The ground trembled slightly that morning, as if the forest itself knew something was changing. Birds didn't chirp like usual. Even the wind moved slow and heavy, like it was carrying a burden too ancient to speak of. Coker stood on the edge of the ravine, a torn cloth wrapped around his arm and blood crusting in thin trails down to his fingers. He didn't care. Pain had long become background noise. What mattered now... was the whisper.
The night before, the same dream came again. Only this time, it wasn't a dream.
He had seen the same silver-eyed beast beneath the old ruins, chained with black roots. Every time it opened its mouth to scream, the world around it bent like glass cracking. But last night… it spoke his name. It whispered it, slow and cracked like a rusted bell. "Coker..."
He had woke up sweating, his entire room covered in claw marks—marks he didn't remember making. His shadow had grown darker too. Not darker as in color, but thicker. When he moved, it delayed like it was hesitating. Or… resisting.
"You're changing," the old man from the guild said, when he came to inspect the clawed floor. "This ain't normal, kid. That beast you summoned ain't just a beast. It's something ancient… something forgotten."
Coker didn't respond. He knew already. Ever since he first reached out to summon his companion, it wasn't light that came for him. It was shadow.
The others in the academy had started to notice too. Some avoided him, eyes full of fear. The strong ones mocked him like always, but now their voices shook slightly when he looked back at them. He wasn't E-rank anymore—not to them, not really. There was something wrong with him. Something cursed.
That morning, Master Helran—one of the highest-ranked Beast Masters in the region—called Coker to the arena.
"You've been acting strange," the man said, his arms crossed behind his back, beard flowing in the dusty wind like fire. "Time we see what your beast really is. Summon it."
Coker hesitated. His heart raced, not out of fear for what the Master might do, but fear for what he might unleash.
Still, he nodded. He walked into the center of the arena, the floor hot under his boots. He closed his eyes.
"Come to me," he whispered—not with force, but with something deeper, something more primal. He didn't shout like the others. He didn't chant or burn incense.
He simply felt the bond.
The shadows around him thickened. The sunlight dimmed even though the sky remained clear. Then the rumble came—deep, hollow, and echoing. The ground cracked.
Something rose behind him.
It wasn't fully visible. The shadow beast curled behind his back like an ancient god waking up from a thousand-year slumber. Long horns swept through the air like blades, and its eyes were pure silver, like moons burning with frost. Its body was covered in mist, leaking trails of black energy that swallowed light.
The audience gasped.
Master Helran took a step back, his mouth slightly open. "That's… not a beast," he muttered. "That's—"
Then it spoke again.
But this time… not just in Coker's mind.
"He is mine," the beast said, its voice overlapping like a thousand growls speaking at once. "And I… am his."
The entire arena went silent.
Then chaos.
Some ran. Others bowed. But Master Helran—he attacked. A flash of red light, a blast of flame. Coker didn't even flinch.
His beast moved without command.
It opened its maw. Not wide, not threatening. Just enough for a spark of shadow to flicker—and then all the fire died. All the light around the Master flickered and vanished, and the man collapsed to one knee, his strength stolen like breath from drowning lungs.
"Stop!" Coker shouted, running forward. "Don't kill him!"
The beast obeyed.
That moment told the world something: Coker wasn't a mistake anymore. He wasn't the E-rank weakling who cried in corners.
He was something else now.
Something more dangerous.
Something chosen.