Juna ran through the trees, and every few steps she had to force herself not to look back because her head still could not make sense of what had happened.
'I was dead,' she thought, feet hitting dirt and roots too fast for her mind to catch up, 'I remember dying, so how am I alive right now?'
The memory came back when she reached for it, blood on her fur and pain tearing through her body while voices shouted around her. She remembered the last part most clearly, that horrible moment when her body stopped listening and the world went dark, so waking up by that camp should not have been possible.
'I just don't understand it,' she thought, vaulting over a fallen branch without slowing down. 'What did that human do?'
Just thinking about him made her chest tighten again, which made her annoyed because what she was feeling was not fear or anything, just this strange pull that kept following her no matter how far she ran.
She pressed a hand against her chest, 'why can I still feel him?' she thought, tears already stinging her eyes. 'What is wrong with me?'
Humans were the ones who killed her family, and the moment that thought hit, her steps went sloppy because the rest of the memory came with it. She saw her mother on the ground again, smelled smoke and blood, heard men shouting while blades flashed through the dark, and this time when her breath broke it did not recover cleanly.
'Humans did that,' she thought, wiping at her face and only smearing tears across it, 'humans took everything from me, so why do I feel tied to one of them now?'
That question made her feel sick, and the sick feeling only got worse the longer she ran because the connection never faded no matter how much distance she put between them.
By the time her legs started to shake, she realized she had not been running anywhere, just away, and those were not the same thing once the panic started wearing thin.
The trees all looked the same now, the ground under her feet meant nothing to her, and when she finally slowed down she could not even tell which direction she had come from.
'Where am I even going?' she thought, stopping at last with tears running freely down her face now, 'what am I supposed to do?'
No answer came, only the sound of her own breathing and that awful steady awareness that the human still existed somewhere behind her.
She lowered herself against a tree, tired from all the running, and once both hands came over her face the crying got worse instead of better.
She stayed there shaking and trying to breathe through it, not even sure why she was crying anymore, there was just too much going on.
It kept going until her face hurt and her breathing started coming out weak. Somewhere in the middle of all that she curled up against the tree and pressed her knees to her chest.
'Why am I back?' she thought, tears still slipping out no matter how many times she wiped at them. 'Why did I come back just to suffer in this world again?'
She did not know how long she stayed like that, only that the crying slowly turned into tired shaking and the shaking turned into nothing because her body finally gave out on her, sleep taking her without permission.
When she opened her eyes again, the first thing she noticed was the smell of food.
The second thing she noticed was the human sitting across from her near a small fire, turning meat over with a stick while the light from the flames moved over his face.
She stiffened instantly and pushed herself up fast, only to stop when something slid off her shoulders and into her lap.
She looked down, seeing a blanket, 'did he cover me up? How did he even find me?' She thought, looking at him with even more suspicion than before.
'Just why is he here, what does he want from me,' she thought, her pulse climbing again while that same strange pull in her chest quietly reminded her she was right, 'and why do I feel so connected to him?'
Her eyes stayed on him while her hand gripped the blanket tightly, and before she could decide whether to run again or ask anything at all, her stomach rumbled so loudly that her face went hot.
Hajin laughed a little when he heard it, not in a cruel way but more like he had been waiting for that to happen, then he lifted the stick a bit and looked at her across the fire.
"So you are awake," he said, turning the meat once before pulling one piece free. "Here, you should eat something."
She kept staring at him.
The food smelled good, too good, which only made her more tense because he was still a human no matter how calm he looked sitting there by the fire.
'How am I supposed to trust him?' she thought, watching his hand hold the meat out toward her, 'humans lie, they smile and then kill you when your guard is down.'
Even so, her stomach kept twisting, the smell making it worse with each passing second, and before she could argue herself out of it she found her body moving forward.
She approached slowly, never taking her eyes off him, then stepped close enough to snatch the meat from his hand and backed away right after.
She went straight back to the tree, sat down and started eating while glaring at him over the food like she expected him to try something the second she looked away.
He watched her for a moment, then looked back at the fire.
'Yeah, she definitely went through something bad with humans,' he thought, listening to the way she tore into the meat while still keeping her whole body tense, 'this is not normal fear.'
His eyes drifted back to the system after that, since he still had no idea what exactly he had summoned, and after fumbling through the menus for a few seconds he found a new tab sitting under his status.
[ Summon Status ]
[ Active Summons: 1 ]
[ Juna ]
He tapped her name.
[ Name: Juna ]
[ Race: Wolf Beastkin ]
[ Rank: 1 Wing ]
[ EXP: 0 / 300,000 ]
[ Stat Multiplier: 1.5x ]
[ Starter Skill: Hunter's Nose ]
[ Bond State: Unstable ]
He stared at the panel for a second.
"One wing?" he said, glancing up at her and then back at the screen. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
The system answered right away.
[ Wing count represents summon evolution stage. ]
[ Each wing is a multiplier on the summon's base capabilities. ]
[ 1 Wing = First evolution stage ]
[ Grants increased physical ability and one starter skill ]
[ Current starter skill: Hunter's Nose ]
He read that once, then again.
'So wings are her rank,' he thought, looking over at Juna while she still ate near the tree, 'and one wing means she already starts stronger than normal.'
More text appeared under the first set.
[ All summons begin at base mortal state after retrieval from the Veil. ]
[ Evolution rebuilds what was lost and opens future growth paths. ]
[ Higher wing counts indicate greater development, not fixed species rank. ]
'I see, that makes more sense,' he thought, looking back at her and smiling nervously, 'though, I have a long way to go before she can even begin trusting me.'