Dread

The shriek split the dark like a blade, too sharp, too sudden—and something was already coming, something fast and heavy and wrong.

Leon's breath caught before he knew why. His body stiffened, eyes snapping wide as the thing burst from the black, too fast to track, too real to be memory.

C-Class? Here?

No time to think. Just the gut-drop of recognition, like stepping into a fall you couldn't stop. That iron hide, the weight behind its charge, the sound of bone folding under pressure—he remembered all of it. That time, he'd barely lived. If not for the Cursed Sword, for that one burst of stolen power, he wouldn't have made it out at all.

And this time… the Sword was silent.

The beast was close now. Too close.

He stood frozen. If he didn't move, maybe it wouldn't see him—like a kid in the dark, hiding behind nothing. His teeth chattered, too loud, too sharp. It gave him away.

And all he could do now was hide his heart in the trembling.

Small. Sharp. Rising like a scream that never made it past his throat.

It wasn't just fear. It was rage, too. And panic. And defiance. All of it tangled, all of it shaking inside one failing breath.

The blade jerked upward in his grip—no form, no edge, no control. It flailed through the dark like a toy in a child's hand, reckless and blind, every motion a panic-reflex dressed up as intent.

He stopped breathing without realizing it.

The Cursed Sword was still lodged deep, sunk to the hilt in the creature's chest. It twitched once—shoulders seizing, eyes wide and glassy—then crumpled—like a story with its ending torn out.

Dead weight. No resistance. No sound.

His arm refused to steady, the nerves still twitching with some leftover signal the fight had already ended.

Blood clung to his knuckles, tacky and warm. The air pressed down with sweat, iron, and the kind of fear that lingers too long. It stuck to his tongue. Lingered in the air between breaths, too thick to swallow.

"I… won?" He didn't believe it. Not really.

He stared at the blade, at the dark smear that still clung to the steel, widening slow as if time hadn't caught up with what just happened.

It didn't feel like victory. Not even close.

The body lay still, too still, and something in him recoiled—not from what it was, but from how easily it had fallen.

That thing hadn't moved like a real C-class. It didn't strike with the weight, the instinct, the purpose he remembered.

And when the blade sank in… it hadn't resisted. It had opened up like wet cloth.

His brows furrowed.

No way. That thing… that wasn't a Shadowbeast. Not a proper one.

Its claws were sharp, sure. But the skin was soft. Fragile. It had died too fast.

Then what the hell was I so afraid of?

His throat tightened. Something bitter crept up from his gut.

It hadn't been the beast—not truly. It was the thing behind it. The echo. The memory of pain before it ever landed a blow. He'd seen the way it moved and let his mind do the rest—filled in every gap with ghosts and worst-case endings.

The body hadn't beaten him. But the fear had.

And he'd believed it. Just like that.

He let out a dry laugh. But the laugh didn't last.

Because something else was moving now. Footsteps, low and dragging, closing in from all sides. One. Then two. Then more.

A growl echoed in the dark.

Then another.

Eyes opened around him—dozens, maybe more. All glowing faint, wrong. All watching.

He tensed. Felt the fear try to crawl back in.

No. Not this time.

He forced himself still. Breathed. Remembered the way the last one moved. The stumbles. The clumsy swipes. The shallow angles.

Then he opened his eyes.

[Keen Sight], he whispered.

The darkness peeled back.

And what he saw made his stomach turn—not with fear, but disbelief.

Their movements were sluggish. Their balance was off. Their claws came in crooked, like they didn't even know how to fight properly.

They were monsters, yes—but untrained. Instinctual. Predictable.

Weak.

A crooked smile tugged at his lips—faint, uncertain at first, like he almost couldn't believe how close he'd come to folding under a fear that, in the end, didn't even belong to the thing he fought.

"Yeah," he said under his breath, more to the silence than to anything still breathing. "You had your shot."

He dragged his sleeve across his palm, wiping the blood from his fingers in one motion while his eyes stayed fixed on the shadows ahead, not out of caution, but because something in him had shifted—quiet, steady, and unwilling to flinch the same way twice.

Not again.

Without another word, without waiting for the dread to return, he raised the sword in a single motion that no longer shook, and stepped forward into whatever came next.

Blood sprayed across his knuckles with a wet snap, hot and sharp, and the stench hit him a beat later—thick, coppery, clinging to the back of his throat. The Cursed Sword had driven straight into the beast's chest, deep and final. The giant feline twitched once. Its eyes went wide. Then it dropped.

It died before it even understood it was losing.

