Chapter 1 – Don’t fear the dark
William stopped abruptly, staring down the seedy alleyway.
Something definitely moved at the end of the alley. He saw it—the outline of a shadow flashed by quickly, with a strange silhouette, perhaps a tail, or even a gaping jaw with jagged teeth. It was hard to tell, and fear vividly filled in the gaps.
Was it a monster? Did he miss the emergency notification?
If it really was a monster, then perhaps it had already seen him. In that case, worrying was a pointless affair that could neither prevent nor delay his impending death. He glanced at his phone. Still no civilian alert, thankfully.
The government was fast and precise with alerts. Last time, the notification came early, less than a minute after a break formed, giving him plenty of time to duck under the counter at Kicken Chicken until the military resolved the situation. That night he made sure to stay far out of sight of the glass paned walls that had somehow still not gone out of fashion despite their obvious design flaw. His mood soured remembering that manager Kim had locked himself into the back office and refused to let him in.
He digressed.
Over the last twelve years, the government had boiled down the tracking system to an exact science. There was little to no chance for a break to occur without an alert being promptly issued.
Since there wasn’t an alert, it was probably safe.
Squinting into the darkness, he wondered if the moonlight reflecting off those broken glass shards cast the shadow that played tricks on his eyes. Yes, that had to be it. There was absolutely nothing to worry about.
This anxious state always settled in when he didn’t get enough sleep, a reminder to pick up the pace. Mental clarity was important for the initiation ceremony tomorrow. It would be devastating if he performed poorly due to something as entirely preventable as lack of sleep, one of few things he could control in this world, unlike family background—he was made an orphan at three due to his parents’ untimely death—or his finances.
To ease his nerves, William turned on his phone’s flashlight despite the low battery. Since the phone was an older model, it lacked a built-in flashlight and instead relied on turning the entire screen white. He had grown attached to the old piece of junk over the years, and at this point he doubted if he would be willing to trade it in for a newer model even with money to spare.
The screen’s white light filled the alleyway at once with its reassuring brightness, illuminating the dumpster and all the discarded litter and broken furniture that lined the inner alleyway. It was burning hot, but he paid no attention to that.
From a ragged sofa with its coils hanging loose to a rusting bike rack, there was nothing visibly out of the ordinary in the alley, although that did little to calm his hyperactive imagination. Images of the mangled bodies from the last attack flashed through his mind. They rarely showed the monsters on the official broadcasts, only the aftermath.
He had half a mind to just turn back, but Manager Kim, that fat bastard, wouldn’t pay if he missed two deliveries in one night regardless of if he had good reason or not, and rent was already late.
It was just paranoia, he told himself, although it was proving difficult to suppress the nagging feeling.
Taking a tentative step forward, he pointed the phone screen to the left, illuminating the garbage bags, then to the right, illuminating the dumpster, before quickly swinging the beam of light back left. His movements were jerky and paranoid, scanning with a practiced eye until he noticed the slight wiggle of an old shoe that was previously stationary, peeking out from behind the dumpster.
“Eughhh….. who’s there?” mumbled the owner of the shoe in an intoxicated voice.
It was just a homeless man. The first drops of rain fell from the sky. Damn, the bags could get wet if he didn’t hurry.
He sprinted past the man, who mumbled incoherently while slumped with his back against the wall, missing both his front teeth. The homeless were a common sight in the abandoned and avoided inner alleys of the city, but they didn’t bother William too much. He’d seen worse, and they were a reminder of how he could end up—or more accurately end up again—if he got evicted.
He kept running, turning two corners as he heard the homeless man now hollered wildly, the sound harsh yet getting more distant as he turned more corners. It was the drugs, he thought.
William had run too far, too fast, to notice that the homeless man’s hollering eventually turned into frantic yelling, and then screams of pain, before fading into muffled silence as he was dragged away by the leg.
Something was out there.
———
Willliam lifted the first red and white paper bag, noting that its precious contents were intact despite the slightly damp exterior. He squinted at the receipt.
“Four piece meal with two sides for apartment 626.” He then checked the second bag. “And this one’s the nugget combo and lemon soda.”
