Chapter 1: Eighteen Candles
The road was empty.
Of course it was.
The sky above was iron-grey, heavy with clouds that threatened to swallow what little light remained. The wind howled like it was mourning something. Something lost. Something unspeakable.
And the silence it wasn't peaceful. It was wrong. Too hollow. Too still. Like the world itself had stopped breathing.
I ran.
Barefoot. Bleeding. Breathless.
My steps slapped the wet pavement, my feet numb from cold, my lungs searing with each inhale. I didn't know how far I'd come. I didn't care. All I knew was that it was behind me. Hunting me. Toying with me.
And it was gaining.
I didn't dare look back. Not fully. But I could feel it. The air around me pulsed with its presence. The shadows twisted when it passed. The world shrank in its wake.
My hair what used to be soft brown and wavy was now bone-white. A stark, unnatural color that clung to me like a curse. It whipped in the wind, tangled, soaked in mud and blood. It was meant to be beautiful.
Now, it was just another thing that reminded me I wasn't the same girl anymore.
There was blood all over me. My clothes were torn, stained, clinging to my skin. The hoodie I wore once comforting was now soaked, heavy like grief. My pants were ripped at the knees, smeared with filth. My hands were scraped and raw. My mascara had long since melted down my cheeks, dried in uneven trails like war paint drawn by tears.
I looked like a corpse in motion.
I felt like one too.
But I kept running.
Because behind me was it.
The creature.
The monster.
I don't even know what to call it demon, nightmare, executioner it didn't matter. It wasn't just some oversized animal or wild beast. It was something far older. Something that shouldn't exist. Something that smelled like death and moved like hunger itself.
Its eyes were the first thing you'd see glowing red like coals, but deeper. Not just color. Not just light. They radiated a malice so raw and violent it made your soul recoil before your body even had time to scream.
Its skin was like rotting leather, stretched tightly over an inhuman frame. Not symmetrical. Not clean. Its limbs bent the wrong way, too long, too thin, like someone had built a person from spare parts and forgot what a human looked like.
Its mouth God, its mouth was a cavern of jagged teeth, but it didn't just open when it roared.
It split.
From ear to ear, its jaw cracked sideways with a squelching noise that haunted me long after I heard it. Its breath stank of blood and ash and something… rotten.
And when it moved, it didn't walk.
It crawled.
Fast.
Limbs hitting the ground in bursts of movement like a spider, but louder. Heavier. Like every step threatened to crack the world in half.
It had found me in the woods, just moments after I discovered my family.
After I found their bodies.
After I dropped to my knees in the blood of everyone I loved and screamed until my voice broke.
I didn't even get a moment to mourn.
Just pain. Just fear. Just this.
I don't know if it was after me because of who I am… or what I'm becoming.
All I knew was I had to survive.
And so I ran.
Through the woods.
Through the mud.
Through the cold.
Now on the road, the town was deserted. Not a single soul. No lights. No voices. No cars. Like the world had shut itself away in fear, leaving me to die alone.
I stumbled.
My knee slammed into the concrete. I cried out but didn't stop. Couldn't stop. I pushed myself up, tears blurring my vision, blood dripping down my leg.
Just a little further.
I knew where I was now.
Just around the bend, past the old crooked mailbox, and down the cracked path I saw the house.
His house.
Rayan.
The boy I grew up with. The one who always seemed to know more than he should. The one who looked at me like he saw everything. The one who had tried to warn me weeks ago when I thought he was just being cryptic and weird.
I reached the steps.
My body swayed.
The creature's shriek echoed behind me louder now, angry. Close.
My fist hit the door once.
Twice.
Then my vision blurred. My hand dropped.
My knees gave out.
And I collapsed against the doorframe, face down, hair falling over my eyes, the world spinning in a whirlwind of colorless pain and soundless despair.
Then
Darkness.
And the cruelest part?
The most ironic?
The thing that made it all feel like some twisted cosmic joke?
It was my birthday.
Eighteen.
Eighteen years old today.
No cake.
No candles.
No "Happy Birthday, Iris."
Just blood.
Just shadows.
Just monsters.
I didn't just lose my family.
I lost everything.