Beyond Beast Rank

The Failed Awakening

The front door stayed shut against the relentless rain, but the cold draft slipped through the wood cracks and chilled my bones.

I knelt down beside the wooden floorboard near our small bed, letting my knees rest on the cold, bare planks. My fingers found the loose edge of the wood and lifted it up with a dull creak. Inside the dark, dusty space rested a small iron box. I pulled it out, placed it on my lap, and wiped the grey dust off the heavy metal lid. My parents left behind very few things when they walked out of our home five years ago and never returned.

Lily walked into the small bedroom, wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm. She watched me open the box, her eyes looking tired and hollow in the dim yellow light of the single bulb hanging from the ceiling. The sound of heavy rain beating against the thin glass window filled the quiet space between us.

"Are you looking at the compass again?" she asked quietly, stepping closer to the bed.

"I need to check our supplies," I lied, lifting the heavy brass compass out of the box.

The glass face of the compass was scratched from years of rough use in the wild zones beyond the city wall. The metal casing was worn down at the edges where my father used to hold it tight during long, dangerous journeys. He always told me that a good compass would lead a person home even when the night was completely blind. He was wrong about that. His compass stayed behind in this box, and he never came back through our front door.

Beside the compass sat his old notebook. The leather cover was torn at the corners, stained with dry mud, and several pages were stuck together from old water damage.

I opened the book to the middle pages, letting the rough paper slide beneath my fingers. Sketches of strange beasts covered the yellow paper. Some drawings showed creatures with multiple tails, glowing eyes, or heavy stone armor plates that did not match any known species listed in the public city records. Next to the sketches were lines of strange symbols that looked like letters from a language nobody spoke anymore.

I spent hundreds of hours staring at those symbols when I was younger. I thought they contained a secret map to where my parents went. I thought they would explain why the government enforcement team stopped searching for them after only six weeks of half-hearted effort. The symbols never changed. They remained silent puzzles that I lacked the intelligence and talent to solve.

Lily sat down on the edge of the bed next to me. She reached out with a trembling hand and touched the corner of the stained notebook, her thumb tracing the frayed edge of the leather.

"Do you think they are still out there?" Lily asked, her voice shaking slightly as she looked up at my face. "Do you think Father lost his way in the deep wilderness?"

I closed the iron box with a sharp metallic click that echoed through the small room. I stood up, placing the box on the wooden shelf, and looked into my sister's pale face.

"I do not know, Lily," I said, keeping my voice steady and firm so she would not hear the doubt tearing at my own throat. "We have to focus on today. Father is gone, Mother is gone, and we are the only ones left to take care of each other."

Lily pulled her thin sweater tighter around her shoulders. She did not argue with me because she knew the harsh truth of our district. Hope did not pay for our monthly rent. Hope did not buy the medicine her weak lungs needed every single day.

"You are going out into the rain again," she whispered, her eyes drifting toward my faded delivery jacket hanging on the wall hook by the door.

"The night shift pays more credits," I said, forcing a calm smile onto my face to ease her mind. "I will be back before the morning sun comes up."

I slipped the brass compass into my inner jacket pocket, placing it right next to my father's old notebook. They felt heavy against my ribs, like a physical weight reminding me of everything our family lost when our parents disappeared.

I placed the iron box back under the loose floorboard, pushed the plank down into place, and tapped it flat with my boot. Every second I spent looking backward into the past was a second wasted on our daily survival.

I picked up my helmet from the small wooden table, wiping a smear of grease off the clear visor with the sleeve of my shirt. Lily stood up from the bed, watching every movement with quiet worry in her eyes. I reached out and patted her shoulder gently, giving her a reassuring nod before turning toward the entrance.

I walked to the front door, pulled the heavy handle, and yanked it open. The wind immediately slammed cold raindrops into the dark hallway, filling the air with the smell of wet asphalt, old garbage, and industrial smoke blowing in from the lower factories.

I stepped out onto the rusted metal landing of the third floor and pulled my heavy helmet over my head, snapping the visor down tight against the blowing wind. My old delivery motorcycle idled at the bottom of the concrete stairs, its single yellow headlight cutting a narrow beam through the heavy grey fog.

My Beast Identification talent was completely useless for uncovering ancient mysteries. It could not tell me why my parents vanished into the wild zones five years ago. It could not tell me how to pay the landlord three hundred credits by tomorrow afternoon. It only told me the weight, diet, and common species of ordinary street dogs.

I ran down the rusted stairs, stepping over puddle after puddle on the cracked concrete steps. I climbed onto the cold leather seat of the bike and twisted the hand throttle. The engine roared to life with a loud metallic rattle, shaking my hands as I turned the wheel and headed down the dark, slick street toward the dangerous pick up location in the industrial district.