It was early in the morning and not many had any business being awake. The ones that hadn’t slept throughout the night, at least. The corridor was dark without any electrical lights, but it was lit by the light of a candle.

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” asked Jason, unusually gloomy. He stood looking at a picture in the hallway as Sean walked through the corridor. Sean glanced at the walls and saw pictures of accomplished alumni. They were neither large nor small, just the right size.

“I couldn’t sleep well,” said Sean. Telling him that he fought some dream monster in his head that may or may not have been put there by Clara wasn’t necessary —that was for his family to know.

“Hm,” he snorted with a nod. He looked at one picture in particular. It was a girl, wearing the uniform of St. Lucas’ High School. It consisted of a gray jacket over a blouse and a skirt. On the jacket, adjacent to the heart, was a stylized cross. She had black hair that reached her shoulders, and seemed to be quite attractive.

Sean looked at the nameplate at the bottom right corner —she’d graduated back in 2014.

“Why up so early?” Sean asked. He didn’t want to ask why he was looking at the picture. That was a recipe for awkwardness.

“Couldn’t sleep as well,” said Jason. His eyes didn’t wander off the picture but his voice quivered a bit.

Him, Max and Rexford were sleeping in the other building. To protect the ones in the Haven, or so the adults told them. In truth, Sean knew that it was just an excuse to keep them there instead of in the school building. It felt like it, at least.

“You know, your family’s full of cool guys. They can kill whatever they want, have cool weapons lying around everywhere and they fight the things that go bump in the night,” said Jason. His voice was stiff, as if forced out.

Sean knew that kind of voice well —it was the voice of someone on the verge of crying, or starting to do so.

“I guess,” said Sean, slowly. He didn’t know what to say. Helping someone calm down was never his forte, and most likely never would be.

“It’s fucking unfair,” shouted Jason and he slammed his fist into the wall, right next to the picture. The wall slightly trembled and after he pulled his hand back, a small indentation was left. It didn’t seem like his hand was broken.

“Maybe it is. Many things are,” said Sean. Things were unfair, that was for sure. Some people were born to decent, loving families and some were born to his family.

“Shit. Sorry about that. I just remembered something I shouldn’t have,” said Jason and he fervently scratched the back of his head. He turned around and let out a deep sigh. Then, he started to walk down the corridor. He blew on the candle and snuffed it out.

If Sean remembered correctly, Jason had lost one of his family members back when they were back in middle school. That was when he started to become a ‘punk’, as people would call him. Before then, he was a normal kid.

Then everything fell into place.

Sean looked at the nameplate again under the light of a Mana Ball and saw the name ‘Hannah Brandt’ —that was Jason’s last name.

“That’s your sister, right?” asked Sean before Jason left. They were basically the same age as Hannah on the picture.

“Yeah. She’s gone,” said Jason. He stopped, not moving anymore. His voice was still trembling, or had it just started to tremble again?

“Sorry,” said Sean. He’d never lost anyone that he was close to. The closest he got to that was his grandparents on his mother’s side passing away, and even that was when he was a child, before he got attached to them.

Maybe Jason felt like how Sean did when he thought Clara was dead. That was… anger and apathy. If Sean’s memory served him well, Jason was more apathetic than angry.

“It wasn’t really a zoo accident, was it?” asked Sean —that was the ‘reason’ they’d given to explain her death. She’d apparently broke into the zoo because of a dare and a bear had killed her.

“No. It wasn’t. She’d never do that,” said Jason.

Back then, when you saw a mangled corpse, you dismissed it as an animal on the run. At least most people did. Not many knew of the monsters and saying that a werebeast tore someone to shreds would most likely mean you’d be put in a mental institute.

Now, that was reality and the ones that didn’t believe in it would deserve to be put into asylums.

“If you umm… ever want to talk about that-” started Sean, thinking it was the humane thing to do, but Jason stopped him halfway through his sentence.

“Nah. I’m fine,” said Jason. He waved a hand at Sean, still looking to the other side, “Years of therapy and people feeding me bullshit. Never bought it. I was right all along. Who’d have thought, yeah?”

And with that, he walked away.

Was that what consoling was? Acting like you care, even if you don’t? Was that what people were supposed to do?

Maybe, or maybe not.

Sean looked at the picture again. The resemblance was uncanny. Both Jason and Hannah had high cheekbones and wide eyes.

The uniform and resemblance reminded Sean of Madison —she was a childhood friend, more of a tomboy than a perfect belladonna. Then again, her role model was Aunt Charlie and the only ones she hung around with were Sean and Chris.

That made Sean wonder… who among Chris and Madison had gotten the Heart Factor?

