~IAN~

I couldn’t breathe.

I just kept staring, kept blinking, my heart pounding fiercely inside my chest as though I was faced with a ghost.

The fuck! What was I even saying?!

This was something worse than ghosts. This was more scarier.

The figure hovering above the shimmering pool wasn’t human. She wasn’t even a creature. She was presence. A rippling form suspended in mid-air, not made of flesh or bone, but of liquid light. As if moonbeams had slipped beneath the water and forgotten how to return.

No feet. No solid form. But still, there were eyes. A mouth. A soul. And a voice.

“Welcome to Silwyn Woods,” she whispered.

Her voice struck before my ears could register it. It crawled into my bones like frost, sinking deep into my marrow. Unshakable. My chest tightened, my lungs screamed for air.

“What the hell is a Silwyn Woods?” The thought exploded in my skull, but even that question felt insignificant compared to what was unfolding before me. Me? Ian? Talking to water? A fucking water being?

“Wh-what are you?” I stammered, crawling backward, my hands scraping against cold stone. “Who… who are you?”

She tilted her head, and the liquid outline of her form rippled like starlight in a stream. Then she smiled – a soft, sorrowful thing, as if she had lived too long to cry anymore.

“I am the first tear the moon ever wept,” she said. Her voice was both thunderous and tender. “When sorrow became flesh, I was born. A shard of her grief, her soul’s fragment, cast into water to watch, to wait. I am not apart from her. I am what remains when she cannot be,”

I stared at her, heart pounding. The pool beneath her brightened, humming with an energy I couldn’t comprehend. She wasn’t a ghost. She was divine memory. Alive. Liquid. Ancient.

She was everything I didn’t understand. And somehow, she was everything that understood me.

“I am Ava.” she said.

The name meant nothing, but my body flinched as though it remembered it. A cold shiver trickled down my spine. Like I’d heard it before. Perhaps in dreams I didn’t know I had.

The shrine grew colder. The walls leaned in. Listening.

“Who is ‘her’?” I croaked.

Her answer was a soft chuckle, low and melodic, like waves lapping at a forgotten shore.

“She is Selene,” Ava said. “The mother of the moon. The creator who was never created. The guardian of Torguyl.”

My mouth went dry.

What the hell am I hearing?

“No, no…” I backed toward the shrine’s edge, my mind snapping. “This isn’t real. You’re not real. None of this is–”

“It is, Ian,” she said, her voice calm as a sleeping sea. “As real as the heart beating in your chest.”

The calmness in her words clashed violently with the chaos spiraling inside me. I couldn’t take it anymore - the pressure, the impossibility, the truth I refused to believe. My hands trembled as I snapped.

“STOP!” I roared. “Don’t tell me anymore! I don’t want to hear it!”

“But you must listen. Selene–”

“DON’T F*CK*NG SELENE ME!” I screamed, my voice torn and inhuman. The echo thundered through the shrine.

My paws slammed against the stone floor, claws out, rage boiling beneath my skin.

“There is only one God!” I shouted. “Not your Selene, not some moon goddess crap!”

Her body didn’t flinch. But her eyes – those ancient, knowing eyes – locked onto mine, patient and unbothered. As if she had already read every chapter of my story.

“That is the god you knew in your world,” she said softly. “But this… this is Torguyl. A world that runs parallel to yours. A planet where werewolves rule. And you, Ian… you belong to it now.”

The word ‘werewolves’ hit me like a knife to the chest.

The claws. The fangs. The strength. The sharp night vision. Every odd thing that had happened to me suddenly clicked.

My lips trembled. “Is that… what I am now? A… w-werewolf?”

“Yes, Ian. You’re no longer human. You are a werewolf. And Torguyl is your home now.”

“No.” My head whipped back and forth violently. “No, no, no! This isn’t a game! I didn’t ask for this! I don’t want it!”

“You begged,” Ava said quietly.

“I WHAT?” I barked, disbelieving.

“Your soul begged,” she replied, her voice thick with memory. “In those last moments, when that train crushed your body, you pleaded. For a second chance. Selene heard you. She gave you this life. But it was I who called you. You heard me then… and you hear me now.”

Her words cracked something inside me – a sharp, painful fracture. A memory - blood, screeching metal, a scream that never finished. I felt it all again. The pain. The ending. And now… this.

“You don’t understand,” I whispered, my voice small against the storm inside me. “I did not beg for anything. I don’t want to be a part of this.”

“You already are.”

I staggered forward, rage building inside me like a storm.

“I said NO!” I screamed again.

The fury hit me in waves. First, silence - eerily unnatural. Then, the rage. A primal fury so ancient and molten it felt borrowed from something darker than me.

Before I could think, I leapt. A growl ripped from my throat - deep, guttural, violent. I lunged at her, claws bared, eyes wild.

But the moment I touched her, there was nothing.

My body passed through her like smoke through wind. I crashed into the cold stone floor, soaked in moonlit water.

She laughed.

That soft, infuriating, otherworldly laugh.

“You really think you can kill me?” she said, amusement in her voice.

I glared at her, soaked, broken, furious - and utterly defeated.

“Please…” My voice cracked. “I don’t want this. I didn’t ask to be resurrected. Send me back to my world. Let me just die in peace.”

“There’s no such thing as your world anymore,” she said. “I have saved you, Ian. And now…”

She paused. The glowing pool beneath her darkened, shadow creeping across the surface like ink in water. Her voice dropped to a whisper, but it echoed through me, a sound like prophecy.

“You must save him from the powers of the dark before it’s too late.”

I blinked. “W-what?”

She floated lower, her eyes locking onto mine. “Save him,” she repeated, her gaze heavy, intense. “Save Thorne,”

“That… is your mission.”

“And if I refuse?” I asked, every word laced with defiance.

Ava’s voice became as sharp as ice cracking on a frozen lake.

“Then, Thorne will fall. And if he falls, so will you.”

I swallowed. “I don’t understand. But I don’t know him! What does his downfall got to do with me?!”

“Should you refuse, Ian, your resurrection will become a debt.”

My skin crawled. The air rippled.

Her final words echoed like a curse.

“You will not die, Ian,” she said. “You will wander. Dreamless. Body without anchor. Soul without skin. You will become unmade.”