One year passed. Then two.
The settlement grew into a proper town. Walls went higher. Streets formed. A market appeared where people traded things found in the Zones.
Ji-hu still lived there. Still watched the horizon. Still had nothing.
---
The hunters came and went.
They had ranks now—letters pinned to their gear like military insignia. F was lowest. Then E, D, C, B, A. Ji-hu heard stories about S-rank but had never seen one. They operated in different worlds, apparently.
The hunters talked about something called Endurance Theory. Something about whatever you survived during the First Minute determined your power. Fire for burning. Water for drowning. Ji-hu heard enough to understand. He didn't ask questions.
Hunter: What'd you survive?
Ji-hu: Nothing.
The hunter laughed. Walked away.
---
Hana reached S-rank in her third year.
Ji-hu saw it on a screen in the defenders' barracks. Seventeen years old. Youngest in history. Valiant Storm's greatest prodigy.
She stood with her guildmates. Same face. Different eyes.
She hadn't come back. Hadn't written.
Ji-hu stopped watching her reports after that.
---
He became a Defender in his second year.
The job was simple: guard the walls, patrol the perimeter, kill anything that wandered out of the Zones looking for easy prey. The guilds paid because it was cheaper than sending real hunters. Defenders took the money because it was better than starving.
Ji-hu was the worst Defender on the roster.
Trainer: You hesitate. Every time.
Ji-hu: I know.
Trainer: Then fix it.
Ji-hu tried. He really did. But when something came at him with teeth, his body froze. Every time.
The other Defenders noticed.
Defender: Hey. Hana's brother. How's it feel being the useless one?
Ji-hu: Fine.
Defender: Must run in the family. She got everything. You got nothing.
Ji-hu said nothing.
---
He learned about Zones from overhearing hunters.
Dangerous places where Earth had merged with other dimensions. Monsters lived there. Bred there. Sometimes wandered out. Hunters went in, killed everything, and if they cleared it all, the Zone would stabilize. The land would go back to normal eventually.
That was the job. Clear Zones. Push back the monsters. Reclaim the world.
Ji-hu never went inside a Zone. Defenders weren't allowed. Too dangerous for unawakened.
He stayed on the walls. Watched hunters leave. Watched some come back.
---
Three years.
He sat on the wall one night, looking toward the dark shapes moving in the distance. Monsters. Hunters. Things he couldn't name.
Above him, the rift glowed faintly. It was brighter at night. The colors bled through more visibly—purple and green and that other shade, the one with no name. Sometimes people claimed it pulsed. Moved. Changed.
Scientists said no. Stable. Unchanging. Just a scar.
But rumors spread anyway. That it was a door. That something was coming through. That the monsters were just the beginning.
Ji-hu didn't believe rumors. He believed what he could see.
And what he could see was a wound in the sky that never healed.
He thought about the water. The metal. The creature's blood on his hands.
He thought about Hana. S-rank Hana. Too busy to remember she had a brother.
He looked at his hands.
Still empty.
Still nothing.
---
Then the cave happened.
And everything changed.
---
END CHAPTER 5