The forest behind Korazu whispered with the soft lull of late spring. Birds chirped lazily from high branches, and sunlight filtered through the leaves in golden threads. Mira knelt in the underbrush, fingers gently parting a patch of flowering moss. Her basket was nearly full—lemon root, wild sage, a few bloodgrass stalks her mother would dry for fever remedies. She was humming to herself, a half-forgotten song her grandmother used to sing, when the air shifted.
It was subtle at first. A hush. The birds stopped singing.
Mira straightened, heartbeat suddenly louder in her ears. The breeze died. The warmth bled from the air.
Then came the sound—like wind being sucked through a narrow tunnel, high-pitched and unnatural.
A pulse of energy rippled through the earth beneath her feet, enough to make her stumble. The ground cracked two meters ahead. The moss recoiled as if something beneath it was exhaling.
"No…" she whispered.
A tear in the very fabric of the world yawned open before her—a spiraling distortion of shadow and swirling blue light. Around it, the grass withered. The trees leaned away. The scent of rotting leaves and sulfur flooded the air.
A dungeon.
She didn't wait to see what came next. Her basket fell forgotten as she turned and ran, heart hammering, lungs burning. Branches whipped at her face. Roots clawed at her boots. But she ran, faster than she ever had.
The village wasn't far. Barely a fifteen-minute walk. She made it in eight.
By the time she stumbled through the western gate, she was wheezing, sweat-soaked, and bloodied at the knees. Reivo was at the well, hauling up a bucket. He looked up as she collapsed against the stone wall, gasping for breath.
"Mira?! What—what happened?"
She grabbed his sleeve, eyes wild.
"A dungeon," she rasped. "In the forest. I—I saw it open."
A pause. Then chaos.
Reivo ran with her to the village center, where their father was speaking with the other hunters. His face paled as soon as Mira repeated her words. A crowd began to gather—concerned villagers, elders, guards, children with wide, curious eyes.
"A dungeon?" Elder Eduin asked, voice tight. "Are you certain, girl?"
"I saw it open! The ground cracked, and the air—it was wrong. It's a dungeon!"
"Did anything come out?" someone shouted.
"No, not yet. But it was still forming—I think it just started!"
That silenced the crowd.
Reivo felt his hands clench. His father placed a firm grip on his shoulder.
"Everyone, listen," Varan said, stepping up onto a wooden crate. "This is serious, but it's not a death sentence. One-star dungeons don't produce strong monsters. Still, we'll need to act fast."
"Should we evacuate?" asked the baker, eyes darting toward her young son.
"Not yet. If it's only one star, it might be manageable. We've dealt with them before—ten years ago, remember? But we need to seal it quickly."
"I'll gather the hunters," Reivo's father said. "And a few of the guards. We'll scout it, confirm the location."
"I'm going too," Reivo said.
His father looked at him, surprised.
"I've trained for this," Reivo insisted. "Let me help."
A long pause. Then a slow nod. "Stay close to me."
"Me too!" Mira said, stepping forward.
"No," their mother cut in sharply, appearing from the crowd, Senn in her arms. "You've done enough, Mira. You found it—you saved us all. Let the others take it from here."
"But—"
"No. You're not going back out there."
Mira looked down, fists clenched, but said nothing.
By late afternoon, a scouting party had been formed—five hunters, two guards, Reivo, and his father. They were armed with spears, short swords, and one enchanted lantern gifted years ago by a traveling mage, its light said to repel lesser creatures of shadow.
The villagers watched them go. Mira stood beside her mother and Senn, silent as the trees swallowed the group.
The forest was different now. Where earlier there had been birdsong and breeze, there was now stillness and a suffocating pressure in the air. Reivo gripped his wooden-handled short sword tightly. His father walked ahead, leading with calm focus.
They found the site quickly. The dungeon gate had expanded—what was once a swirling rift no larger than a plate was now the size of a door. Blue-black mist hissed from its edges. The grass surrounding it had withered further, and the trees nearby looked almost… afraid.
One of the guards knelt near the edge, inspecting it.
