The Instinct to Live
While Ruyi was negotiating her way past the perimeter barricades, three hundred yards deeper inside the misty expanse of the Botanical Gardens, her younger brother was coming to a terrifying realization: running was no longer an option.
The air inside the eastern conservatory was thick with the stench of scorched flora and copper.
Rion panting heavily, his lungs burning with every jagged breath as he pulled his classmate, Leo, behind a thick stone pillar near the exotic fern display. They had been separated from the main tour group twenty minutes ago when the sky cracked open and the first wave of beasts descended upon the park.
"R-Rion... I can't move anymore," Leo sobbed, his legs shaking violently as he collapsed against the damp stone. "My knee is blown out. We're going to die here, man. We're actually going to die."
"Shut up and keep your head down," Rion hissed, wiping sweat and dirt from his forehead. "The responders are outside. We just need to stay hidden until the clearing squad reaches this sector."
He was trying to sound like the confident, collected younger brother Ruyi always sighed at, but his heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He was only seventeen. He was supposed to be taking notes on tropical plant species for an advanced biology project, not playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek with monsters.
A heavy, wet crunch echoed through the foggy corridor of the conservatory.
Rion froze.
From around the corner of the shattered glass display, a creature slunk into view. It wasn't one of the towering, Class-2 alpha beasts that the guild strike teams were currently fighting near the main gate, but to two unawakened high schoolers, it was an absolute nightmare.
It was a Razor-Hide Hound—a twisted, hairless beast the size of a black bear, its skin covered in overlapping plates of bone-like armor, and eyes burning with a sickly yellow glare.
It sniffed the air, its nostrils flaring as it caught the scent of fresh blood from Leo's scraped knee.
"Oh god," Leo whimpered, burying his face in his hands.
The hound's head snapped toward their pillar. With a guttural growl, it lunged, its massive jaws opening to reveal rows of jagged, serrated teeth aimed straight for Rion's throat.
Time seemed to dilate.
Rion stared into the creature's maw, paralyzed by the sheer proximity of death. He saw the saliva flying from its tongue, felt the hot breath rushing against his face, and knew with absolute, blinding certainty that his life was ending right here, on a pile of crushed ferns.
No.
The thought didn't explode in his mind—it solidified. It was the exact same primal, desperate refusal to die that had snapped inside his sister just a week prior. The circumstances were different, their personalities were different, but the shared blood in their veins answered the threat of extinction with the same terrifying instinct: Survive.
Rion threw his hands up defensively, screaming in pure defiance. "GET BACK!"
He didn't channel mana deliberately. He didn't know how. But something deep within his core violently awoke, surging outward through his outstretched palms.
CLANG!
A sound like a heavy iron hammer striking a solid steel anvil echoed through the conservatory.
The Razor-Hide Hound slammed mid-air into an absolute, invisible wall less than three inches from Rion's face. The impact was so violent that the beast's head snapped back, a sickening crack sounding from its snout as blood sprayed across the unseen plane floating in the air.
The hound bounced off the invisible surface and crashed onto the marble floor, shaking its head in dazed confusion.
Rion stumbled back, gasping for air, staring in wide-eyed shock at his own trembling hands, then at the empty space before him. Where the air should have been hollow, a faint, iridescent ripple—like oil sitting on water—flickered briefly before settling into absolute invisibility.
"Wha… What’s going on?" Leo stammered, scrambling backward on his hands and knees in pure bewilderment. He stared at the monster, then at the empty air. "How... why can't it touch us? What did you do?!"
Rion didn't answer. His teeth were clenched so tightly his jaw ached, his entire focus pinned on maintaining the invisible wall standing between them and the beast. He didn't fully understand the mechanics of what he had just pulled out of his own soul, but he felt the heavy, draining anchor of it in his chest.
He had awakened. A defensive-type ability—a Barrier.
The Razor-Hide Hound snarled, scrambling back to its feet. Enraged by the sudden resistance, it reared back and slammed both of its heavy, armored forepaws into the unseen wall.
BOOM!
The force rattled the glass panes remaining in the ceiling above, but the invisible barrier didn't yield an inch. No cracks. No flinching. It stood like an unyielding mountain embedded in the earth.
The beast struck it again. And again. BOOM. BOOM.
With every blow, Rion felt a dull, heavy throbbing behind his temples, as if a weight was pressing directly down on his brain, but the barrier held firm. It was surprisingly, extraordinarily dense for a newly awakened ability—a testament to the sheer strength of his desire to keep himself and his classmate alive.
After nearly two straight minutes of relentless, fruitless pounding, the hound finally stopped. Its snout was bloody, its claws bruised, and its yellow eyes blazed with frustrated malice. It let out a low, defeated growl, realized its prey was completely unreachable, and slowly backed away into the thick fog of the conservatory, turning to hunt for easier, unprotected targets elsewhere in the park.
Rion watched the shadows swallow the beast completely, but he did not drop his hands. He did not release the barrier. He knew better than to trust the quiet—a lesson he had learned from watching endless news broadcasts of fake monster retreats.
He stood there for two full minutes, his breathing ragged, cold sweat drenching his school uniform.
"Rion... it's gone," Leo whispered, his voice trembling. "You... you have magic? You're an Awakener?!"
"Be quiet," Rion rasped, his voice raw. He turned, looking down at his friend. The adrenaline was slowly receding, leaving behind a crushing wave of physical exhaustion. Maintaining the barrier had felt like holding a hundred-pound sack of wet concrete above his head. "Get up. We have to move."
Leo blinked in shock. "What?! Leave? When we're finally safe right here?!"
"We aren't safe," Rion snapped, offering Leo a hand and hauling him up with a grunt. "That thing couldn't break through, but a bigger one might. Or the noise from that pounding will bring three more. We need to fall back toward the western amphitheater—that's where the emergency rally point was supposed to be."
Leo limped alongside him, clutching Rion's shoulder for support as they began to trek cautiously down the ruined, mist-choked hallway.
As they walked, Rion's mind raced, tumbling through a haze of shock and sudden realization.
He thought about the news report from last week—the ruined street in District AAA, the dead Class-3 beast with the impossible, missing piece of its chest, and his sister standing beside it, looking exhausted, holding a borrowed weapon, claiming she had just 'got lucky' and run away.
At the time, the family had believed her. Ruyi was quiet, unbothered, and completely uninterested in the grand, chaotic world of guild hunters. She had passed her tests, registered as a non-awakener, and returned to her mundane life as if nothing had happened.
Did she... Rion thought, his chest tightening as he gripped the wall for balance. Did she go through this exact same nightmare? Did something try to kill her, too?
If his own awakening had been triggered by the sheer, absolute terror of facing death, it stood to reason that Ruyi might have experienced the exact same thing on that street. But if she had awakened... why hadn't she told anyone? Why had she concealed it from the Guild, from their parents, and from him?
Rion shook his head, pushing the overwhelming questions to the back of his mind. He couldn't afford to get distracted.
Right now, none of those answers mattered. The only thing that mattered was staying alive, keeping his classmate from getting eaten, and finding a way out of this living hell so he could go home.