Snow fell gently outside the mountain cabin, blanketing the trees and world in white. The thick spruce forest surrounding the chalet gave it the feeling of a secret tucked away far from Moonstone.
A place untouched by time or noise. It was a secluded retreat they frequented every winter holiday, a safe haven where life moved slowly, and the world outside didn't exist.
Inside, the fireplace crackled softly. Ten-year-old Bryce sat on the thick fur rug in his room, solving a puzzle with his small hands. A steaming mug of hot cocoa sat next to him, wisps of chocolate-scented warmth curling into the air.
He was barefoot, wearing woolen pajamas with little pine trees on them. The room glowed orange and gold from the hearth, shadows dancing across wooden walls lined with framed pictures of his smiling family.
His dad had gone out to get more firewood, promising he'd be back before the cocoa cooled. His mother was in the kitchen humming quietly, preparing dinner with the live-in help that maintained the cabin during their visits.
The cabin staff, familiar and friendly, were tending to their own duties on the far side of the property, respecting the family's privacy. Security was present as always, stationed further downhill, a standard precaution whenever the Farrens left town.
Bryce glanced up at the frost-covered window. He blinked.
Outside, among the white, green, and blue, something moved.
He stood up slowly, puzzle forgotten. The landscape looked like a painting—the clean snow, the towering green of the spruce trees, the vast sky soft with early evening blue. But there, just at the tree line, was a break in the perfect picture.
A white wolf.
It was massive. Over three times larger than any dog Bryce had ever seen. And its eyes, its eyes glowed red like embers. He took a shaky breath.
And then he saw more eyes. Yellow, glowing amber, appearing like stars behind the white one. They moved, approaching from the forest.
Bryce's blood ran cold.
"Mom!" he gasped, his voice cracking as he turned and sprinted from the room.
The hardwood floor groaned under his small feet as he flew down the hallway, every oil lamp flickering in his periphery. The warmth of his room gave way to the cool dread of fear as he burst into the living room.
His mother stood by the window, frozen, her spoon in one hand, her other hovering over her mouth. Her face was pale.
"Bryce, what's wrong?"
"The wolves, they're coming! Big ones. With red eyes."
She looked at him, then outside, then back again. She didn't ask a second time.
In a flash, she dropped the spoon and reached above the fireplace, pulling down the shotgun mounted on hooks. Her hands trembled but her grip was firm.
"Stay behind me," she said, motioning him to crouch behind the couch. Her voice was calm, but her eyes betrayed her fear.
The wind picked up. The cabin seemed to shrink as distant howls echoed, coming closer.
Then, a violent slam against the wall.
Then claws.
Screeching.
Then silence.
The door exploded open.
The massive white wolf stepped inside. Its eyes locked onto them. Bryce could barely breathe. Behind it, the flickering amber glow of the others' eyes filled the dark porch.
His mom stepped forward.
"Back!" she shouted, shotgun raised. Her hands were steady.
The white wolf snarled but didn't move. And then It's expression change almost as if it had realized something, it spoke.
"Your weapon is useless. No silver bullets."
The voice was female. Raspy. Twisted and unforgettable.
She fired. A deafening boom echoed through the cabin. The wolf flinched, but only for a second. Then the wound healed. Bryce watched in frozen horror.
More wolves poured in.
She fired again.
"Bryce! Run!"
But he couldn't. He stood, frozen, until hands grabbed him from behind. He screamed.
He was lifted off the ground, muscles locking up in terror. He thrashed and kicked.
"Let me go! MOM!"
The creature holding him stumbled.
"What the hell, Bryce?"
A familiar voice. One he knew.
He looked.
"Dad?"
It was. Bloodied, bruised, rifle strapped to his back. Breathing hard.
"We have to move," his father said, grabbing him tight. Bryce's chest heaved.
"The wolves, they got mom!"
His father's jaw clenched, eyes glassy.
"We have to go. Now."
They burst through the back door. Snow hit Bryce's face like needles. The cold bit his skin, the air was sharp in his lungs. Behind them, more howls.
They reached the SUV, but a werewolf was already chasing.
"Dad, she's still back there, we have to go back!"
"Get in the car!"
He flung the door open, tossed Bryce inside. As he rounded the front of the SUV, a blur of gray slammed into the vehicle. The entire frame shook.
"Bryce! Down!"
The rifle cracked. The werewolf dropped.
Then another howl. And another. Three more shadows emerged from the trees.
The engine roared. They shot forward, wheels digging into the snow. Bryce screamed.
"What about Mom?!"
"It's too late!"
The truth hit like ice water. Bryce cried, helpless.
The SUV skidded through the snowy road. More howls. Then silence.
Then yellow eyes.
Another wolf.
"Take the gun!" his dad ordered.
Bryce fumbled with the weapon, window down. He fired.
Miss.
Again. Again.
Miss. Miss.
Click.
Empty.
"I'm out!"
His father cursed, swerving the SUV wildly.
Then, the road disappeared.
A sudden turn. Black ice.
Then crash! The car flipped over and over and over again. Then darkness.
Bryce opened his eyes.
