I sobbed as I ran up the stairs. Each step felt heavy, as if the house itself tried to hold me down. I reached my door and froze at the familiar scent of my room, dust, old paper, the faint, permanent note of whatever perfume Kendra favored.

The door creaked when I opened it; the noise startled me even in my frenzy. The room was nearly black. The only thing I could see was the pale glow of my necklace against my skin.

My hands fumbled along the wall, searching for the light switch like I had done a thousand times. I found it and cried out loud, not with words but with relief. "There you are," I thought, and a small burst of childish excitement rushed through me.

I slapped the switch. Light flooded the room, and I slammed the door behind me on purpose to announce I was home, to make sure someone heard.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand until the tears stopped trickling. Being in my room felt like standing inside a memory. Shelves crowded with books lined the walls, neat piles of notes and notebooks that reminded me of the scholarship I had lost.

I sat on the floor slowly, dusting off my skirt so I could settle. My fingers found the pendant around my neck and began to tap it without thinking.

The motion calmed me. Before I knew what was happening, sleep pulled at the edges of my mind.

Voices threaded into that half-sleep, not words I heard with ears but the kind that pushed at the inside of my head.

"She summoned us," one voice said.

"Can she really do that?" another asked, nervous and surprised.

I recognize those voices, I thought, heart pounding. Wind hissed at the windows. My breath hitched.

No way, I told myself.

I moved quietly, careful not to make a sound. If those things were here, I didn't want them near me yet.

In this realm, my hair was longer and my skin even more pale. Everything that I came in contact with ended up frozen. The memory clicked like a broken gear: the four of them, the way their shapes shifted like smoke into wolves and then into women.

There, across the room, a glass tomb stood where there had been nothing before. I have never seen anything like it before. The more I got closer to it, the bigger it became. A red aura pulsed around it, a slow, dangerous heartbeat of color.

I leaned closer, and immediately the tomb moved. There was something, someone inside. The tomb kept moving till it finally stopped, facing me.

It's a lycan. The curve of a shoulder, the hollow of a cheek, a king's crown resting at a tilt that made no sense on anything slumbering.

The glass began to spin by a few degrees on its own as if some invisible hand had turned it.

I reached out. My fingertips hovered close to the cold surface. Before my fingers met the glass, a voice cut across the space behind me like a blade.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Senar said.

Her name hit like a bell. I turned. Senar stood there. She had changed shapes a hundred times in my memories; now she held a form that was at once wolf and woman. The sight of her made the air bite.

I remembered the theft of ten years of my life and could not help the sharp words that left me, even if they passed only in thought.

"You robbed ten years of my life," I thought back. How could I forget?

"Her powers are harnessing," Surya said quietly, and the voice slid through me like water.

"I know you're all here," I said aloud this time. I tried to sound braver than I felt. "So come out of your disguise."

A soft whoosh of wind, and the room seemed full of movement. Forms uncurled from shadow. Wolves shifted into women.

Their eyes were bright and old. One by one, they stepped into the light, faces I had doodled on scraps of paper.

Who is he? I asked aloud, pointing at the glass.

"The one who will end us," Sirnala replied, voice low as riverbeds.

"That is why he is locked in that glass tomb."

I frowned. "Okay, so why am I here again?" I asked.

"And why are you the only ones who can hear my thoughts?"

They exchanged glances that looked like regret and then impatience. Senar paced along the edge of the room, her feet barely seeming to touch anything solid.

"She still doesn't know we are," Senar muttered.

"Senar, this is pointless," Sirnala snapped.

She moved faster than before, circling, her hands tracing patterns in the air.

"The prophecy said she is all-knowing," she added, voice ringing.

"What part of this is all-knowing?" Saki asked with a short, sharp laugh.

Hmmm, Senar said, thinking.

She paused and let her thoughts wind through a dozen places at once. Finally, she nodded, a slow, considered motion.

"It has been a long time trying to get you to understand us."

She said to me, stepping closer until I could see the frost in her hair.

"We tried. But perhaps you cannot hold what we hoped for, so we will wipe your memory. You will go home. You will return to your scholarship. You will forget the burden."

My breath caught. "What?" I whispered. The idea of sliding back into that old life was like a cool hand, almost merciful.

"We need a savior," Senar said, her tone flat.

"And that isn't you."

The words hit me like a stone. Immediately, Senar stepped forward and shifted into a human shape so clean and cold.

Her skin looked like carved marble. She was more frightening as a woman than as a wolf.

I closed my eyes and braced because I expected the wipe. The thought of slipping back into that quiet, accepted life steadied me.

Maybe forgetting would be mercy. Maybe not remembering these faces and that tomb and the name that hummed at the edge of my mind would be the smallest kindness.

Silence loaded the room like pressure. Something in the air made me keep my eyes shut. I felt a pause, then a new sound, Senar's breath catching on some detail.

"That necklace… where did you get it?"

She asked, voice smaller now, threaded with sudden interest.

Oh, you mean this, I thought, touching the pendant. It warmed under my fingers, familiar as skin. The metal was the same shape I had always worn. I lifted it a little, and the pendant caught the weak light, throwing a small square of white across the floor.

"It's the same one," Senar whispered, shock in her tone. "The same."

"Same what?" I asked, puzzled. My heartbeat sped.

"We found our savior," Saki breathed.

Her voice had the rush of someone who had waited too long. Then the wolves bowed slowly, with a ritual grace that made gooseflesh bloom along my arms.

"Senar, that's not all," Saki added hurriedly.

"What do you mean?" Senar asked, voice tight now.

"The sleeping king wears the same necklace," Saki said.

The words landed like an impact. For one heartbeat, nothing moved. Then all four of them spoke at once.

"What?" Senar cried.

I felt my own eyes open wide. A cold ran from my chest to the tips of my fingers. My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

My whole world, the patchwork of life I had tried to rebuild after ten lost years, shifted under me. Wolves bowed. Prophecies breathed like old ghosts waking. Everything I thought I knew about myself felt thinner than a shadow.

The four of them gathered closer, their faces softening around some new, terrible hope. They spoke quickly then, words I could not fully understand, promises and fears wrapped in ancient names. I watched them, my hands trembling against my knees, the necklace warm and heavy against my skin.

I did not move. I could not move. I only listened as my life peeled back like paper, layer by layer, revealing this part of the world I had never asked to be part of.

They called me a savior.