He found himself facing an intimidatingly luxurious gray apartment building. A doorman stood at the entrance, dressed in a crisp uniform adorned with gold buttons and a matching white cap. He greeted William with a polite nod as he approached, then extended a hand to open the polished glass door.
“Delivery?”
“Yes,” William replied, entering the building.
As he stepped inside, an overwhelmingly luxurious scene unfolded, and he couldn't help but feel like he was intruding. The faint scent of expensive perfume filled his nostrils. Plush, velvet-covered sofas were arranged neatly around several glass coffee tables, each topped with intricate floral arrangements that were clearly done by hand every day. A concierge desk made of dark, polished wood stood to the center, where an attractive female attendant sat.
Several maids and butlers shuffled around the lobby holding clean towels, dusting the corners, and attending to all sorts of bits and ends.
He couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be a residential apartment or a seven star hotel.
He approached the desk, feeling out of place in his red and white striped delivery uniform and matching saucepan hat. The beautiful attendant glanced at him briefly before smiling. "Good evening. Are you here for a delivery?"
"Yep," William replied, holding up the bags of food. "Apartment 626."
“Oh?” the attendant replied in a surprised tone after hearing the apartment number, one of her eyebrows raised, as if she’d forgotten her professional attitude. However, her original demeanor quickly returned. “The elevator is to your left.”
He wondered what that reaction was, although it was none of his business. Heading towards the direction the attendant pointed, he walked past a maid scurrying around with a silver tray of carefully prepared food and tried his best to ignore the fact that they had servants doing everything for them and that even the elevator itself was plated in gold. Whoever lived here was used to being treated like royalty.
Taking the elevator up to the sixth floor, he walked through a long hallway lined with portraits and fine porcelain vases dating back to the classical era. His classmates from elite families were classically trained in the history of the arts and would know the finer details of the paintings and porcelain, but that nuance was lost to him.
Down the hall, a maid with a ponytail stood in front of apartment 626 with a fancy hanger trolley of white towels.
Knock, knock.
“I told you to just leave the fucking towels outside!” a young man yelled out from inside the room. “Don’t make me repeat myself!”
The door burst open, and a muscular blond college student in a cashmere bathrobe gestured angrily at the maid, then at a nub to the side of the door.
“There’s a hanger here for a reason!”
The maid’s head hung low as she put the towels on the nub and quickly scurried away, passing by William without meeting his eyes.
The door slammed shut again with a bang, and William was left waiting in front of the door, not looking forward to knocking. The receptionist’s reaction earlier made a lot more sense now.
He exhaled. In the end, this was a job and he had to finish the delivery. He cleared his throat. “Kicken Chicken delivery,” he replied in as enthusiastic of a voice as he could muster up. “You ordered the four piece meal with two sides?”
Upon hearing that, there was a flurry of foot movement, and William swore he could’ve heard the customer mumble forgot I ordered. Then, the door swung open.
An intimidating muscular blond college student stood in a bathrobe at the other side of the door. Behind him was a finely worked grandfather clock and the portrait of an old industrialist with combed white hair, all glinting with gold. Now that William looked at the student directly, he realized who it was. Everything made sense now—the excessive wealth, the maids, the strong attitude.
The square jawed young man with an arrogant face was Luke Brightsteel, the darling son of one of the top elite families and heir to the Brightsteel conglomerate. By a strange twist of fate, he was also William’s college classmate.
The Brightsteels were industrialists hailing from the beginning of the common era. William had read all about them in history books back at the orphanage. Back then, they were known to be cruel to their factory workers and heavily involved in political affairs. The family fortune had only grown since then, and they were still involved with the government and the new post-break guilds.
Luke’s eyebrows raised in surprise, his eyes darting in disbelief between William’s red and white Kickin Chicken uniform and his face.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he started to laugh, his fist pounding the door frame. “You’re a delivery boy?”
William’s grip on the delivery bags tightened, but he didn’t say anything. He knew exactly why Luke was acting this way—he and Luke had a bit of a history from two semesters ago.
The elite families had always valued physical education, now even more so in the post-break era. Luke Brightsteel prided himself as one of the best athletes at Trinity Academy, undefeated in pole vaulting, javelin toss, and the dash.
That was, until William beat him in the dash. Luke was furious, unable to comprehend how an unknown student lacking any formal training had managed to beat him in a televised athletics event.
