Awakening

The grassy path was muddy in the rain, mist hanging thick in the air.

The village children were all the more lively and playful. A boy who looked about ten led his six-year-old younger brother toward the creek with a dip net to catch fish. Their oversized raincoats looked ridiculous, yet neither worried about catching a chill. They were full of confidence about the fish they were about to net.

Many villagers knew that whenever torrential rain made the river swell, fish could be found in the shallow grass along the banks.

The fish were not big, but wasn't that exactly where children's fun lay?

Suddenly, a gigantic white object fell from the sky. Sunlight spilled down, and the two children felt the ground tremble...

Strangely, the brothers were very brave. They ran excitedly toward where it had landed, unconcerned when they fell and smeared their raincoats with mud and water. Shouting at the top of their lungs, they leaped over ditches and raced across the ridges between fields.

The younger brother ran more slowly, calling after his brother from behind. The older brother kept parting the tender green corn stalks, occasionally looking back to pull his little brother along.

When they shoved aside the last row of crops, they stopped dead!

The cornfield beside the mud pond ahead had collapsed. The pond below had become a deep pit, and a spine covered in bony spikes faintly emerged from the surface of the murky sludge. It was huge, and long...

The two children stared blankly at the mud pond they had once known so well.

"Brother~ the fish trap we put out yesterday is gone~"

The moment he finished speaking, the fish trap surfaced and kept rising. A gigantic, savage, terrifying head lifted out of the water—scales, horny plates, bony