The mess hall reeked of desperation.
Colonists huddled around flickering battery lamps, their stomachs growling loud enough to echo. The last of the protein paste had been scraped from tubes couple hours ago. Now, they were down to chewing on boiled leather from discarded boots.
Mark watched them from the corner, his fingers tracing the crumpled sunflower in his pocket. The edges were brittle now, the petals long since fallen away. Just like their hope.
Across the room, the boy—**Ren**—sat curled against the wall, his orange hair matted with grime. He hadn't spoken much since stumbling into their camp, but his hollow eyes told enough. Whatever he'd seen out there had hollowed him out.
Mark walked over and crouched in front of him.
*"You said your name's Ren?"*
The boy flinched, then nodded.
*"Level?"*
*"Two."* Ren's voice was a rasp.
*"Race?"*
Ren hesitated. Then, quieter: *"Soul Reaper."*
Mark's brows lifted. That was new.
*"Skills?"*
Ren swallowed. *"Exoskeleton. Makes me 40% stronger for a minute. Costs 10 MP. Mastery 3."* He tapped his temple, and for a second, his skin shimmered with a ghostly, chitinous sheen. *"And… Death Scythe. I can summon one. Drains 1 HP every five seconds. Mastery 0."*
Mark studied him. The kid was scrawny, but there was something in his gaze—something that had *seen* the dark and hadn't broken. Not completely.
*"You're coming with me,"* Mark said.
Ren blinked. *"Where?"*
*"Outside."*
The airlock hissed open, and the world beyond was nothing like the *Ark Horizon's* corpse.
**Green.**
That was the first thing Mark noticed. A thick, overgrown jungle stretched beyond the ship's wreckage, vines coiled around broken hull plating like serpents. The air was humid, thick with the scent of wet earth and something metallic—blood, maybe.
Ren tensed beside him. *"It wasn't like this before."*
Mark didn't answer. His eyes were locked on the water.
A pond—no, a **marsh**—sprawled to their left, its surface still as glass. Then—
***Flick.***
A shadow darted beneath the surface.
Something **erupted** from the water.
A **fish**, if fish were nightmares. Two meters long, its scales gleamed like oil-slicked metal. Its mouth was a gaping chasm of needle teeth, and its eyes—**red**, pupil-less—locked onto them for a heartbeat before it **lashed** upward.
A bird, wings flapping wildly, didn't even have time to scream before those jaws snapped shut. The creature swallowed it whole and vanished back beneath the water with barely a ripple.
Ren made a choked sound.
Mark exhaled slowly.
*"We're not at the top of the food chain anymore, Monsters are."*