I had a strange dream.
In it, I saw my younger self lying on my bed, quietly drawing. I stepped closer and looked over his shoulder. On the paper were simple figures—Mama, then Papa, then Grandpa and Grandma. Their faces were clumsy, childish, but filled with warmth.
Then my hand froze.
He drew one more figure.
Another child—standing beside me, holding my hand. The moment I saw it, a sharp pain exploded in my head.
My younger self suddenly stood up.
And then—A massive fireball crashed into him, swallowing his body in flames. His scream tore through the room. I rushed forward, panic flooding me, trying to extinguish the fire, trying to cast any spell—but nothing worked. My body wouldn't respond. I couldn't do anything.
Then Mama appeared.
She reached him, extinguished the flames, and struck him—knocking him unconscious. Light wrapped around her hands as she healed him, but it was too late. The damage was already done. A long, ugly burn scar stretched from his chest to his stomach.
I looked down.
The same scar was on my body.
Mama kept whispering, "I'm sorry… I'm sorry…" over and over again.
Then the dream ended.
I woke up drenched in sweat. My shirt was completely soaked, clinging to my body. I didn't have another one, so I took it off and hung it on the balcony to dry in the morning sunlight.
When I looked at myself in the hotel mirror, I saw it clearly.
The burn mark.
Red. Angry. As if it had never truly healed.
It had taken me many days to adapt back then. Mama healed me again and again until she collapsed from exhaustion. We moved places often after that. Papa was always away. And whenever he came back, he always said the same thing.
"Sorry."
Why did Papa and Mama always apologize?
That question has followed me my whole life.
Even now, I still don't know who fired that spell.
Not even Mama.
Later, Papa and Mama died in an accident. I survived—but with a head injury. People said it "awakened my hidden potential."
Idiots.
I let out a long sigh and kept waiting, a single tear slipping down my cheek.
In the morning, we gathered.
I introduced Athena to the commander. She introduced herself properly. The commander nodded—he already knew the chief of the authority and said he only hired capable people.
Before we left the town, more soldiers joined us. Others would arrive later, while some stayed behind to guard the town.
"Let's go," commander shouted.
Everyone echoed it.
There were ten of us as we finally left the town behind.
****
[Previous night]
"Hey, Matthiew," I said as we walked side by side under the dim streetlights. "Do you remember your first day when you joined Xeno?"
He let out a short laugh. "Yeah. I do. It was… a weird day for me."
"Same," Luka said softly.
Matthiew glanced at her. "You joined before me, right?"
"Two months earlier," she replied. "I was the youngest there. Everyone else already knew each other. I didn't."
She slowed her steps a little, memories surfacing.
"At first, I thought it would be exciting," Luka continued. "Head Michael personally invited me. He said I had 'potential' and that Xeno needed people like me. I didn't even understand what that really meant back then."
Matthiew nodded. "He said something similar to me. Made it sound… important."
"For two months," Luka said, "it was just me. Labs, tests, lectures I barely understood. The people were nice, but they never talked to me like a person. More like I am a baby ."
She smiled faintly. "I walked ,trained alone as I didn't like to be with adults."
she said. "Then one day, you walked in."
"That doesn't sound right. I remember everyone staring at me."
"That's because you were loud," Luka shot back.
He blinked. "I was?"
"Yes," she said flatly. "You didn't talk at all at first. Just nodded. Barely answered questions. And then—"
She glanced at him.
"—once you started talking, you didn't stop."
Matthiew laughed. "Okay, that part might be true."
"The female reserchers started to teased me after that," Luka went on. "They kept saying things like, 'Your guard finally arrived,' or 'You look happier these days.' I didn't understand what they meant."
"And?" Matthiew asked.
"And I didn't see a guard," she said quietly. "I just saw a boy who looked clueless."
They walked in silence for a few seconds.
"Then one day Head Michael called us," Matthiew said. Luka nodded.
"He told us," Matthiew continued, "'From today onward, you two will go on missions.'"
"I remember thinking," Luka said, "'Missions? We're researchers.'"
Matthiew chuckled. "I thought it was a joke."
"But it wasn't," Luka said. "Not even close."
"At first, we didn't understand," Matthiew added. "Why us."
She exhaled slowly. "And then we saw our first anomaly- A giant tiger ."
They both went quiet.
"At that moment," Luka said, voice low, "I realized Xeno wasn't just a reserch facility."
Matthiew nodded. "It was just a disguise... ."
They kept walking, the night stretching ahead of them—neither of them saying what they were both thinking.
That even now, anomalies were still something new for them ,and still something terrifying.
****
After returning to my room, I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, realizing I never thought I would love Matthiew like this. I liked his character back then also, the way he acted, but that alone shouldn't have been enough. And yet, somewhere along the way, without me noticing, it became love.
