The first thing Etzel Deymar remembered about the end of the world was his mother telling him not to look outside.
Naturally, he looked outside.
He was thirteen. At thirteen, don't look was less an instruction and more an invitation.
The street below their apartment was almost empty. A delivery van sat crooked across two lanes, its driver's door hanging open. Someone had abandoned a bicycle beside the curb. Farther down the road, a man stood beneath a traffic light that had been red for so long it no longer seemed to matter.
The man wasn't moving. Neither were the cars.
Etzel slowly pulled the curtain closed.
"Mostly sorry," he said.
"Completely sorry," his mother's voice came from behind him.
Ismera Deymar stood in the middle of the living room wearing clothes that didn't belong there. Hospital clothes. There was dried blood on one sleeve. Not hers. At least Etzel hoped it wasn't hers.
A scream came from outside. Everyone stopped.
It wasn't the kind of scream Etzel knew. Not anger. Not surprise. Not even ordinary fear. It went on too long. Then it stopped too quickly.
Neris, his twelve-year-old sister, looked toward the window. "Mom?"
Ismera crossed the room immediately and crouched in front of her daughter. "Don't look outside."
Neris nodded. Unlike her brother, she actually listened.
Veydan entered from the kitchen carrying a toolbox in one hand. "Power's unstable."
"Hospital lost backup twice before I left," Ismera said. "Communications?"
"Overloaded."
"Government?"
"No useful statement."
Etzel watched the exchange. They were trying not to scare the children. They were doing a terrible job.
His phone vibrated. For half a second, Etzel felt relief. Then every phone in the apartment vibrated at once. A national emergency notification filled the screen.
EMERGENCY PUBLIC SAFETY NOTICERemain indoors. Avoid physical contact with individuals displaying severe aggression, abnormal growths, skin discoloration, uncontrolled bleeding, or neurological symptoms. Do not approach injured animals.
Then every bulb in the apartment burned white.
Neris screamed. Etzel covered his eyes.
For one impossible instant, something seemed to move behind the light. Not inside the room. Behind reality itself. Something vast. Something distant. Something that made the world feel very, very small.
And then—darkness.
The power died. Outside, dogs began barking. One after another. Dozens. Hundreds. Then the barking changed.
Etzel would remember that sound for the rest of his life.
By morning, people were calling it a virus. By the end of the week, they were calling it a pandemic. By the end of the month, nobody knew what to call it.
Years later, humanity would settle on a simpler name.
The Rupture.
Because the world hadn't ended. It had broken open.
Five years later, Etzel Deymar was losing an argument with a hill.
"This," he informed the hill between breaths, "is personal now."
The hill remained unmoved. Etzel increased his pace. His shoes struck the dirt trail in a steady rhythm as he climbed through the forest, morning sunlight breaking between branches overhead. His lungs burned. His legs complained. Etzel ignored both.
He liked running. There were more impressive hobbies in the post-Rupture world. Monster hunting, for example. Dungeon diving. Core crafting. Becoming famous enough that companies paid you to stand beside products while holding a sword for no obvious reason.
Etzel ran. It was cheap. Mostly safe. And when the world contained things capable of eating people, being good at running seemed less like exercise and more like responsible life planning.
His watch beeped. Etzel glanced down.
Personal best?
The display disagreed.
"Traitor," he muttered, keeping his pace.
Five years had changed the forest. Some changes were subtle. Trees grew strangely in certain places. Animals avoided patches of ground for reasons humans still didn't understand.
Other changes were impossible to ignore. Far to the west, beyond the trees, the upper floors of a rebuilt defensive tower rose above the horizon. Reinforced concrete. Core-powered barriers. Military observation equipment.
Civilization hadn't disappeared after the Rupture. It had adapted. Badly at first. Then stubbornly.
People still went to work, complained about prices, argued online, fell in love, broke up, went to school, got married, and spent unreasonable amounts of money on coffee. They had simply learned to do all of it while checking monster-alert applications.
Etzel preferred that version of humanity to the dramatic alternative. Apparently, the apocalypse had failed to defeat bureaucracy. He found that comforting.
The trail leveled. Etzel slowed.
Something was wrong. Not dangerous wrong. At least, he didn't think so. He knew this route. He had run it dozens of times. But the forest had become quiet in the wrong way.
There was ordinary silence. Morning silence. The comfortable kind between breaths of wind and birdsong. Then there was the silence that came after something died.
And now there was this. The silence of things that had already left.
There should have been a split ahead: left toward an old forestry road, right toward a shallow creek.
Instead, there was a tree.
Etzel stopped. "Okay." He put his hands on his hips. "That's new."
