It didn't crawl out of the crack.
It burst through—like the ground had coughed it up and rejected it.
The first sound it made wasn't a roar.
It clicked.
A sharp, fast sound, like tapping stones clacking together. Quick and unnatural.
"What was... that..." A few first-timers in the Force Field were trembling in fear.
The creature was low to the ground, six legs sprawled out wide for balance. Each leg ended in a crystal-tipped point that stabbed into the broken pavement as it moved.
Its body was stretched thin, covered in pale, half-transparent skin. Faint blue lines pulsed underneath—veins glowing softly, like buried wires.
Its head jerked once, then twice, as if adjusting to the world around it.
The mouth was simple but unsettling—two plates of jagged bone that snapped together when it clicked.
And its eyes—they glowed and blinked in gold. Slow at first, then faster, flashing like a broken signal light.
It wasn't huge. Maybe the size of a small car.
But for Untuned miners like Raith and his group, it was big enough.
Big enough to kill and it was already moving toward them.
Raith knew the monster. He had read about it in the journal.
"Feral Crawler," he muttered the name.
Or something that had started as one.
Now, it was no longer normal. Like a mutated one.
The unstable Forces inside the Field had twisted it, mutated it into something it was never meant to become.
Its body was stretched wrong. Its movements didn't match the way it should have walked. The veins pulsing under its skin weren't natural.
It wasn't just alive.
It was broken.
A creature that should have died the moment it was exposed to the chaos around it—but somehow, it survived.
The Feral Crawler scanned its surroundings and without hesitation, it attacked the nearest living being.
"H-hh-help—!"
The first man barely got the word out before the creature was on him. One of the Feral Crawler's legs drove through his ribs and lifted him off the ground. He hit the pavement, bounced once, then didn't move.
Another man turned and ran.
Too slow.
The Crawler surged forward, slammed him flat, and drove its crystal leg through his back and into the concrete beneath.
Blood pooled fast. Too fast.
"No—!" a girl screamed. She tripped as she tried to turn around, landed hard, and scrambled on her knees. "Please, please—!"
She got halfway up but the Crawler stomped.
Her spine crumpled. Her wrist monitor blinked red. Then black.
She wanted to scream but her back was slashed by the Crawler.
Someone from the far end tried to crawl away—a teenage boy with a busted ankle, dragging himself across broken tiles. He turned his head, looked right at Raith's group, and reached out.
He didn't beg.
Didn't shout.
He just whispered, "Please help—"
The Crawler's leg split through his side like a blade. The boy folded in on himself, hand still reaching. That's when the screaming started coming from the panic Untuned.
Raith's group hit the ground like instinct. Mira shoved the Kid behind a rusted slab. "Get cover!"
Kev ducked behind the mining cart, muttering, "Doomed… We're doomed..." like it might turn reality back.
Dane stood in front of them without even realizing it—like his body had remembered a role his mind had given up on.
The Kid didn't scream. She just stared. Frozen.
So did Raith. Not because he wasn't afraid. But because fear had long since been replaced by something else.
He'd seen this before. Not the monster, not the Field, not exactly like this—but he'd seen what helplessness looked like. He'd tasted it too many times to panic now.
His wrist monitor blinked red. Then darker.
"Why are the monitors blinking?" Dane hissed. "We're not even close to that damn monster!"
Raith glanced down at the ground.
He should have been trembling. He should have been panicking. Maybe even praying.
But he wasn't.
Instead, he focused on the hum—the low vibration he had felt ever since stepping into the Shatterveil. Only now, it was stronger. Sharper. Closer.
It was like something hidden in the air had taken a slow, deep breath.
Something was different.
This Force Field had changed.
"It's not detecting the monster," Raith muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "It's Force saturation."
Mira glanced at him. "What?"
"That thing is leaking Force—flooding the Field with it. That's why the monitors are going crazy," Raith replied.
He added, "It's not warning us about danger."
"Then what?!"
Everyone started to panic after listening to Raith.
"It's warning us... we're about to break."
The others went silent.
Somewhere deeper in the Field, another scream tore through the air—short, choked, then silent.
"Another kill." Dane gritted his teeth. "We have to move."
But no one did. Because they all knew the truth. There was nowhere to run. Except for the portal.
"It's impossible to reach the portal," Mira suddenly blurted out. "We're going to die!"
Her voice cracked—too loud—and for a second, everyone flinched.
The Crawler didn't hear her. It was still occupied. Still feeding. They got lucky.
The others looked at her, then at each other.
The portal was somewhere behind them—past the warped street, the twisted buildings, the broken geometry of the Field.
But finding it now? In this chaos?
No one could think straight. Even if they remembered the direction, the idea of turning their backs and running felt suicidal.
"Are we gonna die... like this?" Kev suddenly asked.
No one moved or responded.
Because trying to escape without dying wasn't just brave—it was damn near impossible. And worse, deep down, some of them were starting to realize—that maybe, they weren't going to make it out as they were.
"Come one, guys!" Dane shouted. "Don't give up just yet. We can make it out of here alive."
The others seemed to give up, except Raith. His mind was racing with ways to get out of this Field, safely.
While he was deep in thought, that was when it hit Raith. His wrist monitor blinked—black.
"Raith... Your monitor," Dane was the first to notice it.
However, instead of dying, Raith felt something was off with his body. He clutched his chest. If the helmet and the mining suit were taken off, everyone could see blue veins popping.
He could feel an intense feeling shooting down his spine. It was painful. Starting from the back of his head down to his feet. The pain was unbearable as gasped and dropped to one knee.
Dane got down to check on Raith's conditions. "What's happening? Are you okay?"
