Ji-hu stood at the top of the watchtower with one hand wrapped around the bell rope, staring toward the horizon.
The sky was tearing open again.
Far beyond the farmland, the air twisted and bent like heat over asphalt. A thin crack of purple light spread slowly across the clouds. The colors around it deepened, bleeding into shades that did not belong in this world.
Another Convergence.
Below the tower the settlement had already noticed. Hunters gathered near the main gate while guards shouted across the walls. People dragged carts toward the inner streets, moving quickly but with the strange calm that came from living with danger every day.
Ji-hu did not ring the bell.
Not yet.
The bell meant monsters.
If he rang it too early the whole settlement would panic. If he rang it too late, people would die.
So he watched.
Wind passed through the tower, shaking the old wooden beams. Ji-hu leaned against the railing and narrowed his eyes toward the distant distortion. The Convergence was still forming. The tear in the sky widened slowly, spilling dim purple light across the clouds.
Then the mark on his arm burned.
Ji-hu pulled his sleeve up instinctively.
Black lines curved across his forearm, forming an intricate pattern that looked more like a brand than a scar. The mark had been there for three years. Most of the time it did nothing. Now it pulsed with heat beneath his skin.
He had felt it before.
Every time a Convergence appeared, the mark reacted.
But this time the heat was stronger.
It spread slowly through his arm, deeper than usual, as if something beneath the skin had stirred.
Below the tower a hunter looked up.
Hunter: Watcher! Anything yet?
Ji-hu forced his voice steady.
Ji-hu: Just the Convergence.
Hunter: Then keep watching.
The hunters moved out through the gate a moment later, running toward the distant tear in the sky. Fire flickered across one man's hands as he moved. Another lifted a slab of stone from the ground and tossed it aside without slowing.
Hunters.
Three years ago they had been ordinary people.
Now they carried abilities that broke every rule nature had ever followed. Fire, lightning, unnatural strength, strange powers that appeared after the First Minute.
Governments had collapsed when it happened. The ones that survived rebuilt around the awakened. Guilds formed. Ranks were created. Hunters became the shield that stood between humanity and the monsters appearing through the rifts.
Ji-hu was not one of them.
He was a watcher.
The lowest job left.
His duty was simple. Sit in the tower. Watch the horizon. Ring the bell if monsters came too close.
That was all.
Another hunter passed below the tower and glanced upward.
Hunter: Hey watcher.
Ji-hu didn't answer.
Hunter: Ever going to come down and fight?
Laughter followed the question.
Hunter: Didn't think so.
They continued toward the gate, their voices fading into the noise of the settlement.
Ji-hu looked away.
He had stopped caring about that kind of thing long ago.
The mark burned again.
Ji-hu pressed his fingers against the lines on his arm, feeling the heat pulse once more. It had been reacting to Convergences since the night it appeared, though he still had no idea why.
He lifted his eyes toward the sky.
The Rift stretched across the heavens above everything else. Even in daylight it was impossible to miss. A vast scar of color that bled faint purple and green light through its edges.
Three years.
Three years since the sky had torn open.
Three years since the First Minute.
Three years since the world changed.
Ji-hu flexed his fingers slowly.
His hands were empty.
No lightning.
No fire.
No strength beyond what a normal man could manage.
Three years had passed and he still had not awakened.
His sister had.
Hana.
The youngest S-rank hunter in history.
Her face appeared on screens across the country. Guild leaders competed for contracts just to place her name beside theirs. Hunters spoke about her with quiet respect.
Ji-hu had not seen her in months.
S-rank hunters did not stay in small settlements.
They protected entire regions.
The mark burned again.
Ji-hu frowned and looked toward the distant Convergence.
A memory surfaced, pulled forward by the heat spreading through his arm.
Cold water.
Blood in the dark.
His sister calling his name.
The night the world ended.
---
Three years earlier.
---
The car moved along a mountain road as evening sunlight filtered through the trees. Ji-hu sat in the passenger seat scrolling through his phone while his father focused on the road ahead. In the back seat Hana leaned forward between the seats while their mother rested against the window.
Hana: You're ignoring me.
Ji-hu didn't look up.
Ji-hu: I'm enjoying the silence.
Hana kicked his seat.
Hana: You're boring.
Dad sighed.
Dad: Both of you quiet. I'm driving.
Mom laughed softly.
Mom: Leave your brother alone.
It was an ordinary evening.
The kind people forgot as soon as it passed.
Then the sky tore open.
A jagged crack appeared in the air ahead of them. Purple and green light spilled through it like something leaking into the world. Above it, higher than the clouds, something far larger began to form.
Their father slammed the brakes.
The road changed.
Black asphalt twisted into dark red stone that steamed like it had been pulled from a furnace. The car flipped violently, metal screaming as glass exploded across the road.
Ji-hu's head struck the door.
The world spun.
When the car finally stopped it hung halfway over a cliff.
Below them dark water waited.
The engine caught fire.
Ji-hu tried to move and felt metal pinning his leg against the frame.
Ji-hu: Hana!
She was in the back seat, bleeding but conscious.
Ji-hu: Get out!
The car tilted forward slightly.
Hana kicked the door.
It did not move.
She kicked again.
Still stuck.
Ji-hu shouted.
Ji-hu: Again!
The third kick burst the door open.
Hana looked back at him, terrified.
Ji-hu: Go!
She jumped.
The car tipped.
Then dropped into the water.
Cold darkness swallowed everything.
Ji-hu pulled at the twisted metal trapping his leg. It would not move. His lungs burned as the car sank deeper. He pulled harder despite the tearing pain running through his leg.
Something gave.
Not the metal.
His own muscle.
He did not stop.
The metal bent just enough for him to drag his leg free. Ji-hu kicked through the shattered window and forced himself upward through the black water.
Hands grabbed his collar.
Hana.
She dragged him to the surface.
They clung to floating wreckage, coughing and gasping. The car had already disappeared beneath the water.
Their parents were still inside.
Ji-hu opened his mouth to speak.
Then the water churned.
Something rose from below.
It looked like a wolf at first, but the details were wrong. Scales covered its body instead of fur. Yellow eyes glowed through the darkness and its jaws opened sideways like broken machinery.
One of its legs was missing.
It was injured.
The creature lunged.
Ji-hu grabbed a jagged piece of metal from the wreckage and threw himself between it and Hana. The creature slammed into him, claws tearing across his chest while its jaws snapped inches from his face.
He swung the metal.
Missed.
He swung again.
The blade drove into its side and black blood spilled into the water. The creature bit his shoulder, shaking him violently, but Ji-hu stabbed again and again until the creature stopped moving.
Even then he did not stop immediately.
Not until he was certain.
That was when the mark burned into his arm.
Black lines carved themselves across his skin like living ink. The mark pulsed once before fading into a dark pattern that never disappeared.
The entire disaster had lasted less than a minute.
The First Minute.
---
Ji-hu stood in the watchtower again.
The mark burned on his arm.
Below him the hunters had already disappeared beyond the walls, moving toward the distant Convergence. The tear in the sky widened slowly, purple light spreading across the clouds.
Ji-hu looked down at the mark.
For three years it had reacted whenever a Convergence appeared.
But today the burning felt stronger.
Stronger than it had ever been before.
He lowered his sleeve slowly and looked back toward the sky.
The Rift stretched across the heavens, glowing faintly above the world it had changed forever.
And somewhere beyond the horizon another Convergence was opening.
The mark pulsed again.
Hot.
Alive.
And for the first time in three years, Ji-hu had the feeling that something had just begun.