Calling it a tree felt inadequate. Its trunk was wider than the surrounding pines combined, its bark pale gray with thin veins of faint silver light running beneath the surface. Its branches spread outward in a nearly perfect crown. There were no leaves. Yet the space beneath it wasn't dark. Light seemed to gather around the branches themselves.
Etzel stared. Silver light moved beneath the bark.
Everyone knew what these were. Pictures appeared online whenever one surfaced. Governments monitored them. Guilds fought legal battles over them. Hunters built careers because of them.
Ancient Ability Trees.
Three years after the Rupture, they had begun appearing without warning. No roots detected beforehand. No predictable locations. No known pattern. They simply appeared. And when someone with Hunter potential touched one—
Etzel looked around. No people. No cameras that he could see. No patrol vehicles. No warning tape. No guild markers. Nothing.
"You have got to be kidding me," he whispered.
He approached slowly. His breathing had almost returned to normal. Almost. The rational part of his mind began listing possibilities. Report it. Call authorities. Leave. Make absolutely sure this wasn't some weird mutated tree before touching it.
The less rational part had already remembered the fundamental rule everyone knew. Ancient Trees didn't belong to whoever found them. Not according to the System. They belonged to whoever qualified and touched them first. Human laws complicated matters. The System did not care about human paperwork.
Etzel stopped an arm's length away.
"All right." He wiped his palm on his shirt. "If nothing happens, nobody ever hears about this." He paused. "If something does happen..." A grin slowly appeared. "Nobody hears about it immediately."
That seemed reasonable. Etzel placed his hand against the trunk.
For one heartbeat—nothing.
"Yeah. Figures."
The world vanished. Etzel couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Couldn't feel the ground beneath his feet.
Something touched him. Not his skin. Deeper. The sensation wasn't painful. Pain would have been easier. It felt as though an immeasurably large hand had reached into him and weighed something he had never known existed.
His thoughts. His memories. His fear. His stubbornness. Every moment he had wanted to run and hadn't. Every moment he had laughed when he should have panicked. Every person he loved. Every part of himself he had never possessed words for.
His soul.
Then something answered. Words appeared in darkness.
[SYSTEM INTERFACE] SOUL CONTACT ESTABLISHED HUNTER POTENTIAL CONFIRMED
Etzel stared. His heart slammed against his ribs. No way.
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The darkness trembled. Then
ABILITY AWAKENING...
Etzel forgot to breathe. Hunters. Actual Hunters. People who entered dungeons, fought evolved creatures, collected Cores, became stronger than ordinary humans could ever hope to become. His mind produced possibilities faster than he could process them.
Maybe something rare. Maybe something powerful. Maybe—
The final line appeared.
[STATUS: ABILITY AWAKENED]Class: Limited NecromancerClass: Limited NecromancerRank: FLevel: 0
Etzel waited. "...Limited?"
The darkness did not answer.
Etzel's excitement stumbled. "F? Zero? Not one? Zero."
The System remained impressively committed to not caring about his feelings. Etzel rubbed his face. Everyone knew Limited Necromancer. Not personally. There weren't many. But the ability had a reputation. A bad one. Rare enough to sound impressive. Weak enough that people stopped being impressed shortly afterward. Summons required resources. Good summons were difficult to obtain. Soul limitations restricted growth. Progression could go catastrophically wrong.
There were stories of Limited Necromancers spending years building armies that stronger Hunters could erase in minutes.
Etzel looked again at the empty space where the tree had been. He flexed his fingers. Nothing happened.
"Necromancy. Summon? Raise dead? Skeleton? Extremely handsome undead assistant?"
A bird called somewhere overhead.
"You're right. Too ambitious."
He tried thinking about the interface. It appeared instantly.
NAME: Etzel DeymarLEVEL: 0ABILITY: Limited NecromancerRANK: F
There wasn't much else. No army. No mysterious legendary weapon. No instant spell list. No skeleton waiting politely behind a tree. Etzel stared at the screen for several seconds. Then laughed. He couldn't help it. Five years. Millions of people dreamed of becoming Hunters. Entire industries had formed around Ancient Trees. People traveled ridiculous distances chasing rumors of newly appeared ones.
Etzel had accidentally found one while jogging. And it had apparently looked into the depths of his soul and decided: Yes. This one deserves Level Zero.
"Could've stayed home," he muttered, dismissing the screen. Then immediately summoned it again. Hunter. Despite everything, that word changed things.
His smile slowly faded. He thought of his parents. His mother would ask seventeen medical questions before he finished explaining. His father would ask whether the ability could kill him. Neris would probably ask whether he could summon a dragon. Then she would be disappointed when the answer was no. Probably.