They were twins and Sean didn’t know if it split between them or only one got it. A good friend, he was, never managing to have a decent conversation with Chris. They’d only really spoken in passing.

Deep down, Sean was afraid —he was afraid to realize that Chris wasn’t the nerdy cousin he knew and an adult now. And even more importantly, Sean didn’t want to act like a complete stranger to Chris. His priorities were different and he’d changed far too much in the last three weeks, and add onto that the year they’d spent apart because of him enlisting into the military.

It was due time. Tonight, he’d make the choice —he’d already made it before, but now, it was difficult to tell himself that his survival was more important than that of the others. It felt like he was supposed to stay right here…

***

“So you’re telling me that you… fought off a damn hypnosis monster?” asked Uncle Jeremy, staring at Sean with a raised eyebrow. He’d been sleeping but somehow managed to wake up just as Sean walked past the room in the corridor.

“I think so, yeah,” he said, sitting on the chair opposite to him while Uncle Jeremy himself was lying on two chairs joined together. He was still in the meeting room where they’d been talking in.

“Nah, never heard of it,” said Uncle Jeremy, shaking his head.

“So no one’s done this before?” asked Sean. Was it easier for him because he had a Mindscape? That was all it boiled down to.

“Not that I know of, no. Maybe the bastards at the Coalition may have,” he said. He practically spat out the word ‘Coalition’, which Sean was starting to wonder about. It was thrown around a few times.

He pulled up one of his sleeves and showed the black mark on his wrist from when the Mind Worm grabbed him by the limbs. After he saw it, Uncle Jeremy furrowed his brows and got closer. With his calloused hands, he grabbed Sean’s arm and pulled him closer.

“This shouldn’t be possible. This is a tell-tale sign of possession. Was it a demon? No, it shouldn’t be. You’re warded,” said Uncle Jeremy and looked up at Sean’s face, “Where’s your keychain? You always kept it on your person, right?”

Sean reluctantly nodded. It was always in his backpack but-

“Not after coming to the manor,” said Sean. Was he possessed by a demon on top of that hypnosis?

“Then that should be fine. There’s been no demonic activity since this System came. You sure you haven’t put it away before then?” Uncle Jeremy asked again, to which Sean shook his head, “Possession… You told me that you fought the creature inside your head, no?”

Sean could only nod his head.

“I see, I see. So that’s not limited to demons but anything that hurts you from inside your head,” said Uncle Jeremy and put a smile on his face, “It grabbed you from here inside your head, didn’t it? Then the mark has been left on your body… Give it some time, it’ll go away faster than ordinary scars.”

Demonic possessions were a thing? What was the big deal about his keychain?

“So there’s no… meaning behind it?” asked Sean.

“Well, no. Why would there be? It’s not some science. It’s bullshit religious nonsense or pseudoscience,” said Uncle Jeremy with a shrug.

Sean let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. It felt relieving, yes, but awfully boring.

Pseudoscience…

Wait, there was something Sean was supposed to ask him.

“Oh right, what about Metabiology? What do you know about that?” asked Sean. He didn’t find such a term in the encyclopedia —not that he’d read more than a page or two of it. Apparently, it was a boring read.

“Metabiology? I think that’s what they call the physiology of monsters. That word shouldn’t be on any of the encyclopedias,” said Uncle Jeremy, “Who’d you hear it from?”

They?

Was he referring to the so-called Coalition?

“The System says that the Heart Factor is a Metabiology Skill and my Class Skill lets me get Intelligence if I upgrade it,” explained Sean.

“Huh, weird,” said Uncle Jeremy, “Well, you can eat the heart of a werebeast or a troll to get a stronger Heart Factor. Then you can eat the eye of a demon or a spirit to make your sight better. I also think that eating the brain of a fairy makes you smarter, though don’t take that for a fact. That’s just a rumor. They also say that bathing in the blood of a dragon gives you impervious skin and strength tenfold that of mortal men. This is less a rumor and more a legend.”

Dragons?

At this point, Sean didn’t even bother. He just absorbed it, like a sponge.

“That’s all?” asked Sean.

After a few seconds of thinking, Uncle Jeremy added, “They also say that the first vampires came to be when a human ate the flesh of a witch. They don’t exist anymore and it’s cannibalism so that’s just about it.”

Witches also existed-

Well, Sean saw someone drink fairy blood and turn back time. Then he was using Magic while eating monsters. That wasn’t all that nasty of a surprise compared to saying that demons also exist.

“Angels? Do they exist, then?” asked Sean. If there were demons, it stood to reason that there would be angels.

