My First Pet Is a Nightmare God

Chapter 2: The Cracked Egg

The laughter from the arena still clung to me like a second skin as I moved through the parting crowd. I kept my shoulders straight and my face carved from ice, refusing to give them the satisfaction of seeing me break. Eyes slid away from mine in the way people avoid looking at something already rotting, and whispers trailed after me like smoke.

“Did you see that crack? It looked half-dead before it even started.”

“F-rank. They might as well hand him a shovel and tell him to start digging his own grave.”

“Even the instructors looked disappointed. Poor bastard.”

I walked until the heavy arena doors closed behind me with a solid thud, sealing away most of the noise. The corridor beyond felt colder, lined with obsidian pillars that reflected my face back in distorted fragments. My hands remained perfectly steady, but something brittle had begun to fracture deep inside my chest.

The cracked egg rested inside the reinforced case they had shoved into my arms before dismissing me. It felt heavier than its size suggested  cold, pulsing faintly like a heart that refused to stop beating even though it should have died hours ago. The jagged line across its shell had widened slightly since the ceremony, as though whatever lived inside was still trying to claw its way out despite its obvious weakness.

I found an empty training annex on the lower levels, a forgotten room with cracked mirrors and dim emergency lighting that no one bothered to maintain. No one came here. No one would see me sit on the cold floor with my back against the wall, staring down at the egg resting in my lap.

This moment was supposed to be my turning point. Every student at Central Beast Academy received an awakening egg at sixteen. Most bonded with powerful creatures  dragons, spectral tigers, or storm elementals  that elevated entire families and secured bright futures filled with status and wealth. The strong rose quickly through the ranks. The weak were quietly removed from the system, reassigned to menial labor in the undercity, or simply forgotten.

I had spent years training in the academy’s lower halls, studying ancient texts until my eyes burned, and pushing my body through grueling drills until my muscles screamed in protest. All of it had led to this single, crushing outcome.

A dying egg.

I traced the jagged crack with my thumb. The surface felt unnaturally smooth in some places and brittle in others. A faint, sickly thrum brushed against my skin, barely noticeable, like the final breath of something ancient that had been broken long ago.

“Why me?” I muttered, my voice low and flat in the empty room. “Why give me the one thing that cannot even pretend to be useful?”

No answer came, of course. The egg was not yet a beast. It was simply a failure given solid form.

I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. Images flashed behind my lids of the frost wolf that had materialized with such pride, the flame lion that had drawn thunderous cheers, and the way Headmaster Crowe’s gaze had lingered on me with something close to pity before sliding away.

Pity cut deeper than mockery because it meant they had already written me off as lost.

Hours slipped past while the academy bells marked the end of the day’s ceremonies. Students would be celebrating now, boasting about their new bonds and planning their first training sessions with dreams of climbing the ranks. I would remain the joke they told over dinner, the cautionary tale parents used to scare their children into working harder.

The egg grew steadily colder in my hands.

I stood up slowly, my legs stiff from sitting so long, and walked to the corner of the room where the reinforced disposal chute waited. It was standard procedure for failed awakenings. Drop the egg inside and the academy’s incineration wards would erase it cleanly, leaving no trace and no reminder of my shame.

My fingers tightened around the case. I could simply throw it away, accept what everyone already knew, become invisible, and survive in whatever scraps the system left for failures like me.

I lifted the egg and prepared to let it fall into the chute.

Then the sound came.

A soft crack, unnatural and wrong, as though reality itself had torn open just a fraction.

Thick black smoke, oily and far too alive, seeped from the widening fissure and coiled around my wrist like a living thing. The temperature in the room plummeted until my breath fogged visibly in front of me.

I froze in place.

The smoke tightened with deliberate care, as though it were tasting me.

A voice followed, sliding directly into my mind, it sounded like an accent.

“You are pathetic, little vessel… but you will do.”

The words carried the weight of centuries and the sharp edge of hunger.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

The egg shattered completely in my hands.

From the fragments rose something that should never have existed in darkness given form, with eyes like twin abysses opening for the first time in eons. Those eyes fixed on me with terrifying focus.

This was no ordinary beast.

The cracked egg had never been weak.

It had been sealed.

And the nightmare sleeping inside it had just awakened and chosen me.