Leon's hands still shook—not from pain, not anymore—but from something else, something nameless that clung just beneath the skin, like it hadn't finished with him yet. His breath clawed its way up, thin and jagged, like smoke caught in shattered ribs. Each inhale scratched, each exhale threatened to tear.

The sweat had soaked through the back of his shirt, not hot, not cold, just there—like a second skin clinging to bone. He hadn't noticed when it started. It was as if his body hadn't realized the fight was over, or maybe it had and just didn't care.

The sword in his hand felt heavier now, too heavy, as if it had decided to remind him what it was. The blood dulled the blade like rust on old steel, thick enough to blur its edge under the stuttering light.

He didn't move. Couldn't. His legs were still holding, but barely, and he wasn't sure if it was will or stubborn habit.

That had worked?

No form. No discipline. Just a blind swing born of panic, nothing more than survival dressed up as instinct.

And it had been enough.

He glanced at the corpse—those long claws, that grotesque silhouette. But the hide was soft, disturbingly so. Fragile. Easier than some of the E-classes he'd fought during training exercises, back when the world still made sense.

His mouth went dry. The drumbeat in his chest refused to slow.

"…That was it?" 

The fear remained, but thinner now—like fog after fire, no longer heavy, just present, ghostlike.

It wasn't the creature that had undone him—it was the shape he'd given it. The memory he'd let it wear.

The Cyclops. The shattered ribs. The sound his own bones made when they broke. He'd seen this thing charge and grafted those horrors onto its frame before it had even touched him.

That was the real mistake.

"I wasn't fighting the monster," he said, barely audible. "I was fighting the memory of one."

And all that panic—his shaking hands, the breath he'd held too long—it hadn't belonged to this thing. It had belonged to the one before. The real one. The one that broke him.

A hollow chuckle escaped him. Thin. Crooked. No joy in it—only recognition. Shame, maybe.

Then the air changed.

Low vibrations, barely sound at first. Then a snarl. Then another.

Dozens. All around.

Eyes lit in the dark, rimmed with sickly green or blue or something in between—dozens of them. Maybe more.

Leon stiffened. The fear tried to return, curling up from his gut like smoke.

He wasn't scared of the monster. He was scared of what it reminded him he used to be.

But now he saw them. Really saw them.

The way they moved. The way they breathed. Untrained. Sloppy. Wrong.

He tightened his grip on the sword. His pulse slowed. His feet planted.

"Let's try this again," he muttered, and stepped into the dark.

"Woo—Awoo!"

More eyes lit up in the dark, glowing like embers under wet ash, and the snarls rose with them—low, guttural, a chorus of hunger closing in.

Leon froze for half a second. That chill came back, cold and familiar, creeping through his spine like frost down a cracked wall. It told him to run. To panic. But he didn't move.

Not this time.

A slow breath rattled in his lungs—sharp, deliberate. He let the fear rise, sputter, then sink beneath the weight of something steadier.

Fear was a trick. A lie the dark whispered when you stopped thinking. And he'd believed it once—stumbled in the dark, swinging blind. That wouldn't happen again.

His eyes narrowed.

"Keen Sight."

The skill flicked to life, and the shadows peeled back. Shapes sharpened. Movements slowed. The air stilled, and in that stillness—he saw.

Clumsy steps. Ragged breathing. Their claws swung in lazy, predictable arcs. They weren't fighting. They were flailing. Creatures driven by instinct, not thought. Not tactics. Just hunger.

He blinked. Once.

"...This is what I was afraid of?"

He let go of the tension, and the fear with it. For the first time since it began, he didn't feel like prey.

Not anymore.

The sword rose, slow and deliberate, catching what little light there was. A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth—cold, certain.

"Alright then…" he whispered. "Let's see who owns the dark."

He moved.

One step—then force, sudden and violent, exploded through his legs.

The air cracked. The ground buckled. Silver steel howled through the dark like lightning pulled thin.

Swish—

A head flew clean off. The body dropped without a sound.

He kept moving, not because he meant to, but because there was no thought left to stop him.

Step—cut—turn—pierce.

His blade flashed like a storm trapped in a man's hands.

And still they came.

The beasts snarled in panic now, their eyes wide with something that might have been fear—if they were capable of anything that human.

They knew. The man they'd rushed before was gone.

What stood now was something else.

They howled. Charged. Desperate.

Leon didn't flinch.

He twisted low, blade trailing behind him like a tail of silver fire, and then—

Shhhhrkk!

One clean arc. Two more fell, cleaved apart before they hit the ground.

He moved like a shadow with a pulse, like something that had crawled out of death and kept its hunger.

No hesitation. No mercy.

Only the hunt.

The beast's pupils shrank. Its limbs jerk once—then gave out. The body hit the stone with a sickening thud.

