. But I'll be in touch very soon. The Association takes a very keen interest in... anomalies. Especially ones that survive when they shouldn't."
The word followed her out of the room like a curse, echoing off the sterile walls.
Min-ho waited until her footsteps faded completely down the hallway before allowing himself to breathe properly. His reflection stared back at him from the darkened window—pale, hollow-eyed, looking every inch the traumatized survivor he was supposed to be. But for just a moment, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he could have sworn his eyes flashed crimson like dying embers.
The discharge process devoured another hour of paperwork and stern warnings about mandatory psychological counseling that he had absolutely no intention of attending. By the time Min-ho stepped out into Seoul's perpetual haze of smog and neon, the sun had already begun its descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of rust and amber that reminded him uncomfortably of dried blood on concrete.
His phone buzzed with a message from the Association's job board—new gate alerts flooding in faster than the system could process them. Seven C-rank gates had materialized across the city in the past twenty-four hours alone, an unprecedented surge that had the hunter community buzzing with nervous energy and wild speculation. The news feeds were calling it a "mana storm," some kind of natural fluctuation in the dimensional barriers between worlds.
But Min-ho knew better. He could feel it in the spaces between his thoughts, in the way shadows seemed to reach toward him with grasping fingers. Something was stirring in the darkness beyond the gates, something that recognized the power now flowing through his veins like liquid night.
*They call to us,* the shadow wolf's voice purred in his mind, no longer bothering to disguise itself as his own thoughts. *Our siblings in the dark places. They know what we have become.*