“You can say they do, yeah. Well, did. It could’ve been myth or it could’ve been reality, but when you’ve found dragon fossils, there’s nothing you won’t believe about the supernatural,” said Uncle Jeremy, “These demons we run into. They ain’t as scary as the ones from the Scripture. Maybe the angels are the same. Just people with wings who wield swords and spears.”

He didn’t know about that.

Sean was an atheist, if he could call himself that. He just chose not to believe in any deity even if he could acknowledge that they may indeed exist. Better to be skeptical than to be blindly faithful to a fabrication of the mind.

“Dragon fossils?” he asked.

“The Coalition hid the evidence the moment it was found,” said Uncle Jeremy, and again, he almost spat the word when he said it, “Could’ve done with a little publicity but they like their secrecy. Would’ve made our job easier, too.”

“And now, they can’t keep it a secret,” said Sean.

He remembered what Clara said —she said that after the night of the full moon, things would change. They happen every month and she said it was his last chance. That meant that in the next month, the monsters were about to do something.

“The monsters aren’t bothering to keep it a secret as well, wandering the streets and probably kidnapping people,” said Sean. He could feel a slight repulsion toward them, despite the fact that Clara was one of them. Creatures that depended on humans to survive, yet tried to oppress them.

Then he realized it.

If he’d fought against the effects of the Charm, that meant that he was finally free from it —something even Clara couldn’t do for him.

“In the next few days, they’ll make a move,” said Sean.

Uncle Jeremy tilted his head slightly and stared at him with a smile on his face and a half-lidded gaze. There was a bottle of beer with the top twisted off, like the one at Chris’s place. It was clear who’d drunk that.

“And what makes you think that?” he asked.

“Inside information,” said Sean.

“You didn’t even know they existed until earlier this week,” said Uncle Jeremy.

“I hadn’t killed anything until three weeks ago and I didn’t know my best friend was a vampire until three days ago,” retorted Sean. The secret was out. Well, Aunt Charlie had a loose lip so he probably knew about it.

There was a slight pause.

“And how will they do that?” asked Uncle Jeremy.

“I know that Nerea will be overrun this time next month. That is certain,” said Sean. That was his expectation.

Uncle Jeremy shrugged.

“Well, they can’t reach us at the shore and we got a boat,” said Uncle Jeremy, almost dismissively. He made himself comfortable on the chairs and closed his eyes.

“Aren’t you worried?” asked Sean. He stared at Uncle Jeremy, hoping that he was kidding, like he always did.

“What? We’ll survive just fine,” he said.

“What about the others? The normal people,” asked Sean. Wasn’t it their duty to protect them from the monsters?

“They’ll probably get captured and kept as pets or cattle. Why do you care? It ain’t like we can do anything against a literal army of monsters. Better trained than most special ops squads, I’d bargain. Hell, they’re probably pulling in anyone decent into their ranks already,” said Uncle Jeremy.

That was… wrong.

That utter apathy toward innocent people irked Sean. It made him want to punch him, but Sean held the anger inside. If that thought process was shared by the rest of the family, Sean didn’t want to be a part of it —they were just selfish bastards.

“They deserve to be saved as well,” said Sean.

Jason thought that his family was full of cool people. Could they even be called ‘cool’ when they were just sitting around, not even bothering to think about the people that were at risk?

“Well, go on. Be a Noah, tell them to board ships and migrate to some tropical island. That’ll save ‘em. But will they listen to you? Not really. The ones that would will have gotten dragged away,” said Uncle Jeremy and placed a book on his face, as if to fend off what little light there was —there was little to none, as the room was meant for a projector to be clearly visible in the middle of the day. And the curtains were closed at the moment.

“I will. I’ll do it alone if I have to,” he said and pushed himself up to his feet.

Then he stopped.

Help people? Save them from the impending apocalypse?

Wasn’t he supposed to… become a monster? To join Clara on the other side before it was irreversibly changed and he lost his chance?

Now, it didn’t feel half as logical as Sean thought it was.

There were a lot of humans, but how many monsters were there? If Sean and his merry band could get rid of sixteen mindless vampires in the high school, what could hundreds of them achieve?

An army of humans consisting of a hundred thousand people, all ready to fight.

Were there that many monsters?

Maybe, just maybe, they had more of a chance than they realized. Maybe the monsters were afraid of them banding together. But they would, especially if he managed to make them believe that something was coming.

What little knowledge of MMORPGs that Sean had pointed him at a single option —he could tell the people a raid was coming. Lie to them about the true nature of what would soon happen and rally them together.

Yeah, that seemed like a good plan.

But first… he needed to get a hold of Chris and Max. The two of them combined was nerdier than a thousand of him put together. Chances were, they knew what to do to tickle the inner rebel in people.

And he only had a day and a night to prepare…

Maybe he had more time than that, but he had to strive to get them together today.