Not the kind of love you read about in books. Not the dramatic, destiny-written kind. Just… something quiet. Heavy. Something that stayed.
Back then, he was just a boy who walked too loudly, talked too much once he got comfortable, and stood beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world. I didn't think about feelings. I didn't think about us. I was too busy surviving.
The day everything changed started like any other mission.
They sent only the two of us.
The anomaly was rated low—barely worth attention. It looked human at first, just wrong in the details. Its limbs were too long, muscles bulging unnaturally beneath stretched skin. It moved fast, hit hard, but nothing we couldn't handle. We exchanged a glance, already in sync, and took it down easily.
I remember thinking, That was it?
Then it laughed.
Its body twisted, bones snapping and reforming as scales tore through flesh. Wings grow from its back.
I don't remember who screamed first.
What I remember is fear—raw and suffocating. Orders came through the communicator. Retreat. Delay it. Buy time for the others to escape.
We were supposed to run.
But neither of us did.
We fought like idiots. Like people who didn't know how to abandon each other. Every spell burned, every movement screamed. We were bleeding, exhausted, barely standing, but still we stood—back to back—stalling a monster that should have killed us in seconds.
At some point, the fear changed.
It turned into resolve.
If we were going to die, we would die together.
But we didn't.
Somehow—through desperation, timing, and sheer stubborn will—we killed it. When the dragon finally fell, the silence that followed felt unreal. I remember collapsing, laughing and crying at the same time, my hands shaking so badly I couldn't even hold my weapon.
Matthiew looked at me then—really looked at me—and I saw it.
Something had shifted.
From that day on, we talked more. About small things. Stupid things. About fears we never said out loud before. There was no sudden confession, no dramatic realization. Just a slow closeness that crept in without asking permission.
Until one night.
We were drunk. Celebrating survival like idiots do. The alcohol loosened tongues that had been holding back for too long.
We confessed at the same time.
It was clumsy. Awkward. Honest.
And just like that, we were together.
We dated quietly. No grand declarations. Just shared meals, shared missions, shared exhaustion. A year passed faster than I expected.
Then one day, a new boy arrived at the facility.
At first glance, he looked like a cocky bastard. Sharp eyes. Annoying confidence. The kind of person you expect to clash with immediately. I remember rolling my eyes, already judging him.
I was wrong.
He was prideful, yes—but he knew when to let go of that pride. He listened. He adapted. He was frighteningly talented. Watching him work felt like watching something unfinished .
Matthiew and I talked later, after the fight with Winter.
Both of us reached the same conclusion without saying it out loud.
He was stronger than any one of us.
****
After a long journey of 4hours, we finally reached the city. The commander and Athena headed straight to the station to file their report and speak with the chief, while the rest of us went to a nearby restaurant to eat.
As we ate, we talked about all kinds of things. The age gap between the three of us and the soldiers wasn't that large—Luka and I were nineteen, Winter was twenty, and most of the soldiers were around twenty-five to twenty-seven, though a few were older. The conversation flowed easily, and the atmosphere felt lighter than it had in days.
Partway through the meal, the vice commander arrived with several other soldiers. We told her where the commander had gone. She let out a tired sigh and immediately left to meet him.
About an hour later, the commander returned. He told us to get some rest, because we would be patrolling the Xeno Center that night. According to the information he had received, there had been sightings of unknown individuals nearby, possibly the same people we had encountered before.
We rested for a few hours. After three hours, the commander gathered everyone again, with the vice commander's squad joining us. We were twenty in total now, with more units scheduled to arrive later. After traveling for another hour and a half, we finally reached the Xeno Center.
"This Xeno Center looks better," Winter said as we arrived.
Luka and I both looked at him at the same time. Winter immediately realized what he had said and quickly apologized. There wasn't much for us to do yet, so we went up to the terrace and watched the sunset. As the sun slowly disappeared beyond the horizon, we readied ourselves, staying alert for any danger.
"Matthiew, Luka, I'd like to give you two this," the winter said suddenly. When we looked at what he was holding, both of us froze. "How did it survive -it was taken you said us ?" we said at the same time, our eyes wide with shock.
Night fell, and we began patrolling. For a long while, nothing happened. Then we saw a single person walking toward the entry gate—a large, muscular man. The guards at the gate tried to question him, but before they could react, he grabbed both of them. At the same time, multiple fire spells shot out from the forest.
Our men were engulfed in flames and collapsed, but the muscular man's hands remained completely unharmed as he continued walking toward the facility.
The alarm rang.
Our forces moved instantly. From the sky above, massive bird-like creatures descended toward us, while from the forest, strange creatures emerged alongside men wearing robes. Our units split immediately—some moved to engage from the air, others took positions on the ground. From the terrace, where I was stationed, I could see the commander below leading the ground forces, while the vice commander remained with us above.
I thought to myself, the battle has begun… now let's see if all our preparation was enough.