The last one froze. Its eyes flicked to the corpse, and something flickered there—fear, pure and simple. It turned.

Tried to run.

Leon snorted. No words, just a twitch of the wrist.

The Cursed Sword sang.

A flash of steel—clean, final.

The head rolled before the legs gave up. The carcass stumbled two steps and then folded, like something that had finally realized it was dead.

And then there was only silence.

Blood pooled at his feet. Steam rose off the fresh kill. The stench was thick—iron, bile, something too old to name.

Leon didn't move. His fingers stayed wrapped around the sword like it hadn't decided to let go yet.

The cave had gone still. And in that stillness—no fear, no flinch, only clarity.

But as his gaze swept over the bodies, a crease formed between his brows.

"…These things," he muttered, voice low, "something's not the same."

They looked like Shadowbeasts. Moved like them. Fought like them—barely.

But something was off.

They coordinated their approach, but not their blows.

No timing. No formation. Just noise and motion wearing the shape of strategy.

He remembered the way they growled at each other in the dark—short bursts, like signals. Not mindless noise, but pattern. Exchange. Maybe even language.

Lower-class Shadowbeasts didn't do that.

A cold flicker stirred at the edge of thought—uncertainty, slow and creeping.

He crouched beside a corpse, running a hand along the matted fur. The claws were sharp, but the hide wasn't thick. These things shouldn't have been a threat, not even close.

So why had he flinched? Why had they felt so wrong?

Whatever these creatures were…They weren't just Shadowbeasts.

And something told him this wasn't over.

The Cursed Sword should've flared the moment he struck—should've pulled in the dying breath of the Shadowcore like it always did. But nothing happened. The corpse lay still. No reaction. No absorption. No resistance.

He narrowed his eyes, shoved the blade in deeper, angled it toward the chest cavity, slicing through muscle and cartilage straight to where the heart should've been.

"Empty?"

There was nothing. Not even the lingering spark of depleted essence. No warmth. No flicker. Just flesh, blood, and rot. And worse—no trace of magic. Not even a residue. As if the core had never existed to begin with.

This doesn't make sense. Their structure… it's not how a Shadowbeast is supposed to be.

Boot slammed into the next corpse. The blade flashed. Same thing—hollow.

Third. Fourth. Fifth. By the seventh, breath caught tight in his chest. Blood caked his fingers. Sweat clung cold to his back.

All of them.

No Shadowcores.

Not one.

Slowly, he straightened. Grip still locked on the hilt. Eyes scanning the carnage. Dozens of bodies lay crumpled across the cavern floor—shaped like Shadowbeasts. Moved like them. Hunted like them. But nothing about them fit. No core. No reaction.

And those sounds—those growls in the dark. He'd thought they were just noise. But they weren't. They'd had structure. Pattern. Maybe even language.

They weren't feral. But they weren't organized either. Primitive. Instinct-driven. Yet intelligent enough to track, to surround, to hunt.

His pulse thudded harder.

No Shadowcores. No energy signature. No record. No pattern that fit.

Not Shadowbeasts.

Something else.

The word hit him like a dropped weight—heavy, sudden.

Monster.

The term from the letter. A word that had felt… off when he first saw it—too casual, too vague for a hunter's report. Like something scribbled down in passing, not the final thought of a dying man.

He hadn't understood it then. Hadn't taken it seriously.

But now…He took a breath, held it.

What were they eating, if not people? Hunters would've noticed by now. Disappearances, scattered remains, panicked reports—there'd be signs. This place would've been purged, razed, scrubbed from the maps.

But no bones. No blood that wasn't spilled tonight.

They weren't feeding on humans. So what were they feeding on?

He shoved the corpses into his storage ring, every motion quick and silent, then followed the trail—not the one he came from, but the one the creatures had used, faint claw-marks along the stone, dried blood caught in cracks. A pattern worn into the cavern floor.

He moved without sound, blade low, every step laid down like a whisper.

The air was still. Too still.

No wind. No breath. Only the echo of his own footfalls, bouncing back wrong—too soft, too delayed.

Then he saw it.

Something that didn't belong.

Carved. Deliberate. Half-buried at the cavern's edge, crouched in shadow like a secret ashamed of its shape.

Too even. Too clean.

Not shaped by water, or time, or collapse.

He crouched. Ran his fingers along the edge. Smooth—almost unnaturally so.

Made by hands, not by nature.

Human-made. Or something close.

"This place…" he murmured, voice barely above a breath. "It's not just a nest."

He rose, blade ready, and started climbing.

The steps pulled upward at first, climbing into the dark like the spine of something long dead. But after a while, the path began to bend—subtly, gently—then turned down. A curve disguised as ascent.

