He opened his eyes.
The sky was still torn open above him, the Rift pulsing like an open wound. The Wanderer that had hurled him against the wall stood ten feet away, motionless, its maw still dripping with something dark. It was looking at him. Or at least, whatever served as its eyes—two vertical slits, without pupils or color—was turned toward him.
Quentin got back to his feet.
He shouldn't have been able to. His rib was broken, his arm cut open, his temple split. But the pain was gone. Not lessened—gone. As if someone had cut the cable between his body and his suffering.
Instead, he felt something else. A thick, heavy heat rising from his stomach and spreading through his arms, his legs, his jaw. Not adrenaline. Something older. Dirtier.
Hatred.
The System pulsed in the corner of his vision.
**[Bear's Fury — Lv. 1 activated]**
**[Temporary Strength: +40%]**
**[Duration: 47 seconds]**
Forty-seven seconds. He didn't know what that meant. He didn't know what a level, a percentage, or a skill was. But his body knew. His muscles suddenly tensed, as if someone had pulled all the strings at once. His fingers clenched. His feet planted themselves in the cracked concrete.
The Wanderer leaped.
Quentin didn't think. His fist shot out—a clumsy motion, without technique or grace. Just brute force channeled through something he didn't understand. The punch landed squarely in the creature's maw.
The impact was monstrous.
The Wanderer flew off the ground. Its twisted body cut through the air for fifteen feet before crashing into a metal pillar that buckled under the impact. The creature collapsed, its overly long limbs twitching once, twice—and then not at all.
Quentin looked at his fist. His knuckles were intact. Not a scratch. He had just struck a creature that had nearly killed him, and it was the one lying on the ground.
**[F-Rank Wanderer eliminated]**
**[Experience gained: +12]**
**[Hatred Orb: 79%]**
One percent more. One fight, one memory of those Awakened who had left him to die—and the meter had climbed.
He didn't have time to think about it. Two more Wanderers detached themselves from the hangar's shadow, smaller than the first but faster. They moved in a circle, like wild dogs around a wounded prey animal.
Except the prey wasn't wounded anymore.
**[Time remaining: 31 seconds]**
Quentin gritted his teeth. He could feel the heat in his arms starting to weaken, like a flame running out of oxygen. Thirty-one seconds. After that, he would become what he had been again—a skinny high-school student with broken ribs.
The first Wanderer charged. Quentin dodged it—not by reflex this time, but by instinct. His body moved differently. Faster. Sharper. As if hatred had burned away everything slowing him down: hesitation, fear, politeness.
He grabbed the creature by one of its overly long limbs and pulled. The limb tore free with a wet sound. The Wanderer made a noise—the first sound he had heard from them—a high-pitched, almost plaintive hiss.
Quentin didn't stop. He struck with the severed limb, again and again, until the thing stopped moving.
**[F-Rank Wanderer eliminated]**
**[Experience gained: +12]**
The third Wanderer backed away. It backed away. A creature from the Veil, a thing born from horror, was looking at Quentin Vasseur—five foot nine of nothing, covered in blood, a severed limb in his hand—and it was afraid.
**[Time remaining: 9 seconds]**
He dropped the limb. His legs were shaking. The heat was receding, fast, too fast. The pain returned in waves—the rib, the arm, the temple. All at once.
The remaining Wanderer stared at him for a moment, then turned around and disappeared into the Rift.
Quentin dropped to his knees.
**[Bear's Fury — deactivated]**
**[Cooldown: 24 hours]**
**[Summary: 2 Wanderers eliminated — F-Rank]**
**[Total Experience: 24/100]**
**[Hatred Orb: 79%]**
The concrete was cold beneath his knees. Blood began flowing from his arm and temple again. The Rift above the hangar was slowly closing, like an eyelid drifting back to sleep. Silence returned.
Quentin stayed there on his knees, breathing hard, his trembling hands resting on the ground. He looked at his fingers—the same fingers that folded math worksheets for Kévin, that slowly put away his things to avoid getting shoved around, that had never struck back even once.
Those fingers had just torn a limb from a living creature.
And he hadn't felt a thing. No disgust. No remorse. Just—efficiency. As if the part of him that should have been horrified had been muted.
He lowered his eyes to his bloodstained hands.
*So that's what it feels like,* he thought. *That's what it feels like to stop being kind.*
The System blinked one last time.
**[Quest generated]**
**[Survive. Become stronger. Never be left for dead again.]**
**[Reward: ???]**
**[Failure: death]**
He got to his feet. Slowly this time. Without the System's help, without the heat, without the hatred. Just a seventeen-year-old boy, injured and alone in an abandoned industrial district, with blood on his hands and something changed behind his eyes.
He picked up his bag. He put his earbuds back in. He started down the road home.
No one saw him pass. No one noticed the blood on his sleeve, his uneven gait, the difference in his eyes. Quentin Vasseur was still invisible.
But for the first time in his life, it didn't bother him.
Let no one see him coming.