It was because he spent many of his early years at the orphanage sneaking into the library in the dead of the night to pick out books, which taught him to be light on his feet. Then in middle school, he began running deliveries through the alleys, which taught him to be fast and alert.
Luke didn’t know this, however, and even if he did he couldn’t care less beyond the fact that William had beaten him in one of the five core events, one where he held the title.
“I didn’t know that someone at Trinity was struggling this badly.” His tone was unmistakably mocking. “Tell you what, why don’t I arrange something for you at my father’s company. Maybe cleaning toilets or something.”
William did his best to ignore the provocation, lifting the bag containing Luke’s order. “Here’s your food.”
There was only one day left until the initiation, and he didn’t want to cause any new problems now.
“Thanks,” Luke laughed and roughly grabbed the bag from William, before looking down with a sour expression. “This bag is wet.”
“All deliveries are double wrapped. Your food is dry.”
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“As my grandfather would say, a worker with no eye for detail will soon have no eye at all,” Luke sneered, pointing at the other bag in William’s hand. “Give me that one too to make up for this one being wet.”
William noticed a heat-like steam aura began to rise from Luke’s arm as if it was evaporating as Luke reached out to grab the bag.
But that was impossible. He couldn’t have awakened an ability before the initiation. His eyes were playing tricks on him again.
At that moment, years of reflexes kicked in and he pulled back the bag quickly, much to Luke’s and his own surprise.
“That’s someone else’s order,” he said defiantly. He wasn’t about to have a delivery go missing and risk being late on his rent again.
Luke paused for a moment as if he was contemplating something, before a smirk returned to his face.
“Suit yourself. See you tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe you’ll get a power that helps you deliver chicken even faster.”
With a derisive snicker, the bathrobed heir nudged the door shut with his foot.
William cursed under his breath as he turned back down the hallway towards the elevator.
Luke’s attitude angered him, but on a deeper level he envied Luke. William didn’t care as much about his modern chateau lifestyle or the countless orderlies attending to his every wish—another butler just passed by him—but what he truly envied was the formal education, the richness of history and culture, the strong sense of dignity that came with being a member of an old elite family.
Dignity of class was something beyond the superficiality of being a good or a bad person. Class was not something that could be emulated by simply reading books—it was inherited, nurtured, and it commanded a degree of respect that could never be emulated by an outsider.
For instance, no matter how bad of a person Nero from the imperial era was, his name still graced modern history books with a gravitas reserved only for truly great men.
The dungeon break twelve years ago may have introduced many new forces to the world, such as strange new materials that scientists were still learning to harness, but was this transformation all that different from the transformation wrought to the world by industrialization centuries ago? Or the agricultural revolution? Or the end of the imperial era and destruction of the natural world during the volcanic era?
Unchallenged recency bias led modern academics to arrogantly claim that they lived in the era of greatest change, the post-break era, the other world era, the dungeon era, but William disagreed. This era was no different from the last.
As things changed, so too things stayed the same. Old military traditions of the elite families fell easily in line with the new need for organized armed forces of ability users. Guilds that arose in the post-break era were simply corporations taking on an expansion of duties and a new name.
Even the other world itself was quickly falling into line—most breaks were resolved within hours. Yearly civilian casualties in the city had fallen to less than ten. Things were becoming assimilated into normal.
Just like before.
But he digressed yet again.
William's fundamental dissatisfaction with his own being arose from his inability to change the fact of his own personal insignificance, that his own existence was a mere footnote in the books he pored over so dearly, that he was a side character in the recorded history of the likes of Luke Brightsteel, to be forgotten regardless of what he chose to eat or say or do on any given day, simply by right of his birth and upbringing.
He was deeply envious of those who had the means to become somebody. But to become somebody when he lacked both societal and familial means, he needed power.
The initiation ceremony tomorrow had to go well.
Lost in thought, he realized that he was back in the alleyway from before. Most people—even delivery workers—avoided the inner city alleys, but he was used to them. He’d grown up on the streets, and they were fine shortcuts that enabled him to spend less of his evenings delivering and more of his free time exploring and understanding the world.
The sight of a familiar shoe brought him back to his senses.
It was up ahead, abandoned, sitting upright in front of the dumpster with the lace untied. There was no sign of the owner.
