The island didn't attack without warning.
It tested first.
The morning air was wrong—too still, too heavy. Even the mercenaries noticed it. Their movements slowed, eyes scanning the treeline more often than usual. One of them knelt, pressed his palm to the soil, then stood without a word.
They changed direction.
No explanation.
Mark followed.
He'd learned by now that questions were useless. Survival on the island wasn't about understanding—it was about timing.
They moved through dense forest, the canopy thick enough to choke the light. The ground dipped gradually, then sharply, funneling them into a narrow valley of stone and twisted roots.
That's when the sounds stopped.
Not faded.
Stopped.
The mercenaries raised fists.
Freeze.
Mark felt it immediately—the pressure inside his chest surged, sharp and warning. His skin prickled, senses tightening, pulling information from the air like hooks.
Something was close.
Too close.
The first scream came from the rear.
It was short.
Wet.
Final.
By the time Mark turned, three remaining kids were already gone—dragged into the underbrush so fast there wasn't even time for blood to hit the ground.
The mercenaries didn't fire.
Not yet.
"Hold," the leader ordered calmly.
That word sent a chill through Mark that fear couldn't match.
Whatever this was, they wanted to see it.
The thing stepped into view.
It stood taller than any animal Mark had ever seen—its frame lean, elongated, muscle layered too densely beneath dark, scarred hide. Its head was wolf-like, but wrong in proportion, jaw too wide, eyes too intelligent.
And its legs—
They bent backward.
Jointed incorrectly.
Designed for explosive movement.
The creature inhaled.
Mark felt that breath like fingers raking across his spine.
It smelled them.
All of them.
The girl screamed.
That broke the moment.
The beast moved.
It crossed the distance in a blur, faster than Mark's eyes could track. One mercenary fired—missed. Another fired—hit flesh but didn't slow it.
The creature slammed into the group.
Chaos.
Mark didn't think.
He moved.
Not away.
Through.
He ducked under a claw that should've taken his head, rolled, came up behind a fallen tree trunk without remembering how he got there. His heart was pounding—but his body was perfectly aligned, every motion precise, economical.
One of the other kids froze.
That was the mistake.
The creature turned.
Mark acted.
He grabbed a sharpened spike from the ground—something he'd fashioned days ago without knowing why—and threw it.
The spike buried itself deep into the creature's eye.
It howled.
Not in pain.
In rage.
The beast turned on Mark.
Good.
Focus on me.
It lunged.
Mark ran.
He didn't outrun it.
He led it.
Through narrow gaps. Over uneven ground. Toward terrain that favored agility over raw power. His legs burned, lungs screamed—but something inside him refused to let him slow.
The creature slipped.
Just once.
That was enough.
A mercenary's blade flashed.
Another shot rang out.
The beast collapsed, twitching violently before going still.
Silence returned.
Breathing filled the space.
Mark stopped.
Hands shaking now—not from fear, but from the aftershock of restraint.
He hadn't lost control.
He'd come close.
One of the kids was dead.
Another was injured badly, bleeding out.
The mercenaries didn't rush to help.
They looked at Mark.
Really looked at him.
"You," the leader said.
Mark turned.
"You didn't panic."
"I did," Mark replied. "I just didn't stop."
The mercenary studied him for a long moment.
Then he nodded once.
That was all.
They buried the dead before nightfall.
No ceremony.
No names spoken.
Later, as the fire burned low, the leader approached Mark, who was looking at the grave of those kids he didn't even knew there names
"Hey kid," he said. "Tomorrow, things change."
Mark met his gaze.
"How?"
The mercenary's eyes were flat.
"We stop teaching you how not to die," he said.
"And start teaching you how to hunt."
Next morning
Training did not begin with weapons.
It began with exhaustion.
The mercenaries woke him up before dawn and ran him until his legs failed. When he collapsed, he was dragged back up. When he vomited, they were given water and told to keep moving. There were no explanations, no encouragement, no visible benchmarks.
Only correction.
Only consequence.
Mark learned quickly
this wasn't about strength.
It was about control.
He was taught how to move silently for hours without rest. How to read the ground, the wind, the trees. How to feel when something was watching—really watching—and how to decide whether to disappear or prepare to kill.
Pain became background noise.
Fear became information.
Mark adapted faster than the other two.
Not because he wanted to be better.
Because his body responded as if it had been waiting for permission.
When combat training finally began, it was brief and brutal. No forms. No sparring. Just live situations against the island's lesser predators—creatures that would have killed normal humans in seconds.
Mark didn't fight wildly.
He ended things.
Efficiently. Quietly. With a restraint that unsettled even the mercenaries.
They never praised him.
But they just stopped correcting him.
---
4 Years passed.
The island never became safe.
By the time Mark turned sixteen, he no longer thought about escape every day.
That realization scared him more than any monster.
---
The Swinton house was quieter than it used to be.
Not empty—just restrained, like sound itself didn't want to linger.
Lucy Swinton kept Mark's room clean. Too clean. No dust. No changes. Nothing moved unless it had to. Sometimes she stood in the doorway longer than necessary, fingers resting against the frame, eyes unfocused.
Ethan Swinton returned to work after a year.
Not because he was ready.
Because standing still was worse.
They never said Mark was dead.
The body was never found.
The case files used words like missing, presumed, unrecoverable.
Lawyers circled. Investigators dug. Journalists speculated.
The school collapsed under the weight of it all.
FIRs. Lawsuits. Criminal negligence. Regulatory violations.
The charter company vanished within months.
The academy shut down permanently.
No memorials.
Too much liability.
At night, Lucy sometimes dreamed of turbulence.
Ethan dreamed of silence.
They learned how to function again.
Not heal.
Just function.
---
On the island, the air tightened like a drawn breath. The mutated beasts fled inland, away from something unseen. The mercenaries felt it immediately—every instinct screaming at once.
Mark stopped mid-step.
The pressure inside his chest surged violently, sharper than it had ever been. His vision blurred—not from weakness, but from overload. For a fraction of a second, his reflection appeared in a pool of water.
His eyes looked wrong.
The sky above the island fractured.
Not visibly—structurally.
Something or someone ancient, starved, and furious pushed against the reality itself from the other side.
The Veil had been wounded.
A wall that separates the human world from the supernatural. The Veil
Someone was tearing through the the veil from the other side,
A man looked drained of life almost looked like a corps tears The Veil, from the crack of the reality itself. Then instantly fell on the ground. No one noticed him.
Cause everyone was focused on Mark
Mark dropped to one knee, gasping—not for air, but for restraint. Whatever had been holding him back strained, threads tightening, threatening to snap.
He didn't know why.
He only knew this:
Something had changed.
Something that had been sealed was moving.