Upside down. Blood on his face. The cold. The pain. The sound of approaching wolves.
He screamed.
Unbuckled himself. Crawled. His father, still.
He dragged himself from the wreckage, every breath a knife in his chest.
Then the shadows appeared.
They surrounded him.
And she appeared again, the white one. The leader.
She changed. Became something in-between.
Majestic. Terrifying.
She laughed, exposing her crimson colored jaw. her white silky fur was bloodstained and Bryce's gut wrenched as he realized that blood wasn't hers.
"So, you're Farren's little brat."
Her voice was cruel. Bryce could only stare.
And then—
Silence.
Bryce was still. Eyes staring into nothing. Adam sat beside him, unsure what to say.
"Bryce... I'm so sorry. I—I didn't know."
Bryce didn't look at him. "They murdered her. Like it was nothing."
Adam stayed quiet.
"If I had one wish," Bryce added, almost to himself, "I'd erase every last one of them. Every werewolf. Every monster. They shouldn't exist."
Adam stiffened. He swallowed hard, a lump forming in his throat.
He thought of his mother.
Of her secrets.
And wondered if he'd ever be able to tell Bryce the truth.
That the thing Bryce hated more than anything in the world... was the very thing his own mother had been.
The silence that followed Bryce's revelation still clung to the room like thick dust in a forgotten attic.
Adam didn't know what to say.
So, like people often do when emotions hang too loud in the air, he tried to soften it with something ordinary.
"I, uh… I told Aiva we'd help her out with the garden today," he said, clearing his throat and adjusting the strap on his backpack. His voice was casual, but not dismissive, just enough to anchor them back to something real. "Said we'd be her human shovels or something."
Bryce let out a breath that almost passed for a laugh. "She say that?"
Adam smirked. "Word for word. Threatened to dig without us. Can you imagine?"
Bryce's lips curved slightly, but the humor didn't quite reach his eyes. "Sounds like her."
There was a pause, then Bryce sank further into the bean bag, tugging his knees up slightly. His book, something old, with a cracked spine and a stained cover, rested on his lap, closed now. "I feel kinda lazy though," he murmured, rubbing his face. "Might just stay here and rot."
Adam gave him a side glance and folded his arms. "I think this is a perfect time to make peace with her, man. She's been trying."
Bryce tilted his head to one side, brows furrowed. "Peace? What are we, nations?"
"Technically, yes," Adam quipped, then after a beat, his tone softened. "Come on. It'll be something normal, you know? The world could use more of that."
Bryce stared at the ceiling for a second, exhaled long and heavy, then gave a single nod. "Alright. Gimme a few minutes. I'll change and meet you there."
"You sure?"
"Yeah." His voice steadied a little. "Go on ahead. Don't let her rip up all the lilies on the account of either of us not showing up."
Aiva was funny that way, taking flowers hostages. Adam chuckled faintly and grabbed his hoodie off the chair. "Alright. I'll stall her."
The door clicked shut behind him a moment later.
And then, the room fell quiet again.
Bryce remained still for a while, his arms loosely hanging over the sides of the bean bag like a marionette with severed strings. The silence didn't feel peaceful, more like a pressure behind the ears. A kind of stillness that demanded thought.
He sat up slowly, stretching, then wandered toward the window, nudging it open with two fingers.
Outside, clouds shifted over the school grounds like a slow-moving curtain. The afternoon was grey but not stormy. Trees swayed gently beneath the weight of the breeze. The scent of moss and distant pollen seeped faintly through the open gap, brushing against his face like a memory.
He leaned on the sill with his forearms, shoulders sagging slightly, and stared.
From here, he could see the vast courtyard, the gravel paths, the arches of the greenhouse beyond the garden, even the blurred outlines of students moving between buildings. A world that kept going, routine, loud, unbothered.
It felt distant.
Like it didn't include him.
His eyes narrowed slightly. His breath slowed.
Maybe I've gotten soft, he thought.
That bitter taste returned to his mouth, the one from the night before. That guilt-ridden edge that no amount of food or sleep could wash away.
Maybe I've been… docile.
Tame.
Too wrapped up in feelings, too wrapped up in pretending.
Maybe even this thing with Aiva, whatever this was, had made him slower. Duller. He wasn't sure. He didn't like questioning it, but the thoughts slipped in anyway, like cold fingers into the seams of a coat.
Would Mom even recognize me now?
Would she—
His jaw clenched, and he looked away from the window sharply, as if it had betrayed him.
That question had haunted him for years. Not because he didn't know the answer, but because he feared he did.
Would she be proud?
He glanced down at his hands, steady, clean, fingers pale under the shadow of the cloudy sky.
They were capable of things she never saw. Of darkness she never taught him to handle. Of thoughts she would've hated.
And yet… they were also the same hands that held onto Aiva's wrist when she panicked in the hallway. The same ones that helped a lonely girl carry trays when she had no friends. That cleaned up after parties he didn't even want to attend. That once held a photograph of his family so tightly it left a crinkle through the middle.
His breath hitched, just once, and he shook his head, hard.
No. Not now. Not here.