Etzel looked toward the path home. Not yet. He needed to understand what he had first. Then he would decide what to tell them. Preferably after discovering whether Level Zero was an insult or a medical condition.
There was, however, one line he hadn't understood earlier.
[PROGRESSION REQUIREMENT]Establish First Threshold:A Hunter without progression cannotcommand death. Reach Level 1.
Etzel blinked. "That's extremely dramatic for 'go get experience.'"
No response. He leaned against the sink of his mind. To reach Level 1, he'd have to kill something. That wasn't exactly shocking. Hunters gained most of their Level progression through meaningful combat. But Etzel had never killed a monster. He had basic emergency training, like most people his age. He was fit. Fast. Strong for an ordinary human. That was not the same thing as being a trained Hunter.
He stared at himself in the mirror of his thoughts. Wet hair. Eighteen years old. No combat experience. F-Rank ability. Level Zero.
"This is how people die in tutorials," he told his reflection.
His reflection offered no strategic insight. Etzel lowered his hand. Then smiled.
"Tomorrow."
Not because he was fearless. He wasn't. Only idiots were fearless in a world with monsters. But there was something waiting beyond Level Zero. He could feel it. And he had spent five years watching the world become larger, stranger, and more dangerous while remaining an ordinary person inside it.
Now a door had opened. Even if someone had written Limited across it. He intended to walk through.
The next morning, Etzel brought a knife. Then, after thinking about it, he brought a second knife. Then a short-handled forestry hatchet. Then rope. Then a first-aid kit. Then he stood beside his bag and reconsidered his life choices.
"This looks less like monster hunting and more like I'm about to commit a very organized crime."
He removed one knife. Then put it back. "Safety first."
He left before anyone could ask why his morning run required a hatchet. The forest felt different. It shouldn't have. Same trees. Same trails. Same sunlight. But yesterday Etzel had entered it as an ordinary eighteen-year-old. Today he entered as a Level Zero Hunter looking for something he could kill without becoming its breakfast.
He stayed near known low-threat areas. He watched tracks. Listened. Moved slowly.
Hours passed. Nothing. Etzel began to suspect monsters had collectively decided to respect his personal development.
Then the forest went quiet.
He stopped. Birds had vanished. No insects. No rustling leaves. His hand moved toward the hatchet.
A sound came from his right. Click.
Etzel turned. Nothing. Then sunlight shifted across a tree trunk. Something moved. Transparent. Almost. Etzel's brain needed a second to understand what he was seeing.
A creature unfolded from beside the tree. Its outer shell resembled smoky glass, translucent enough that distorted shapes could be seen beneath it. It stood low to the ground on multiple jointed limbs, its front pair ending in long curved blades. It was roughly the size of a large wolf. Perhaps slightly larger.
The shell along its back reflected the forest in broken fragments. Etzel stopped breathing.
TARGET DETECTEDName: Graveglass ReaverRarity: Epic
Etzel's mind went wonderfully blank. "...Epic?"
The Reaver moved. Etzel threw himself sideways. A blade passed through the space where his throat had been. Bark exploded from the tree behind him. Etzel hit the ground, rolled, and ran.
No dignity. No heroic stance. No testing its strength. Run.
The creature clicked behind him. Fast. Too fast. Etzel cut left between two trees. The Reaver followed. A blade sliced across his backpack. Fabric tore. Supplies scattered.
"Hey!" Etzel immediately realized protesting property damage to a monster was unlikely to produce results.
He jumped a fallen trunk. The Reaver didn't. It cut through it. Etzel's eyes widened. "That's cheating."
He ran harder. His lungs were fine. His legs were fine. His terror was doing excellent cardiovascular work. But something bothered him. The creature wasn't attacking randomly. It reacted every time he changed direction. Before he made noise. Before his feet landed.
Movement? Etzel grabbed a loose branch while running and threw it hard to his left. The branch crashed through bushes.
The Reaver turned instantly. Not toward the sound. Toward the moving branch.
Etzel stopped. The creature hesitated. Its bladed limbs clicked against the ground. Etzel's heart hammered. He stayed still. The Reaver's head shifted. Searching. Movement. Not sight exactly. Something related to motion. Maybe more.
Etzel slowly lowered himself. The creature turned toward him. So not purely movement. His awakened soul? It could sense something. But imperfectly. Good. Imperfect could be exploited.
Etzel looked at its body. The shell was thick along the torso. Blades heavily armored. Leg joints—Different. Where translucent plates met, the material looked cloudy. Soft. Not fully formed. Nascent. Young.
