Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 43: Campfire Before Dawn

Chapter 43: Campfire Before Dawn

Lucian came by while his Thunder Falcon drank from the trough.

He didn’t announce himself. He just appeared at the edge of Jin’s patch of firelight, quiet, watching the falcon dip its beak into the water.

His eyes moved to Glitch’s bound leg.

"You rested him," Lucian said.

"He needed it," Jin said.

Lucian was quiet for a moment. His falcon lifted its head, water beading off its feathers, wing still held a fraction stiff from the scratches.

"Most candidates wouldn’t," Lucian said. "Not this close to a placement evaluation. They’d push the beast, take the injury risk, chase the ranking." He glanced at Jin. "You didn’t even hesitate."

"Rankings don’t heal a torn leg." Jin shrugged. "He’s more useful whole later than broken now. That’s just math."

Something flickered across Lucian’s face — not surprise, exactly. Recognition.

"...Most people don’t think that far ahead," he said.

Then, without another word, he turned and walked back toward the water, falcon settling onto his shoulder.

No challenge. No speech. No declaration of rivalry.

Just a little more respect than there’d been a minute ago, carried off into the dark.

Jin watched him go.

He gets it, Jin thought. That’s the problem with him. He actually gets it.

The fire that night wasn’t really a fire — a cluster of portable heat units, dim and safe, no open flame to draw attention. But a handful of candidates gathered around it anyway, the way people had gathered around fires since before there were shelters.

Not friends. Just exhausted, and tired of being alone with it.

"I froze," a boy admitted, staring at the heat unit. "First beast I saw today. Just — locked up. My knees stopped working. Two years of training and my knees quit."

"I threw my entire ration pack at a stalker," a girl said flatly. "Not as a distraction. I just panicked and threw it. Watched three days of food bounce off its face and run away with it."

Somebody snorted. Then somebody else. Then half the circle was laughing — the loose, punchy laughter of people too tired to hold it in.

"I named my beast ’Fang’ because I thought it sounded cool," another boy confessed. "It’s a herbivore. It eats leaves. Its name is Fang and it’s terrified of everything."

"Why’d you even sign up?" the first boy asked, around the circle. "For real. Why do this?"

The answers came slow and honest, the way they only did when everyone was too worn down to posture.

"Inner Core housing," the ration-thrower said quietly. "My little brothers. Get us out of the Outer Ring before the next Astral Tide."

"Family’s been tamers for four generations," said the boy with the flinching cat, not looking up. "Wasn’t really a choice."

"Real sunlight," someone else murmured. "I’ve never seen it. Just once, I want to see it."

Jin mostly listened.

He learned more about the world in ten minutes around that dim fire than any orientation packet could’ve told him — the desperation under the ambition, the families behind every scared kid, the specific weight of a shelter where the only way up was to walk out the blast doors and risk not coming back.

He didn’t offer his own reasons.

Nobody pushed.

"Hey." The ration-thrower nodded at Glitch, curled asleep against Jin’s side. "Why’s your lizard so calm? Mine’s been vibrating with stress all night. Yours just... naps. Through everything."

Jin looked down at Glitch. At the slow rise and fall of his breathing, the bound leg, the fat rabbit that had migrated over to sleep against him at some point.

"I spend time with him," Jin said.

The girl nodded like that made sense. "Training pays off, huh."

"Yeah," Jin said. "Something like that."

She assumed he meant drills. Reps. Command conditioning.

She was wrong, and Jin let her stay wrong.

Because it wasn’t the training. The Engine could’ve handled training. What made Glitch calm wasn’t a stat or a skill or a synchronized command routine.

It was a thousand small moments. Sitting together. The tail-tap signals invented in the dark. The check-before-you-move. The sit and the dramatic sigh and the shared shade with a rabbit.

Glitch was calm because, somewhere along the way, he’d learned that Jin had him.

You couldn’t grind that. You could only earn it.

In the observation room, rankings had given way to quieter measurements. Examiners logged which candidates checked their beasts’ injuries before sleeping, which rationed water for both partners, and which still treated exhaustion as disobedience.

On Jin’s feed, Glitch slept pressed against his side. The veteran added a short note—consistent beast welfare under pressure—then moved on. A single kind moment could be performance. Four days of small, repeated choices were evidence.

The camp went quiet a little after that.

One by one the candidates dropped off, exhaustion winning out over fear, until the only sounds left were the hum of the barriers and the occasional shift of a sleeping beast.

Jin stayed awake.

Not from anxiety. Not from grinding — the Engine sat quiet in the back of his soul, no menus open, no dungeons running, nothing to optimize. Just there. Idle. At rest.

Glitch was curled against his side, the fat rabbit long since reclaimed by Milo, the bound leg tucked carefully beneath him. His breathing was slow and even. Trusting.

Jin looked up at the dome, at the faint smear of not-stars projected across the false sky, and felt something he hadn’t felt once since he’d opened his eyes in this body.

Not safe. He wasn’t naive enough to feel safe.

Not happy, exactly. The world was still a mana-irradiated horror show that wanted him dead.

But — comfortable.

Like the pieces had settled into a shape that fit. A sleeping beast that trusted him. A ragtag group that had made it through. A father waiting past the barrier who just wanted him home.

Like he belonged somewhere.

Huh, Jin thought, mildly startled by it. Didn’t order that. Must’ve come free with the bundle.

He let his eyes close.

The horn split the pre-dawn dark.

Not an alarm — a single, clear, rolling note that rippled across the camp and pulled a hundred exhausted candidates up out of sleep at once. No panic in it. Just finality.

Beasts stirred. Kids sat up, rubbing their eyes, reaching for packs. Medics began breaking down tents in the gray light.

The Head Examiner’s voice carried across the whole camp, calm and even.

"The final evaluation begins in one hour."

That was all. No drama. No dire warnings. Just the quiet weight of a thing everyone had been walking toward for days, finally arriving.

Around Jin, the camp came alive — tense, focused, but not afraid. The disaster had burned the worst of the fear out of them. What was left was something steadier.

Jin sat up, stretched, and looked down.

Glitch was already awake, gold eyes bright in the dim light, watching him. Waiting.

The bound leg was tucked under him. The horns had grown a little. He looked, for all the world, ready.

Jin reached out and rested a hand on his head.

"Ready?" he said, and smiled.

Glitch bumped his head firmly against Jin’s palm.

Ready.