"It's fresh," he said. "Not fully stable yet. We've got some time."
"We'll need to assemble the village and prepare the defenses." then sighing he says "if only we had a couple of Awakened in the village, they could enter and kill the boss right now, but unfortunately we have no one, so we need to wait that the boss comes out by himself"
"Back to the village," Reivo's father said. "We'll report this and start assembling a fighting party. The sooner, the better."
Reivo couldn't stop staring at the gate. It pulsed, like a heartbeat.
His first dungeon.
Part of him was excited. Part of him was terrified.
They returned just before sunset. The mood in the village had shifted—fear clung to the air, even among the laughter of unaware children.
But Mira met them at the gate, eyes locked on Reivo's.
"You saw it?"
He nodded.
"And?"
"It's real. But we're going to close it."
She didn't smile. She just reached out and touched his shoulder.
"Be careful."
"I will."
That night, as the village went to sleep with lanterns burning in every window, Reivo sat outside the house, sword across his knees.
The dungeon was only one star. That's what they kept telling themselves.
But it was still a crack in the world. And something was coming through.
The night crept on, heavy and long.
Reivo sat beneath the awning outside their home, the dull metal of his short sword resting cold against his knees. The lantern light from inside cast a warm glow through the shutters, but it didn't reach him. Out here, the air felt thinner—like the village itself was holding its breath.
He kept his eyes on the dark horizon where the forest loomed. Somewhere out there, the dungeon pulsed and grew. Each breath of wind seemed to carry a whisper from it—soft, cold, and foreign.
"Can't sleep?"
Reivo turned. His father approached quietly, a blanket draped over one shoulder, a cup of steaming root-tea in hand. He handed it to Reivo and settled beside him on the wooden step with a groan of tired joints.
Reivo took the tea gratefully, hands wrapping around the warmth.
"I keep thinking about it," he said. "That rift. The feeling it gave me. Like the world was… wrong."
His father nodded slowly, staring into the dark.
"That's what they are," he said. "Wounds. The Will of the World keeps the balance, but sometimes… things slip through. Dungeons are like broken veins. They bleed monsters and madness."
Reivo was quiet for a moment. Then, softly, "Why can't we just destroy it now? Before anything else comes through?"
"Because we're not Awakened," his father said, voice low and steady. "We're just people. No class, no system, no strength beyond what we train with our hands and backs. The Will doesn't grant its power to everyone."
"But what if we had someone?" Reivo's grip tightened on his sword. "If I awakened—if someone did—couldn't we stop it?"
His father looked at him then, really looked, eyes dark and thoughtful.
"It doesn't happen just because you want it," he said. "The Will chooses. Sometimes in a moment of great need, or great pain. Sometimes at eighteen. Sometimes never." He paused. "I've seen men die waiting for their system. And others… others break when it finally comes."
Reivo stared into the steam rising from his cup. "I want to protect them," he whispered. "Mira. Mom. Senn. I don't care what I have to do."
His father didn't answer right away. Instead, he reached into his cloak and pulled out a small, cloth-wrapped object. He handed it to Reivo.
Reivo unwrapped it—an old pendant, shaped like a circle split by a single diagonal line. He'd seen it before. His father wore it when he hunted deep in the wilds.
"My father gave it to me," he said. "Before he left to deal with a three-star gate near Rydel. He never came back."
Reivo held the pendant carefully, reverently.
"I'm not giving it to you to make you brave," his father continued. "You're already brave. I'm giving it to remind you what matters most."
Reivo nodded slowly, the weight of the pendant in his palm grounding him.
"Will we make it through this?" he asked.
His father didn't lie.
"I don't know. But we'll stand. And we'll fight."
The silence stretched between them, thick with meaning.
Then his father stood and gave him a small smile.
"Try to sleep, son. The next week won't be easy."
Reivo stayed a little longer after he left, eyes tracing the treeline one more time before he finally rose. He slipped the pendant around his neck, tucked it beneath his shirt, and went inside.
Standing on what Elder Eldin said the dungeon would open in approximately seven days.
And he'd be ready.