He knew that his questions sounded stupid but he could not really think straight at that moment. Kev was trembling, holding his head outside his helmet.
"He's going to die... We're going to die..." he muttered because all of their monitors had turned red.
Raith felt his chest burned. Not like heat. Not like fire. But the pressure—dense and coiling—pushed outward from the center of his body. He gritted his teeth and blood started to drip from his mouth.
He tried to prevent from getting the Crawler's attention by shouting.
Then came the pangs.
He couldn't count them. Couldn't even breathe between them. Stabbing jabs hit the back of his palms over and over—like something was etching into his skin.
He took off his right glove.
A glowing Mark had formed on the back of his palm—sharp, angular, with a central spine split by two slanted cuts. It pulsed faintly as if matching the beat of his heart.
Raith stared at it, eyes wide.
He recognized it.
He'd seen it years ago, but the diagrams of the Marks had stayed in his mind. He knew well what this Mark meant—Super Strength.
One of the oldest, rarest, and purest Forces known.
Not magic. Not tricks. Just power—the kind that could crush walls and shatter mountains. The kind meant for gods, not people like him.
And now... it was burning into his skin.
Golden. Undeniable.
While Raith was still lost in the glow of his awakening, he barely heard the shouts around him. Only Dane was able to see the Mark and knew that Raith had awakened.
"What should we do now?!" Mira's voice cut through the haze first, sharp with panic.
Kev's followed, rough and urgent. But the words were muffled like they were shouting through water.
Raith's body began to steady—breath by breath. His vision sharpened. His muscles, which had been screaming a moment ago, started to feel solid again.
That was when he saw it.
The Crawler twitched.
Once.
Twice.
Dane spotted it too. His face tightened.
"Move!" Dane barked. "Get back! I'll cover Raith!"
But with his injured leg, Dane couldn't move fast enough. The others—Mira, Kev, the Kid—stood frozen in shock, caught between fear and instinct.
The Crawler didn't hesitate.
It leaped.
"It's coming!" Dane shouted, panic raw in his voice.
Raith's mind snapped fully awake. Everything else—the fear, the noise, the pressure—faded into the background.
He saw the monster mid-air.
He didn't think. He just moved.
"Get cover!" Raith shouted, shoving Dane roughly behind him.
The others scrambled back as Raith planted his boots into the cracked pavement. His body felt heavier than before—but not slow. Not weak.
He moved forward, taking one step, then another—each step felt heavy against the ground.
Toward the oncoming Crawler.
Toward the thing that had almost killed them.
This time, the fear had gone.
Raith charged his right fist. As he did so, the ground under his boot cracked. The cracks spread out like a spiderweb. His breath locked in his chest.
Every muscle in his frame screamed. But he didn't stop. He met the Crawler midair—fist clenched, jaw tight, instinct louder than fear. And he punched upward.
The impact wasn't thunder. It wasn't even noise.
It was silence—snapped and shattered—as if the world itself held its breath too long and exhaled all at once.
His right fist met the Crawler's leg.
The limb shattered instantly—bone, crystal, and sinew detonating in a burst of iridescent shards. The Crawler was forced to twist around completely. Its direction changed entirely because of the strong force.
The monster smashed into the wall with a sickening crunch—stone and crystal flying in all directions.
Raith swayed on his feet, body screaming in protest, but he forced himself to stay standing. His boots scraped against the broken road, searching for balance he wasn't sure he still had.
Behind him, the others were there—shaken, sprawled across the ground—but alive.
They'd been knocked off their feet by the impact, sprawled awkwardly across the ground, but they were alive.
Dane was the first to push himself up, blinking hard. His voice broke the stunned silence.
"You managed to fight it?"
The others stared at Raith, wide-eyed, trying to piece it together.
Kev, still half-sitting on the ground, pointed a shaking finger at him. "D-d-did he... did he just blast that thing away?"
But Raith wasn't standing straight anymore.
The moment his fist slammed into the monster, something inside Raith just—gave out.
It wasn't a clean feeling. It wasn't some heroic rush of power. It was sharp and messy, like a rope snapping inside his shoulder.
Pain ripped through him—fast and brutal—shooting from his knuckles up through his spine. His knees buckled under the shock. He stumbled sideways, breath tearing from his lungs in a half-strangled gasp, and dropped hard onto the cracked ground.
The world spun around him for a second, and all he could do was hold onto the burning throb lancing through his arm—raw and real and completely unforgiving.
His hand trembled.
Fingers twitching.
He stared at it—at the Mark still glowing faintly on his palm. And then he grinned, just barely, through clenched teeth.
Because even if it hurt—hell, even if it nearly broke him—he knew one thing—he had really awakened.
Silence fell.
"He... awakened?" Mira stared at him, mouth half-open.
Kev's eyes were wide behind his visor, unmoving. Even the Kid, still crouched low, said nothing—her gaze fixed on Raith's hand.
Dane's brow furrowed. His voice, low and quiet, cut the silence. "This is pretty similar to how the legendary Pavel awakened. When he was in a life-or-death situation like this."
No one responded.
Dane looked down at his hand.
For a second, he just stared at it—fingers slightly curled, almost like he expected something to happen. Then, slowly, he closed it into a fist.
His breathing changed—deeper now, heavier like his body remembered something his mind hadn't caught up to yet.
A small, stubborn part of him—buried under all the years of scraping by, of just surviving—stirred awake.
And for the first time in a long while, he let himself wish for it.
He wished he could awaken too.
And he wasn't alone.
Around him, Mira, Kev, even the Kid—each of them stared not just at Raith, but at their own empty hands. At the empty space where a Mark could be.
But before any of them could say a word, the Crawler's broken body twitched again in the distance.
It wasn't dead yet.