Epic rarity didn't mean Epic combat power. At least he desperately hoped it didn't.
Etzel pulled his knife. The Reaver lunged. He moved at the last possible instant. Blade missed. Etzel slashed the nearest joint. The knife struck. Resistance. Then penetration. Black fluid sprayed. The creature shrieked.
Etzel smiled. "Found you."
The Reaver's other blade smashed into him. Pain exploded across his ribs. Etzel flew. He hit the ground hard enough to lose the knife. For several seconds, breathing became theoretical.
The Reaver advanced. Etzel tried standing. His body disagreed. The creature raised a blade. Etzel's hand found something beside him. His hatchet. He rolled. The blade punched into the soil. Etzel swung. The hatchet buried itself in the damaged joint.
The Reaver screamed. Its leg collapsed. Etzel ripped the weapon free.
The creature changed. That was the problem with plans. Things didn't politely continue behaving the same way after you hurt them. Instead of pursuing, the Reaver backed toward the trees.
Etzel froze. It was learning too.
Its translucent shell shifted. Camouflage. It was going to disappear. Then attack from cover.
"Absolutely not." Etzel grabbed a stone and threw it past the creature. The Reaver's head twitched toward the movement. Half a second. Enough.
Etzel charged. Every intelligent part of his brain screamed that charging an Epic monster with a forestry hatchet was a terrible long-term habit. He agreed completely. He did it anyway.
The Reaver turned. Too late. Etzel kicked the injured limb. The joint buckled. He brought the hatchet down. Once. Crack. Twice.
The Reaver's blade swept upward. Etzel leaned away. Too slow. The edge opened his shoulder. Heat. Blood. Pain. He screamed. But he didn't stop.
Third strike. The joint shattered. The creature collapsed sideways. Etzel saw beneath the shell. A narrow seam. Softer tissue. He changed grip. Raised the hatchet with both hands. The Reaver tried to rise. Etzel swung. Once. Twice. Again. Again.
Until the clicking stopped.
Silence returned. Etzel remained standing over it. Hatchet raised. Waiting. Nothing moved. His arms began shaking. Then his legs. He dropped backward and sat in the dirt. Blood ran down his shoulder. His ribs hurt when he breathed. His hands wouldn't stop trembling.
Etzel stared at the corpse. "Okay." He swallowed. "Running..." Breath. "...was definitely the better hobby."
A sound chimed inside his mind. Etzel froze.
Graveglass Reaver slain.Combat contribution confirmed.Significant threat differential.Level threshold reached.
Etzel's pain disappeared beneath sudden attention. One final line appeared.
[LEVEL UP: LEVEL 0 → LEVEL 1]
Something changed. Not healing. His shoulder remained cut. His ribs still hurt. But warmth spread through his body. His muscles tightened. His senses sharpened. The exhaustion didn't disappear, yet his body suddenly felt more capable.
Then the world went dark around the edges.
When Etzel woke, he was lying on the forest floor. The Reaver's corpse was still there. But he wasn't alone.
A man stood over him. Tall. Wearing full plate armor that was bright. Almost silver. Not dark in the slightest. A long armored coat. A shield. A sword. The pressure coming from him was absurd. Not raw power. Something else. Presence. Like standing beside a fortress that had somehow learned to breathe.
[SUMMON ACQUIRED]Target: Dark KnightRank: APotential: SS
Etzel stopped. His eyes moved slowly from A to SS. Then back to the kneeling warrior. "What."
The knight raised his head. For a moment, neither spoke. Then the armored man looked around the forest. At the dead Reaver. At his own hands. At Etzel.
His voice was deep but strangely calm. "Where am I?"
Etzel opened his mouth. Then closed it. The knight looked down at himself. His brow tightened. "I..." He paused. Something uncertain entered his expression. "What is my name?"
Etzel's humor disappeared. He didn't know. The System didn't show one. The man genuinely looked lost. Not frightened. Lost. Etzel glanced at the silver armor. Then at the system designation. Dark Knight.
He almost laughed. Instead he extended a hand. "I don't know."
The knight stared at it. Etzel smiled. "But until you remember..." He nodded toward the shining silver armor. "...how do you feel about Dark Knight?"
Silence. The knight looked down at his very bright armor. Then slowly back at Etzel. One eyebrow rose. "Dark Knight."
"DK for short."
The knight considered this. "Is mockery customary between summoner and summoned?"
Etzel blinked. Then grinned. "Oh, you're going to fit in perfectly."
For the first time in his second life, the nameless knight smiled. And somewhere far beyond Earth—something noticed that a dead legend had opened his eyes again.