The wolf's eyes were wrong.
Not yellow, not red—absent. Twin voids that swallowed light, reflection, meaning. Everest watched those empty sockets track him across the clearing, and somewhere in the back of his mind a word surfaced: Echo.
The clearing itself had gone silent. Birds—if there had been birds—were gone. The grass beneath Everest's boots was too green, the kind of saturated emerald that belonged in paintings, not nature. Each blade stood rigid, perpendicular to the earth, like frozen flames.
The mythborn moved like oil through water.
Its body was smoke given mass, shadow folded over itself in layers that hurt to focus on. Where its paws touched ground, the too-green grass withered to ash-gray. The creature's outline flickered—sometimes wolf, sometimes something with too many joints, sometimes just a void-shaped hole in the world.
"Run."
His voice came out flat. Practical. The kind of tone you'd use to discuss weather or breakfast, not the seven-foot amalgamation of shadow and teeth currently circling them like a predator savoring the hunt.
Aya Norito stood three meters to his left, small hands clenched into useless fists. Her breathing was too quick and shallow to be anything but panic. The pink ribbons in her pigtails—Christ, she wore ribbons—fluttered despite no wind, matching the pink tips of her deep purple hair. Her outfit was a study in contradictions: black band t-shirt stretched across a figure that belonged on someone older, short skirt that showed legs in black hose, heels completely unsuited for running. Fourteen years old wearing twenty-something's curves like borrowed clothes.
Her eyes were the strangest part—crimson, dead and unflinching, alien in her otherwise expressive face. They tracked the wolf with an intensity that seemed wrong for someone so young.
The wolf's maw split.
Not opened—split, reality peeling back like old wallpaper to reveal something that shouldn't have throat or tongue but did anyway, dripping darkness that fell upward instead of down. The inside of its mouth was lined with teeth that seemed to recede infinitely, row after row disappearing into impossible depth.
"I said run—"
It lunged.
The world compressed into a single moment: the wolf's body elongating mid-leap, smoke-form stretching like taffy; Aya's sharp intake of breath making her chest rise sharply; the grass beneath Everest's feet bending toward the mythborn as if magnetically drawn; his own reflection caught in a dewdrop on a nearby leaf, alabaster skin stark against the violent green, the black silk of his robe rippling like water.
Everest's body betrayed him.
Not toward safety. Not away from the teeth now closing the distance in fluid bounds. Between. His legs moved without consulting his brain, without checking with the part of him that understood logistics and survival odds and the basic mathematics of mortality.
He collided with Aya—felt her solid frame, all dangerous curves and surprising weight—shoving her backward as shadow-matter slammed into his shoulder.
The world inverted.
Cold. February-in-London cold, the kind that got into your joints and teeth and stayed. But more than cold—absence. The sensation of being unmade, letter by letter, like someone had opened the book of his existence and started erasing sentences at random. The wolf's breath washed over him, and Everest could smell forgotten birthdays, missed opportunities, names no one spoke anymore.
His shoulder where the wolf gripped—not bit, gripped, shadow-teeth sinking through silk and skin without tearing either—began to gray. Not bruising. The color itself was draining out, flesh going from alabaster to dove to slate to nothing.
In his peripheral vision: his reflection in Aya's wide, terrified eyes. Those crimson irises suddenly alive with fear despite their usual deadness. His own face, normally composed, now twisted in something beyond pain. Gold irises flickering like dying lightbulbs. The black hair from his bun coming loose, strands falling across his vision in ink-dark curtains. The silk robe hanging off one shoulder now, black fabric somehow darker where the shadow touched it.
"GET OFF HIM!"
Aya's voice, shrill with fear-rage. Something whistled past Everest's ear—a rock, palm-sized, still warm from her grip—and struck the wolf's flank.
The impact made no sound.
The rock simply stopped existing where it touched shadow-flesh, particles dissolving into non-light.
But the wolf turned.
Those void-eyes fixed on Aya, and Everest watched the grass between them wither in a spreading circle, watched her heels sink slightly into softening earth, watched her small hands tremble as she bent for another rock she'd never throw in time. Her crimson eyes reflected nothing—no light, no fear, just that alien deadness—even as her face twisted with terror.
His hand found a branch.
Fallen oak, he registered distantly. Bark peeling away in strips like skin after sunburn, interior wood gone soft with rot, mushrooms growing in the hollow where it had broken from the trunk—white caps with blood-red gills.
The wolf took a step toward Aya.
The grass between them died faster.
Everest drove the branch into its eye-socket.
The mythborn screamed—a sound like tearing fabric, like nails on reality's chalkboard, like the noise a photograph might make if you could burn it alive. Shadow-matter burst from the wound, not blood but absence, droplets that fell and vanished before hitting ground.
