It was an ordinary day.
Or at least, that was how it seemed at first.
We had agreed to meet at the Mercenary Guild, just as we always did on days without any clear missions—those days when you needed to sit down with the people you fought alongside and calmly evaluate what came next.
There was nothing unusual about it.
No tension leading up to it.
No excitement driving it forward.
Just another routine we had repeated so many times that it had become part of life’s rhythm here.
But when we arrived…
The atmosphere was different.
The guild was usually filled with a very specific kind of life.
Not the calm, orderly kind, but a noisy, tangled one: deals being struck amid loud voices, arguments ending in laughter or a punch, mercenaries bragging about their latest jobs to anyone willing—or unwilling—to listen.
Constant movement.
Overlapping conversations.
That ever-present feeling that something was always happening somewhere.
Today…
None of that was there.
The mercenaries were scattered across the tables in a state of exhausted lethargy.
Some were slumped over their arms, heads buried in the small darkness created by their own embrace.
Others stared blankly into space with lifeless eyes.
A few sat without speaking or moving, like statues carefully placed on chairs.
Even those known for never shutting up or sitting still…
Were silent.
They weren’t asleep.
They were simply too bored to talk.
And that kind of boredom was unsettling in its own way.
It wasn’t the restfulness of someone who had earned a break.
It was the heaviness of someone with nothing to do, a weight pressing on their chest that they couldn’t shake off.
The receptionists behind their desks didn’t look any better.
Their expressions carried the quiet boredom of people waiting for something to happen while already knowing deep down that nothing would.
It was the first time I had ever seen the guild like this.
A place I had always known to be overflowing with life now seemed…
As though it was breathing on the bare minimum.
We took our usual seats at the far end of the hall, away from the other groups—the corner we had chosen from the beginning because it allowed us to speak without our words belonging to anyone but ourselves.
Karl lounged comfortably in his chair, arms folded behind his head, his eyes lazily wandering across the faces of the other mercenaries.
Jin slowly rubbed his thumb against the tabletop.
Noor sat upright, her gaze calm with the sort of composure that always preceded careful analysis.
And Amy sat beside me, quietly watching the entrance.
Then I noticed something.
Mary.
She was sitting with us.
Not behind her desk.
Not sorting through paperwork.
Not giving instructions or reviewing reports.
She was here.
At our table.
There was something on her face that I couldn’t quite name.
But it definitely wasn’t a smile.
That alone was enough to tell me this day wasn’t ordinary.
Silence lingered for a few moments.
Then Mary broke it.
“This place is really depressing today…”
Her voice was calm, but there was restrained irritation beneath it.
“It’s strange.”
Amy responded immediately, as though she’d been waiting for the opening.
“It’s like this most of the time lately…
but today’s a special case.
The Provincial Lord ordered everyone to stay out of the Western Forest.”
I paused.
The Western Forest.
The name alone made me raise my head.
“Why would they suddenly ban access without any warning?”
It wasn’t mere curiosity.
There was necessity behind the question.
The Western Forest wasn’t just a forest.
It was a source of income.
A source of missions.
A source of training.
Closing it meant freezing a huge portion of every mercenary’s livelihood in this city.
That explained what we were seeing.
Mary answered carefully, as if selecting each word before speaking.
“The forest’s atmosphere has been suspicious these past few days.”
She paused.
Then added,
“The monsters have been behaving strangely…
with an unnatural level of coordination.
There haven’t been many incidents, but what we’ve seen is enough to raise serious concerns.”
Something froze inside my thoughts.
“Coordination…?”
The word didn’t fit what I knew about monsters.
Monsters moved through instinct.
Need.
Hunger.
Some naturally hunted in packs, like wolves or ghouls.
But coordination…
Not in the sense Mary meant.
That was something entirely different.
And then…
The memory returned.
Not as an image.
As a feeling.
A complete sensation rising suddenly from a place deep within me that I had thought I’d sealed away.
The day of the wolves.
We had killed them all. Get faster updates on g.com.
The battle had ended.
Massive gray bodies lay scattered across the ground.
The chill of the forest had begun creeping back into the air after being driven away by the heat of combat.
I had been trying to breathe.
Trying to return to normal.
My ability had still been partially active—that state between full activation and complete shutdown, that delicate moment when everything became unnaturally clear.
And in that exact moment…
I felt it.
From deep within the forest.
From somewhere impossibly far away.
A place neither sight nor sound could reach.
Yet it reached me.
It passed through the trees, through the distance, through everything separating us.
Like an invisible wave.
It wasn’t ordinary fear.
It wasn’t the kind of fear that came from seeing danger in front of you and needing to react.
It was something deeper.
Heavier.
As though something in the darkness had looked in my direction.
I couldn’t see it.
But I could feel the weight of its gaze against my skin.
Dread.
Not the dread of a soldier facing an enemy he understood.
The dread of a human standing before something that didn’t fit into any category he knew.
And that thing…
Was alive.
Organized.
Thinking.
I felt my hand tremble slightly atop the table.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath before opening them again.
Everyone was talking.
But my own thoughts were louder.
