Aurin shot upright, breath catching in her throat, cold sweat clinging to her skin. The pale light of her tiny apartment was still on, the AC murmuring softly above her. But the ache in her chest—sharp and lodged deep—hadn’t faded.
Her fingers trembled as she touched the spot.
There was a bruise. Faint, circular, almost like the ghost of a wound that refused to disappear.
“What… is this?” she whispered, barely audible.
She pushed herself out of bed and moved toward the mirror. What she saw there—an old mark she didn’t remember ever having—made her stomach turn. What was happening to her? Ever since she turned nineteen, strange things kept showing up in her life. Sensations she couldn’t explain. And the nightmares—always the same ones—repeating night after night as if trying to tell her something.
Aurin stepped toward the window.
Her apartment sat right on the edge of the city. From here, the lights always looked like they belonged to a world she was only borrowing. For three years, this small town had been her refuge. After losing her parents and realizing she couldn’t stay with her aunt and uncle, she had no choice but to leave and stand on her own feet.
She could still see the small forest stretching beyond the housing blocks. Usually dark. Quiet. Undisturbed.
But tonight… something bled through the trees.
Aurin narrowed her eyes. Orange. Moving. Alive. Flames. She blinked once. Twice. No—she wasn’t imagining it. The forest was burning.
“No… that can’t be,” she whispered.
Sirens wailed faintly in the distance, but that wasn’t what made her spine lock.
From the forest—rising through the smoke—came a howl. Long. Low. And ancient.
It wasn’t the sound of a stray dog. It wasn’t any animal she knew. It felt older than the trees themselves. But she forced a shaky breath. Maybe a wolf? Except this forest didn’t have predators. Only deer, rabbits, a few snakes. Nothing dangerous. Nothing that should be howling like that.
Another howl answered the first. Closer. Aurin flinched and then, without fully realizing how, she found herself outside, on the ground.
“H—how did I get here?” she whispered, stunned. She didn’t remember jumping. She didn’t even want it.
The smoke shifted.
Something stepped out.
A white wolf.
Massive. Wounded. Its fur glowed faintly under the fire behind it. And its eyes—dark silver, too familiar for comfort—locked onto hers as if its entire world hinged on finding her.
Aurin stumbled back, her breath caught somewhere between horror and disbelief.
“No way…” she breathed.
The wolf took one step closer. But it wasn’t the movement that rooted her to the earth—it was the look in its eyes.
A grief so raw it hurt to witness. A relief that felt undeserved. And something else—something like recognition. As if it knew her. As if it had always known her. As if her nightmares weren’t nightmares at all.
The fire roared louder, swallowing branches and sending sparks into the sky. The wolf stood tall despite the tremor in its body.
And then—
just as she backed away—
it spoke.
Or tried to.
“Aur—”
The sound broke as the wolf collapsed.
Aurin froze. Her knees buckled. The pain in her chest flared again as the sirens grew nearer.
She stared at the fallen creature, disbelief pressing against her ribs.
This can’t be real. This thing can’t exist.
But it was right there, breathing—barely.
“Hey—hey! Don’t you dare die on me!” she blurted.
Fear didn’t stop her. She ran to the wolf. Its body radiated heat—no, not heat. Something like molten metal trapped under skin. Aurin brushed her fingers through its fur.
“How did this even happen…?” she whispered.
The wolf pried its eyes open. The silver flickered. Its breaths shuddered. And somehow—God, somehow—its expression looked impossibly human.
Like it had words trapped in its throat.
Light burst from its body.
Aurin staggered back. The glow wasn’t blinding, but intense, throbbing like the pulse of a heart. The wolf’s fur dissolved into drifting silver dust.
Aurin could only watch.
Inside that haze, its form shrank—shifted—bones reshaping, limbs stretching into something familiar. And then on the ground where the wolf had beenlay a man.
A man with tangled silver hair, scarred skin, and a face she knew far too well. Aurin’s breath hitched. “Raven…? R—Raven?!” It didn’t make sense. None of it did. And yet those eyes—when they fluttered open—were the same silver she had seen in the café.
“A… Aurin…” he whispered.
Her mind spun, but instinct overpowered panic. She had to move him. He was hurt, half-conscious… and barely covered by tattered scraps of fabric.
“Come on. You need help. You can’t stay out here,” she murmured, pulling his weight onto her. She expected him to be impossibly heavy—but somehow, she carried him with ease, guiding him through the empty lobby and into the elevator.
Inside her apartment, she laid him on the sofa. Not the bedroom—she wasn’t that reckless.
“What happened to you? How did you—how did you *change* like that?” she asked, breath uneven.
Raven raised a trembling hand and touched her arm. His skin was burning-hot. Aurin stiffened.
“I… tried to stop them,” he said, voice cracking. “But tonight… there were too many.”
“Them?”
“Who are you talking about?”
A cold dread crawled up her spine.
Raven looked at her then—with a fear that wasn’t for himself.
“Aurin… you need to run. Before they—”
A howl tore through the night.
Closer than before.
Aurin whipped around. Even inside the apartment, the sound pierced her like ice. She rushed to the window, dread clawing at her ribs—and something else, something like a pull she didn’t understand.
And there, in the open—stood a shadow. Huge. Not white. Black. Its fur caught the moonlight like spilled ink. Its eyes burned gold.
Aurin couldn’t move.
The black wolf held her in its gaze, the world falling strangely silent around them.
Behind her, Raven groaned. “A—Aurin… don’t… that’s him…”
She didn’t hear. Or maybe she couldn’t. Those golden eyes felt too familiar. Too close. Too human. Her throat tightened.
“Kael?” she breathed.
Aksara