Did the homeless man leave and forget his shoe?
William peeked cautiously around the other side of the dumpster with his phone flashlight in hand, and there was nothing there, but when he turned back he noticed a few torn scraps of clothing on the floor by the shoe that he hadn’t noticed earlier, and his mind and his imagination and his ears picking up the slow dripping sound from behind him all quickly converged to the same conclusion—run.
And so he ran.
Chapter 2 — Run
He scrambled forward as fast as he possibly could, the delivery bag abandoned, desperately darting between corners as he could now clearly hear the footsteps of something chasing him.
Whatever was chasing him was eerily silent, although if he listened closely he could hear the unsteady gait, the unmistakable breathing, its body moving fast and stealthily. He dared not look back and risk losing momentum.
All those years of experience navigating the alleys since middle school came to save his life at this very moment. He hurtled around several corners and ran over furniture with the rapidity of a monkey, knowing that with each turn he got closer to the main streets where there would be patrols, where he could call for help.
But that was ages away, and there was no help to be found in the alleyways. The government had given up on them long before the break. He turned another corner where a rusted rake had fallen to the ground. He did not see it in time, and his foot got caught by the long wooden handle, tripping him. He fell to the ground with a tumble, the creature still behind him, and he knew that it was all over.
But the impact never came, and William dared to glance back as he got up on his feet, but only for a moment. There was nothing behind him. He wondered if it had stopped chasing. Just as he was about to turn and continue running, a rustle came from above.
A pair of yellow eyes emerged from the corner of the second floor of the building behind. It moved slowly, the rest of its body imperceptible in the darkness. Realization dawned upon him that this creature could climb.
William ran without looking back, not stopping to catch his breath even as his lungs burned and his feet were heavy as lead. His heart thumped like it was about to burst from pressure. He could see the street lights up ahead. That meant a main street was there. Sprinting forward with both arms pumping, he crashed into the open and nearly ran into a parked car.
Looking around, he recognized the place. This was the old docking district. There was a police station down the right between the convenience store and the warehouse. He’d be safe there.
——
The officer looked on at William with a bored expression.
“So you’re saying that it chased you down to the docking district.”
William nodded, but he could tell that the officer was not buying his story.
Four soldiers with assault rifles idled about outside the conference room. One picked his nose.
“Where is it now?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did it look like?”
“I told you, it had yellow eyes and it could climb—“
“I mean the body, so we can identify it.”
“It was dark, I couldn’t—“
“Essentially you didn’t see what it looked like.” He sighed, jotting down another note onto his notepad.
The overweight officer with a mustache put one elbow on the table, his metal rings glowing under the harsh fluorescent interrogation light. He sat across from William. “Listen, kid. Tell me what this is really about. Were you smoking in the alleyway?”
“No, I’m telling you—“
“If you need an alibi for the school, just let me know. This wouldn’t be the first time a Trinity kid needed a coverup.”
“Officer, this isn’t a coverup and I am being entirely serious. You need to send a patrol to find this monster.”
The police officer shook his head. “No can do, kid. We’re short staffed at the moment and need to be on alert for an emergency.”
“This is an emergency.”
The officer snorted. “Fat chance of that. I’ve never heard of a monster that stops chasing someone after seeing them. At least, not on this side of the gate.”
It was clear that he’d made up his mind.
William slumped back down on his chair. What the officer said was true. Over the last twelve years, scientists from around the world had done extensive behavioral testing on captured monsters. A foreign paper first called it the madness principle, the phenomenon where exposure to the human world caused monsters to lose their intelligence and indiscriminately attack humans.
This was a proven fact, with countless studies backing it.
If this monster stopped chasing, then it broke everything that humanity knew about monster behavior. It seemed implausible. Only monsters still on the other side displayed any form of intelligence or organized behavior.
Even he was starting to second guess himself. He was tired, the initiation was tomorrow, and maybe he just imagined the whole thing.
“Second,” the officer continued. “We’ve had breaks under control for months now. It’s sort of confidential, but our radar guys at the government have figured out a way to immediately find new breaks using electromagnetic tracking. That’s why casualties have been so low lately.”
William nodded weakly. That’s what he suspected as well. The officer made sense, too much sense.