A trap, maybe. Or something more complex.

His nose caught it first—something metallic, cloying, sweet in a way that didn't belong. Like blood left too long in heat.

Something watched from the dark. He could feel it. Not a presence. Just… a weight. In the air. In his bones.

He pressed on.

The staircase opened. Wider. Higher. The walls no longer echoed his steps in the same way. The sound twisted, warped—less like footsteps, more like… breathing.

Something deep. Not close, not far.

But the vibration was real—trembling up through the stone beneath his feet, too faint for a sound, too steady for a ghost.

Unease crawled up his spine. And yet, part of him hoped the path would bend back—to the chamber of bones, the ruin, the silence he already knew.

Even that place felt safer than whatever waited ahead.

But this wasn't a retreat.

This was a descent.

And just past the bend—too sudden to brace for, too sharp to expect—

a burst of light tore through the dark. Not like fire. Not like day. It was brutal and bright and wrong, like someone had shattered a blade of sun and flung the pieces at the wall.

He staggered, half-turned, eyes burning, air stuck halfway in his chest. The glare was a blade across his vision, clean and merciless, searing out shape and depth until only a smear of pain remained.

It took several breaths—ragged, uneven, pulled through clenched teeth—before the white began to fade, before the world softened enough to be looked at again.

An idea stirred, low and nameless, lodged somewhere between instinct and memory. And with it came a shape, dragging itself out of the dark.

Nothing about it was clear. But it was there.

A door. Or the shape of one.

Not real—nothing he could name. No handle. No hinge. Not even seams.

Just two upright slabs of stone or metal or something older, something weightless, and in the space between them, a screen of light. Not warm. Not inviting. Pale and thin, humming with a quiet sort of pressure, the kind that scraped against thought.

It wasn't solid, but it wasn't nothing.

It pulsed, like water disturbed by breath.

And through it—or on it—symbols flickered. Not letters. Not language. Marks that twisted when looked at directly, curling into shapes that didn't belong to hands, didn't belong to time.

Something flickered at the back of his mind—unwanted, uninvited, but already there.

Those creatures. The ones without cores. The ones that should've bled power and didn't. Were they from here?

He felt it in his chest first—not fear, not yet—but something that tightened slowly, like a hand closing over old memory. Not his memory, maybe, but something older. 

It wasn't knowledge he'd learned, but something etched deep—like the memory of childhood carved into bone, always there, but never truly understood.

"Stellar Enclave…" 

It was an intrusion—something foreign, something wrong—and the world had warped to make room for it, like gravity buckling around a wormhole that never stopped feeding.

He'd heard it before. Once in a forgotten ruin. Once from the cracked lips of a scholar dying of internal frost. A space unanchored—outside time, untouched by reiki, beyond the order written into the bones of the world.

He stared at the veil. Light without heat. A shimmer without sound. His grip on the sword tightened.

Curiosity gnawed at him, sharp and insistent. But beneath it, a quieter voice tugged—one that remembered fire licking up his arms, bones splintering under something he hadn't seen coming. The cost of diving in headfirst. He wasn't that man anymore.

Test first.

He crouched, fingers skimming the ground until they found a jagged shard of stone. He flicked it toward the veil. There was no flash, no sound, only the unsettling smoothness of something being erased from the world.

Another. Same result.

A third, with spin this time. Gone.

There was no ripple, no resistance—no sign that it had ever been real at all. Not a wall. Just an absence. Just an opening.

He stepped close, reached out, touched nothing. Not heat. Not chill. No pushback. The air didn't change. The scent of blood and stone remained, unbroken.

But it wasn't right.

Those things—those beasts—no cores. No reiki. No essence for the cursed sword to swallow. No trace left behind, as if they were never really here to begin with.

That veil hadn't just brought them. It had made them.

So what was this, then? A way forward? Or a grave with a glowing door?

He stared too long. Thought too much.

The cursed blade gave a low hum—no warning, no promise, only that cold, expectant silence that asked if he'd take the next step anyway.

He raised it. Touched the tip to the veil.

It passed through, smooth and silent. No heat. No shock. Not even a tingle up the hilt. He turned the blade, pulled it back. No damage. No change. Still cold. Still steel.

Maybe it was safe. Or maybe time hadn't caught up yet.

He exhaled, not quite a sigh.

And then, out of nowhere, came a memory. A scowl. A voice shrieking half in anger, half in worry, half in something else she never wanted to name.

"She's gonna kill me for this," he whispered.

The sword said nothing. But in its silence, he heard the scream anyway.

He stepped toward the veil.

And his figure vanished from the world.