Ae-ran felt like her heart was going to explode. 

Each checkpoint she passed, each camera she walked by seemed to make her pulse double in speed as she tried her best not to stand out. 

After all, she had an official reason to be below the Northern Limit Line. The only way the soldiers would know her ulterior motive was on the rare chance that some sort of mind reader was stationed at the village. 

Before leaving the barracks, she had disposed all contraband she had stored up over her years of service. Even if someone had a reason to inspect her living space while she was gone, they wouldn't have any evidence that she had been consuming media from the outside world.

As she walked through the empty streets of Kijong-dong, Ae-ran forced her attention straight ahead, refusing to glance south despite how much the urge was making her stomach twist in knots.

Just the fact that she'd been assigned a mission inside the DMZ so soon after making up her mind to leave had been a stroke of luck that felt almost like fate. 

However, crossing the DMZ had originally been her last choice when she started scheming up ways to leave the DPRK. After all, the sheer number of guards that were stationed along the border was no laughing matter. 

Like everyone else, she'd heard horror stories about corpses dragged back from the DMZ riddled with bullets, tragic tales of family members going missing only to be found at the base of a cliff with broken limbs. Even worse were the stories about those who were captured before they could make it across the zone.

Ae-ran herself had been tasked with tracking down the family members of attempted defectors more than once. It was impossible to wash off the filthy grime that she felt after dragging sobbing wives and terrified children into custody for someone else's crime. 

Risking the DMZ was simply too dangerous to have been her preferred option: she would be up against abysmal odds. 

Reaching the operations building, Ae-ran produced her badge, scanning her way inside and trying to ignore the heavy clank of the metal shutting behind her once again. 

All of the life in this village seemed to be concentrated here, the corridor inside filled with more people than she'd seen on her walk through the area.

Ae-ran stood patiently as her bag was thoroughly searched—she'd had no choice but to abandon any idea of bringing supplies with her—giving the other soldier a salute when it was returned to her.

"Soldier Moon Ae-ran, I've been assigned for your briefing. Follow me."

For all Ae-ran cared, the officer who spoke to her had no face and no identity: one of thousands of soldiers who had the same cold look as they carried out their duties. 

She fell into step behind the officer, doing her best to pay attention as he rattled off the terms of her mission. 

An awakened engineer and his family had vanished from their village an hour north of Kijong-dong after he had been given special leave to visit them. The assumption, of course, was that they were headed south through the wilderness. 

The engineer wasn't someone they could afford to lose, apparently. His ongoing project was near completion and they didn't want the technology leaking across the border. 

As a hunter specialized in tracking, it seemed like Ae-ran had been the ideal choice for the job. 

"Your timeline is five hours. We expect a check-in every fifteen minutes. Your coordinates will be transmitted live at all times for a quick pickup when you locate the traitors."

The salute was ingrained in her soul, Ae-ran executing it immediately, "Understood."

A raggedy stuffed doll was passed over to her as a homing item and Ae-ran turned it over in her hands. If she was a braver, more selfless person, she would search for the family and try to escape the region as a group. 

As things were, she mentally added these lives to the list of souls she'd need to make amends for when she got the chance to do so. 

Ae-ran activated her tracking ability, glancing up from the doll to follow the glittering red string that floated down the hallway and through the western wall, the magical pathfinder only visible to her eyes.

"I'll get started immediately, before the trail gets any colder."

The officer nodded, "You're dismissed, soldier. Work quickly."

She didn't waste anymore time, heading back out of the building and following the thread that connected the doll to its owner. The deep red color indicated that the family had made some good progress in the half-day since their disappearance: there was at least 1 kilometer between them and her location.

Starting off at a jog, Ae-ran left the ghost village behind, jaw twitching as the path led her further away from the border than she had started. However, the logical part of her mind—the section that was unnervingly cool despite her nerves—insisted that she had to put a good amount of distance between herself and any pursuers before there was any unusual activity on her radar and check-ins. 

If the engineer was foolish enough to go in a straight line south, they wouldn't have needed to call her in, and the people tracking her location would certainly know that.

Ae-ran's breath stayed steady as she covered the terrain, footsteps light and instinctive as she skirted around hidden landmines and gave the natural predators of the untouched wilderness a wide berth. 

Vaguely, she wondered if there was a living person on the other end of her tether. After all, her tracking skill didn't differentiate between the living and dead: if there was a body to find, she would find it, regardless of its state.

And even though the engineer was superhuman in his own ways, the sort of sixth sense afforded to Ae-ran as a tracker was incomparable to any sort of heightened observation a lab rat would have.

Squeezing the doll in her hand slightly, she shoved those questions out of her head: it wasn't as if she was ever going to get an answer, anyways. 

By the time of her first check-in, Ae-ran could barely see the Panmunjom flagpole. Her report was short and concise: she hadn't come across any evidence of the family passing through yet, she was still more than one kilometer away from them, and she was going to keep moving.

It wasn't until the third check-in, 45 minutes into her trek, when Ae-ran began to lie.

By this point, there wouldn't be a single hunter at Kijong-dong who would have been able to lay eyes on her. Large boulders blocked the line of sight between her location and the village: the timing could have been more perfect. 