The wolf thrashed. Its body expanded, contracted, lost cohesion—became pure smoke for a heartbeat before snapping back into wolf-shape with a sound like breaking glass. Where its blood-that-wasn't-blood had sprayed across Everest's hand, his skin had gone completely gray, colorless as pencil shading. The silk of his robe repelled it, droplets sliding off the fabric like water off oil.
But he could breathe again. Could remember his own name—Everest June, bastard son, failed prince, walking secret—could feel the reassuring weight of existing.
The wolf staggered, one eye now a weeping void of nothingness, the other fixing on him with what might have been surprise or rage or hunger.
Behind it: the tree line.
More shapes emerging from between trunks. Not smoke this time—solid forms, muscles rippling under midnight fur, eyes that were merely dark instead of absent. Regular wolves. Still dangerous. Still wrong—too large, too coordinated, mouths dripping saliva that hissed when it hit grass.
"MOVE!"
They ran.
The forest swallowed them whole.
The transition was immediate—one moment, dying clearing with its too-green grass and spreading circles of gray; the next, darkness so complete Everest couldn't see his hands. Then his eyes adjusted, and he wished they hadn't.
Trees bent at wrong angles, trunks spiraling like DNA helixes, bark twisted into faces that might have been human once. Mouths open in silent screams. Eyes that were just knots in the wood but tracked their movement anyway. The roots—Christ, the roots—broke through earth in thick ropes, pulsing with something beneath the bark. Not sap. The rhythm was too regular, too organic.
The forest had a heartbeat.
Beneath his boots: moss that squished wetly, releasing spores that glowed faint blue before fading. Mushrooms the size of dinner plates, caps split to show interior flesh that looked disturbingly like brain matter. Something that might have been a flower once, petals now fused into a cage around a center that blinked.
The air tasted of rot and copper and that sweet smell that came from things dying slowly.
His black silk robe caught on branches, the fabric flowing around him like liquid shadow, somehow remaining pristine despite the grasping thorns.
Aya stumbled.
Her heel—left foot, the stiletto now cracked—caught on a root that hadn't been there a second ago. She went down hard, palms scraping across bark-chips that drew blood in thin red lines. The skirt rode up, showing where the black hose had torn at the knee. Her purple hair with its pink tips splayed across the forest floor, ribbons tangled in moss.
"Up!"
Everest grabbed her arm, hauled her vertical. Her shirt had a smear of mud across the front now, fabric straining as she gasped for breath. Those crimson eyes found his—still dead, still alien, but something flickered in their depths.
Behind them: the wolf's hunting cry, joined now by others. A pack. The sound echoed wrong, coming from multiple directions simultaneously, as if the trees were amplifying and redirecting it.
"There!"
Aya pointed—her hand shaking, blood running down to her wrist—at a hollow in what might have been an oak tree once, before madness got its hooks in.
The tree was massive. Trunk at least twelve feet across, bark stripped away in patches to reveal wood beneath that had gone black with age or rot or both. The hollow at its base was a wound, edges ragged like torn flesh, interior darkness absolute. Around the opening: mushrooms growing in perfect circles, white and red, red and white, hypnotic in their symmetry.
The opening was barely wide enough. The interior dark and unknown.
But unknown beat definitely being eaten.
Everest shoved Aya inside first—felt her resist for a half-second before survival instinct won—then followed, his silk robe catching momentarily on the entrance before flowing through like water. He pulled branches across the entrance with hands that shook harder than he'd expected.
His left hand—the one the shadow-blood had touched—was still gray. Colorless. He could move the fingers but they felt distant, like he was controlling them through thick gloves.
Inside the hollow:
Darkness. Absolute at first, then gradual revelation as his eyes adjusted again. The walls were wood, but breathing wood, expanding and contracting slowly. The surface was covered in something that might have been fungus, might have been moss, might have been neither—pale growth that glowed faint green, barely enough to see by.
The hollow was larger inside than the tree's trunk should have allowed. The back wall curved away into darkness that his eyes couldn't penetrate. The ground was soft, covered in what felt like mulch or decomposed matter, releasing that sweet-rot smell with every breath the tree took.
And it was warm. Body temperature. Like they'd crawled inside something living.
The green glow caught Aya's purple hair, making the pink tips seem to fluoresce. Her crimson eyes reflected the light strangely—not like normal eyes would, but flat, absorbing, like paint instead of living tissue.
Aya's breathing was ragged, too loud. Everest clamped a hand over her mouth—his right hand, still alabaster pale—felt her entire body go rigid with fresh panic. Through the skin contact he could feel her pulse hammering, could feel the heat of her fear-sweat, could feel the moment understanding caught up and she stopped struggling.
Her eyes—crimson, dead, alien—found his in the dim green glow. Wide. Terrified despite their inherent lifelessness. But not panicking anymore.
The wolves passed.
Shadow-shapes between the trees, bodies flowing around trunks like liquid, hunting by smell or presence or something else entirely. Their void-eyes cast no light, but Everest felt them anyway—that sensation of being observed by something that wanted to know what flavor your existence had.