“You probably saw some kind of animal, or just the light moving in a funny way.” He paused in thought. “Could be a homeless guy using an ability, too.”
“Either way, I doubt it was a monster. Have confidence in the systems we have, kid. They haven’t failed us yet. And isn’t Trinity having its initiation tomorrow? You better head home and get some sleep.”
“Mind if I charge my phone a bit before I go?” His battery was completely dry.
“Be my guest. You should always keep your phone charged to receive emergency alerts, you know that right?”
William nodded.
The overweight officer got up from his chair and left the interrogation room, leaving him alone.
He plugged in his phone to the socket and checked the time. It was already two in the morning. A few texts floated on the lock screen from Manager Kim, no doubt asking about why he missed his last delivery. If Manager Kim docked his pay, he was going to miss his rent payment again. It hurt his head just thinking about it.
Best just not think about it for now. If everything went well at the initiation, he’d be able to awaken a decent ability, join a guild, and make a solid part time living going on raids. At least enough to keep a roof over his head until he graduated college.
The officer swung by the interrogation room and rapped on the door.
“We’re closing soon, kid. You should head back.”
—-
William arrived at his apartment dead tired. He had stuck to the main streets after that questionable experience in the alleys, and arrived at home safely.
He was greeted by a rat scurrying past the staircase that led up to his dingy place, and after a quick shuffle with his keys the creaky door whined open. His place was small in a way that was reminiscent of a coffin, with peeling wallpaper, a sagging bed, and a tiny kitchen that had seen better days.
A cracked mirror showed his reflection, blond with dark brown eyes, slightly malnourished, tall, with bookish looks and messy hair.
He was filthy after everything that happened today, and immediately headed to the shower, trying to forget the whole episode altogether as he wetted his face. Perhaps the officer was right, and he had imagined the whole thing. It was too dark to tell for sure.
Tomorrow was the big day. William dried himself, changed into night clothes, then went to sit at his laptop. He cracked it open and navigated to the discussion forums.
This was actually a useless practice. He already read all that there was to read about abilities. Out of the common four elements, he already knew that he preferred to awaken a fire ability, because knowing his luck, he’d awaken at a power level of 1 or 2, and at least fire was still viable at those levels compared to something like clairvoyance which was quite bad at lower levels.
He just needed to nudge the awakening towards fire. Hence the little setup he had next to his bed, with the candles, newspapers, fire-proof tiles that he scavenged from a nearby junkyard, and matches. It almost looked like an altar for witchcraft. He built it over the last few months to ‘manifest’ a fire ability.
If the forums were to be believed, then a person’s wishes, experiences, family background, and a slew of other non quantifiable factors were taken into account when ability was being determined. For instance, individuals from families that had deep ancestral roots to the forest were likely to awaken earth or plant based abilities. Nurses were more likely to awaken healing abilities. So on and so forth.
The problem was that he had no clue what his family did. All that the government told him was that his parents died in an accident, that his surname was Blackwood, and that they left him a college fund but otherwise no money to use on day to day expenses.
He appreciated the fund, which in addition to a scholarship program were the reasons why he could attend Trinity Academy, but the mystery around his family dug at his heart. He felt like he was missing a part of his identity. In the absence of concrete knowledge of them, he could imagine that his family was storied and respectable, perhaps even nobility or maybe even royalty, but deep down he knew that that was just his fantasy, wishful thinking. Logically speaking, it was most likely that he belonged to an ordinary or less than ordinary family, despite his delusions of grandeur.
To the right of his laptop were several dusty books from the city library, the kind that were never bothered to be scanned into the internet archives. William had scoured them for any mention of Blackwoods in the past, but aside from some offhand mentions of a mayor here or a tax evasion arrest warrant there, he couldn’t find any conclusive details of his family, or even confirmation if those other Blackwoods were related to him at all.
He tried accessing the government census records, but many files were destroyed during the break, and his request was of too low priority to get processed by the bureaucratic machine.
The whole endeavor left him completely in the dark. Therefore, for purposes of his ability he had to just stick with his gut and awaken something practical.
Taking a match out from the box, he lit the candles and prayed.
“Please, just give me a level two fire ability.”
He completed his little ceremony, then blew out the candles and went to bed. This was the most he could do. The rest was up to fate.