She turned over the small hair tie she had found at the base of a mountain in her fingers, her skill indicating that it had belonged to the owner of the doll as she told the soldier on the other end of her line that there were no developments. 

If the family was still alive, this small lie might give them a few more hours once Ae-ran vanished.

The path had started to curve back toward the south after she stopped for her third check-in. It was a gradual curve, still taking up more distance west than it did south: she imagined the engineer assumed they would avoid searches for the first day by taking an indirect path on their way to the Military Demarcation Line.

Hopefully, it would work as intended for her own purposes.

Check-in four was Ae-ran's last, her hands trembling slightly as she told more lies: the family seemed to be slowing down, potentially stopping for the night now that the sun was fully set; she had been diverted slightly due to a collection of mines; and it looked like they were heading for the coast instead of a land crossing.

As soon as she was finished with her check-in, Ae-ran took off at a run, hopping over rocks and fallen branches, bursting through bushes and past trees without care for the resulting scratches on her arms and face. The rag doll was abandoned after three minutes, Ae-ran turning off her tracking skill entirely in favor of focusing on land mine detection.

The full moon bathed the wilderness of the DMZ, making the path as clear as day for Ae-ran and her awakened eyesight. She could hear animals running away from her as she approached, disturbing the otherwise untouched peace of the unpopulated land. 

Five minutes before she was meant to call in again, she abandoned all of her gear. 

There was no way to know how many parts of her equipment had tracking devices: she couldn't risk taking any of it. Stopping at the edge of a creek in the hopes that the person keeping eyes on her location would think she had paused for water, Ae-ran shoved her watch, radio, and badge into her backpack. 

Ignoring the biting cold of the dead of night, she started tugging off her clothing next. Just like every DPRK hunter, her uniform was mana-infused to protect her from the elements, but that also meant it was possible they had embedded magical trackers in it. 

Left only in the threadbare old underwear she'd dug out from the bottom of her belongings, Ae-ran took off at a full sprint. 

The hunters assigned to protect the border were well-known as the children of respected members of the DPRK elite. As far as she knew, there were even a solid handful of them at a higher rank than she was. 

Getting a good head start would be her only chance of outrunning them if someone powerful was sent after her. 

It was terrifying to be on the other end of a deeply familiar chase for the first time. Adrenaline pounded through her system, making the endless scrapes and cuts on the bottom of her bare feet barely register as she raced forward. 

Even the cold started to fade from her awareness, only the faint fog of her breath and the goosebumps on her skin were left to remind her that she couldn't risk being stuck out here for much longer than three days. 

A rusting signpost came into sight two minutes before the designated time for Ae-ran's fifth check-in. 

She ran past it without slowing, tamping down the soft wave of relief that tried to rise up with the knowledge that she was officially south of the armistice line.

Despite technically no longer being in the territory of the DPRK, getting caught by southern forces wouldn't be much of a deterrent for the border capture teams. Between superspeed and high-ranked stealth skills, they would certainly risk being noticed if it meant recapturing her. 

After all, Ae-ran wasn't a random civilian trying to escape, she was a well-rated hunter with a heavily-utilized skill set. In some respects, her position wasn't too dissimilar from the engineer she had been tracking. 

If they caught her while she was still in the DMZ, even if such a thing happened right in front of southern soldiers, Ae-ran wasn't going to get any assistance. 

When it was time for her next check-in, the Southern Limit Line was in sight, floodlights illuminating its length.

Taking a deep breath, she activated one of her stealth skills, vanishing from eyesight between one footstep and the next. Slowing down her breakneck pace, Ae-ran approached the fence at a careful walk, keeping her steps silent as she searched the area for human presence. 

Her hands were trembling slightly as she hoisted herself up the fence. She could feel the barbs sinking into her skin as she carefully slipped her way between the wires at the top, blood running down her arms and legs by the time she was scaling down the fence on the other side. 

Shaking her limbs out, Ae-ran waited until her movements would no longer illuminated by the floodlights before she started to sprint again. 

It took nearly thirty minutes before her destination came into view: the last fence between herself and a life free of the DPRK's rules. Maintaining a stealth spell for so long had significantly drained her energy, her legs trembling violently underneath her as she stumbled onto a dirt path.

Removing her spell, Ae-ran slowly walked toward what looked to be some sort of checkpoint, both her hands up in the air in surrender as she waited for the lookout to notice. 

It didn't take long, the man stationed in the checkpoint speaking into a radio well before she was reasonably in earshot. 

When they were within shouting distance, the soldier called for her to halt. "State your purpose for approaching the checkpoint!"

"I've run away from the DPRK, I'm requesting refugee from the Republic of Korea!" She shouted back, too exhausted and nervous to care that she was standing in her underwear. 

After speaking into his radio once more, the soldier reached down into the guard post. Just like that, the gate opened and he waved for her to continue walking. 

Keeping her hands up, Ae-ran stepped through the gate, relief flooding her system as the gate closed behind her. 

She wasn't even bothered that the guard kept his gun at the ready, that she was covered in dirt and blood, that she had absolutely no idea where they would take her next. 

All that mattered was that she had made it. 

A small smile curled onto her face before she dropped to the ground.