Noor was explaining something, and I noticed she was watching me from the corner of her eye while she spoke.
That silent attentiveness was one of the things that set her apart from everyone else.
“Wars leave behind countless corpses.
Even when they’re buried, monsters often dig them up and feed on them.”
Her voice remained calm and controlled as always, yet it conveyed the danger without any need for exaggeration.
“When monsters gorge themselves on enough flesh, they become stronger and more dangerous.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“And in the worst cases…
they evolve.”
Evolve.
The word landed heavily.
Not merely a growth in size or strength.
Something deeper.
A transformation.
As though a creature crossed beyond the limits imposed upon it and became something entirely different.
Then she added, her seriousness making the air itself feel heavier.
“A Monster Wave occurs when a monster evolves into a Catastrophe-Class creature.”
Silence.
Complete.
Absolute.
Even the sounds of the guild around us suddenly seemed farther away.
Noor looked at us and continued in a measured voice.
“It will be intelligent.”
“Powerful.”
“And capable of controlling and directing other monsters.”
She paused.
Then said:
“And once its evolution is complete, it begins a campaign to exterminate the nearest human settlement.”
No one spoke.
But everyone understood.
The city.
This city.
Us.
I couldn’t stay silent any longer.
“I felt it…”
Everyone turned toward me at the same moment.
But I continued before I could reconsider.
“That day…
during the wolf mission…
after we killed them, before my ability completely faded…”
I paused, searching for words to describe something that resisted description.
“I felt an overwhelming presence coming from deep within the forest.
It was unbelievably far away…”
My throat tightened.
“But even at that distance, it shook me to my core.”
I swallowed.
“It didn’t feel like an ordinary monster.”
“It felt like something…
more.”
The silence that followed was different from before.
It wasn’t the silence of listening.
It was the silence of people hearing confirmation of something they had desperately hoped wasn’t true.
Everyone looked at me.
There was a quiet glimmer in Noor’s eyes, as though a missing piece had finally clicked into place.
Amy stared at me, tension hidden beneath her expression.
Jin rested his elbows on the table and slowly interlocked his fingers.
Mary watched me with the gaze of someone evaluating rather than reacting.
And Karl…
Karl was the first to speak.
His voice was calm.
Steady.
Different from his usual sarcastic confidence.
“Maybe you’re right.”
“And maybe you’re wrong.”
He looked directly at me.
“But don’t forget.”
“This city is protected by a Grand Knight.”
His gaze widened to include all of us.
“If it’s a Monster Wave, we mercenaries will only deal with ordinary monsters.
The evolved monsters are the knights’ responsibility.”
His expression hardened.
“And a Catastrophe-Class monster…”
He paused.
“Only the Grand Knight himself could face something like that.”
The words were logical.
Convincing.
Reassuring.
I noticed how everyone received them.
Karl believed what he was saying.
Jin nodded slowly.
Even Amy looked as though a knot inside her chest had loosened a little.
As for me…
I stared down at the table.
Karl’s reasoning was flawless.
The Grand Knight existed.
The city was protected.
The hierarchy of battle was clear and orderly.
Mercenaries had their place.
Knights had theirs.
And the strongest stood above them all.
Everything was where it should be.
But…
That feeling.
That sensation from deep within the forest.
It hadn’t felt like something that cared about anyone’s hierarchy.
It felt like something that didn’t acknowledge hierarchy at all.
I took a long breath.
“You’re right, Karl…”
I said it slowly.
But I never finished the sentence.
Because the rest remained inside me.
And what was inside me was saying something entirely different.
The meeting ended shortly afterward.
There wasn’t much left to discuss when missions were suspended, the forest was sealed off, and all anyone could do was wait.
We dispersed.
Mary returned to her desk.
Karl, Noor, and Jin headed off in their own directions.
Leaving only…
Amy and me.
We walked out of the guild in silence.
The street before us looked completely normal, unaware of what had been discussed inside those walls.
People walked, laughed, argued, shopped.
Life continued as it always had.
But that thing I had felt in the forest…
Hadn’t disappeared.
It was still there.
Somewhere behind my ribs.
Not shouting.
Not rushing.
Just…
Waiting.
Like a sound too low for the ear to hear, yet one the body somehow recognized.
Amy glanced at me as we walked.
“You’re thinking.”
Not a question.
“Yeah.”
“About the same thing?”
“Yeah.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she asked in a calm voice that failed to hide what lay beneath it:
“What exactly did you feel?”
I thought about how to explain it.
“It felt like something…”
I looked ahead.
“Something deep inside that forest knew we were there.”
We stopped together at a crossroads.
“And it didn’t stay still because it couldn’t move.”
My gaze drifted toward the distant horizon where the trees shimmered green beneath the sunlight.
“It stayed still because it wasn’t time yet.”
Amy didn’t answer.
But I saw it in her eyes.
She understood.
And that…
Was what worried me most.
Not the danger itself.
Danger had a name.
Danger could be understood.
No.
It was that final word.
Yet.
Because everything that has a yet also has a before.
And we…
Were living in the before.
And that before…
Had no set date for ending.