“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

                                -Haruki Murakami

The Society had never accepted relations between other races. It was an unspoken taboo. They saw mixed blood as dirty. Status came with reputation and pureness of blood. Those who were not considered so were considered monsters.

Countless families had been forced to leave their clans, fleeing the persecution and judgment that stomped them into the earth. For them, it was bearable. They were the ones who acted on their own selfish whims.

There was a village set in a secluded forest that was known to be the safe haven for these monsters. It was in this sparsely populated town that travelers sought refuge. No other creature could understand compassion like the hybrids. It was the children who suffered; the real monsters.

These children had never ventured outside the forest that protected them, though the talk from passing troupes was enough to satisfy their curiosities. They saw a look of pity and disgust in every stranger they encountered. For years, they lived in niches, hiding from the werewolves.

Jealousy fueled the conflict between them. The werewolves were regarded as the bottom of the hierarchy. Their sinful deeds would never be repented. Though the Society was harsh in its own judgment, they did not act heartlessly.

Those who essentially ruled the Society made in their hearts a room for these children. The eudemons and cacodemons, from whom the vampires usurped their power, acted as the final judgment for all creatures of the night. They granted these children, these monsters, with a status above that of a werewolf, for their deeds had not been sinful, only consequence. Their repentance would be a life of seclusion and sterility.

No learned creature ever uncovered the reason for their secrecy. It was well believed that it was the shame of the Society for ever allowing such absurdities to become reality. Even the children believed this, as it was the reason for all their restrictions.

Sheer terror of what lay beyond the think forest was what kept them in their beds at night. None dared to venture too far from the town, out of fear that they would be captured and treated as experiments. It was not uncommon for the vampires to steal a few of these monsters for their own wicked tests.

Jae Han had been one of the lucky ones. He had survived their cruel experiments that put him through countless days of agony. The screams of his friends were still fresh in his ears, though it had been years since he escaped the dungeon beneath the Perimeter.

The pain of his memories far outweighed the days he spent writhing on the clammy stone floor. It was one thing to endure the physical trauma, but another to withstand the guilt. The mutations remained vivid, though the names and faces slowly faded into nothing. He still had the scars from the tests that they put him through.

There was one face he would never forget. It was the face of the one who helped him escape the hellish chambers. She had been but a child, no older than three, but her maturity and courage was beyond that of an elder. He could remember her tears the first night she had been tossed into his cell. Her sobs continued through the night, though none of them were for her.

She had been separated from her mother, with whom she was walking with in the woods. Her fear had been solely for her mother, though she had endured more torture than any of the other prisoners. He remembered the night he escaped, the dull look in her eyes made sure he would never forget it.

The girl was the daughter of an enchantress and a skin-walker. He had seen her playing in the village square a few times before they had captured him. She used to be full of innocence and bursting with spirit. The image of the broken girl shattered his heart into pieces of dust.

She had provided him with a cover. Though she was young, her skills were beyond her years. Her anima had chosen her, despite her youth, a vicious panther with glowing yellow eyes. The chaos she caused allowed for several of the lost children to escape into the stifling cool air.

Jae Han and the others had managed to escape their prison, but their dangers had only escalated. They stood in the center of the Perimeter, a place that had only existed in tales to scare the children into obedience.

He remembered what it made him. The Perimeter had changed him, it twisted him into a killer; a true monster. Never did it cross his mind that he would have the capacity to take another life. His eyes drank the sight of his fallen comrades, mutated and scarred, bloody from the countless procedures they had been submitted to.