He shut the window gently. Drew the curtain. Then grabbed his hoodie from the floor and pulled it on in silence.
There was no mirror in the room. Just the black, reflective glare of his laptop screen. He caught his own face in it, dim, pale, eyes sunken with just a whisper of red at the corners. He pulled the hood over his head.
This wasn't about pride.
It was about moving. About surviving.
He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him with a soft click. Not slamming it. Not hesitating.
Just moving forward.
Down the hall, his footsteps were quiet. Steady.
The school breathed around him.
***
Somewhere beyond midnight, in a room layered with shadows and stillness, Harris stirred in his sleep.
The darkness was thick.
Heavy. Still.
Not the kind of quiet you'd find at midnight when the world slept in peace — no. This was the kind of stillness that felt like a trap, like something was watching, something waiting. The moonlight barely seeped through the slits in the blinds, casting silvery scars across the concrete walls and floor of the dorm room.
Harris lay still in bed, on his back, his arms tucked awkwardly at his sides beneath the blanket. His brow was damp with sweat, clinging to his skin despite the cold draft that crept under the door. His breathing had slowed, slowed too much. Something was wrong.
He blinked.
Once. Twice.
Eyes open now, fully. But his body didn't follow.
He tried lifting his arm. Nothing. He tried turning his head, shifting a leg, anything. His lungs pulled tight as panic began to simmer beneath the surface.
He was awake.
Awake, but trapped inside a body that refused to listen.
A thick pressure sat on his chest, like something was pinning him down. A cinderblock? A stone? No, worse. It breathed. The weight was alive.
His eyes darted rapidly around the room, wild and desperate. All the familiar things were there: the desk stacked with books and notes, the dirty laundry piled in the corner, his roommate's soft snoring coming from the bunk across the room. But at the edge of his bed, beyond his feet, in that corner where the moonlight didn't reach.
There was something else.
A shadow.
It wasn't shaped like a coat or a pile of clothes. It stood. Slowly. Unfolding from the dark like a living silhouette, humanoid in shape but wrong in form—too tall, too thin, too still. The air turned cold, the kind of cold that seemed to whisper against the skin, crawl under it.
The pressure on his chest tightened. Harris's jaw clenched.
The shadow tilted its head.
And then it moved. Not like a person. No footsteps. No weight. Just a glide, slow and silent, like fog across still water.
Closer.
Harris's vision blurred for a moment. His heart hammered against his ribs like a fist against a door. Every breath now a struggle. He wanted to scream, shout, cry, anything. But his lips wouldn't part.
It loomed over him now. Standing right above him.
Still. Watching.
Then.
A voice.
Right next to his ear.
Barely a whisper, but sharp enough to cut through every layer of thought.
"For what you did…
you deserve to die."
The words didn't echo in the room. They echoed in his bones.
Harris's eyes widened. He tried to thrash, scream, run, but the body was a coffin now, locked and sealed. Every cell frozen.
The shadow didn't laugh. Didn't move. Just stood there, its words hanging in the air like smoke.
Then.
Relief. Sudden. Rushed.
Like a thread had snapped.
The weight lifted. His lungs gulped in air as he shot up with a gasp, hand to chest. His body was his again. Limbs shaking, cold sweat matting his hair to his forehead, his shirt damp and clinging to his back.
He stared around, the room unchanged. His roommate still asleep. No sound, no movement.
The shadow was gone.
A full minute passed before Harris even trusted his legs. He moved like he was learning to walk again, feet quiet on the tile floor as he padded toward the mini fridge beside the desk. He opened it with trembling fingers and pulled out a half-empty bottle of water, twisting the cap slowly to keep from waking his bunkmate.
The water hit his lips and some spilled down his chin, but he didn't care. He gulped it down, then stood there, clutching the bottle, staring at the far wall like it would offer answers.
His throat ached.
He shuffled back to his bed and sat down on the edge, elbows on knees. And just… broke.
Tears welled up in his eyes before he could stop them. He didn't sob. Just let them fall. Silent, slow. Like drops of regret carving lines down his face. He buried his face in his palms and stayed like that, the quiet ticking of the wall clock now the only sound in the room.
This wasn't the first time.
It had started the night of the fight. Wednesday.
Right after Aiva.
He hadn't slept well since. The first night he wrote it off as a bad dream. The second time, a coincidence. But by Friday, he'd stopped pretending. The shadow wasn't going away.
And he didn't know what it wanted.
Was it guilt? Was it in his head?
He'd never been the religious type. The few times his mother tried to take him to church, he'd resisted. Called it silly. Dismissed it as superstition. But now…
Now he wasn't so sure.
Harris sat back in bed, pulling the blanket up to his chin. He stared at the ceiling.
His jaw was tight. His knuckles white under the sheets.
Maybe.
Maybe he should go to church.
He didn't know why the thought felt strange. Like he was betraying a version of himself. But something inside was cracking. Something he couldn't patch up with fists and swagger anymore.
The moon shifted behind the clouds, dimming the room even more. Harris closed his eyes, just for a second.
The tears had dried.
But the weight in his chest?
Still there.
And the whisper?
Still ringing in his ear.