Felix
The greenhouse on the academy's roof shouldn't exist — waste of resources, they said, impractical in a world where every square metre should go to defence or housing. Felix built it anyway, scavenging materials from pre-Rupture ruins and convincing the groundskeeper to look the other way. Tomato vines climb salvaged chain-link fence. Herbs grow in cracked concrete planters. Something green persists in a grey world. It's his rebellion, small and defiant, growing things when everyone else focuses on killing.
His Hunter Assessment approaches. Three years of training, blade work until his hands bled, studying creature weaknesses and elemental theory, learning to move in formation and fight alone. His halberd — steel shaft with a bone head, and a E-rank Nature-element core he harvested himself — should be enough. He was ready. At least, he thought he was.
Everything changed on the canal path. A water-element fish erupted from the surface, all teeth and rage and impossible speed. Felix thought he would die before reaching the Assessment. Then a Bernese Mountain Dog appeared — one he'd thought dead for four years — wreathed in vines and glowing with emerald light. A bond snapped into place between them, foreign and familiar at once.
Bartholomew is alive. Changed into something the city would kill on sight if they knew he wasn't wild. Felix can feel him now — emotions bleeding through a connection that shouldn't exist, a partnership the guilds would call treason. Takashi Kojima, the class president who shares his secret, provided an illusion collar borrowed from his own bonded partner. It buys time. But the Assessment still waits, and so do questions Felix can't answer.
The tomatoes are almost ripe. He wonders if he'll live long enough to taste them.