Through the gaps in the branches covering their hiding spot, he watched them work. Pack tactics. Organized. The leader—larger, with two heads instead of one—paused directly outside the hollow. Its noses twitched. Its void-eyes swept across the entrance.
The tree's heartbeat quickened.
The breathing walls contracted tighter.
Aya's fingernails dug into Everest's wrist, drawing half-moons of blood.
The alpha wolf took a step closer. Then another. Its maw split—both maws, synchronized—revealing those infinite rows of teeth.
Then: a sound from deeper in the forest. High-pitched. Possibly prey. Possibly bait.
The alpha's heads swiveled as one. It barked—a sound like tearing metal—and the pack moved, flowing away between the trees, shadow-bodies leaving trails of dead vegetation in their wake.
Minutes stretched.
The tree's breathing slowed.
Everest counted his own heartbeat—seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five—before he released Aya's mouth.
She gasped air like a drowning victim, the sound harsh in the hollow's intimate space. Her lips were pale from pressure, already darkening where his palm had pressed. A thin line of drool at one corner that she wiped away with the back of her hand, smearing mud and blood across her cheek.
"What—"
Her voice cracked. She swallowed, tried again. "What was—"
"Mythborn." Everest leaned back against the hollow's wall, felt it pulse once against his spine like a responding heartbeat. Everything hurt in that distant way that meant adrenaline was doing heavy lifting. His shoulder—where the wolf had gripped—was completely numb now. When he looked down, he could see through the silk where holes had formed, edges burned away, revealing skin beneath that had gone from gray to nearly translucent. He could see the outline of his collarbone through it, the shadow of muscle and tendon beneath.
"Echo-class," he continued, pulling his attention away from his own dissolving flesh. "Which means we're in a mad zone."
"Mad?" Aya stared at him. Even in the dim green glow, he could see her face clearly—smudged with dirt and blood, ribbons hanging loose from her pigtails, mascara (she wore mascara, at fourteen, to an international death game) running in streaks down her cheeks. But those crimson eyes remained unchanged, dead and flat even as her expression shifted through confusion and fear. "Mad like—"
"Like the entire forest wants us dead. Yes."
Her expression shifted. Confusion to fear to something sharper. In the green light, her crimson eyes seemed to glow faintly, that alien deadness somehow more pronounced. The purple of her hair looked nearly black in the shadows, only the pink tips catching light.
"You knew." Not a question. "The way you moved, the way you—you knew."
"I guessed."
"Bullshit."
The profanity sounded wrong in her kawaii-cute accent, incongruous with the goth aesthetic and adult curves and those unsettling crimson eyes. But her presence—that invisible weight he'd barely registered before—was beginning to manifest. The air around her felt heavier somehow, denser, like reality was paying closer attention.
The hollow's walls contracted slightly, as if responding to the pressure.
Everest met her gaze. Held it. Those crimson eyes reflected nothing back at him—no light, no emotion, just flat dead color like someone had painted over where pupils and life should be.
Let the silence stretch.
His reflection didn't show in her eyes. Just darkness and that alien red.
He looked away first, down at his own hands. Gold irises glowing faintly in the green light, long black hair loose and tangled around his face, alabaster skin stark against the darkness except where it had gone gray and translucent. The black silk robe hung off his shoulders, somehow pristine except where the wolf had touched, those spots eaten away to reveal dissolving flesh beneath. He looked like a corpse. Or a ghost. Or something in between.
"Fine," he said. "I knew. My family—" careful, careful "—had dealings with mad zones. I've seen mythborn before."
"Your family." Aya's laugh was harsh, brittle. Moisture gathered at the corners of her eyes—tears forming despite those dead crimson irises, the contrast unsettling. "Right. Your family. The same family that let a fourteen-year-old girl and some random British-Chinese guy get hunted by shadow wolves because—why? Entertainment?"
"Yes."
The honesty caught her off-guard. She blinked—mascara-streaked lashes, one false lash hanging loose—and the almost-tears spilled over. Two clean tracks through the dirt on her cheeks, but her eyes remained lifeless, crimson and flat as paint.
"This is Stellar High," Everest continued, voice flat. "The International Mansion isn't a school. It's a warfront. And the road to it—" he gestured at the pulsing walls, the breathing darkness, the pale growth covering every surface "—is the first test. Survive, or don't. Simple."
"That's insane."
"That's madness." He smiled, thin and joyless. In the green glow, with his dissolving shoulder and loose hair and corpse-pale skin and black silk robe, the expression was grotesque. "Welcome to the industry."
Aya opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Her shirt was clinging to her frame now with sweat, the band logo stretched and distorted. The torn hose showed scraped skin beneath, already bruising purple-black. Her purple hair with pink tips stuck to her neck and face in wet strands.
"So what do we do?" she asked finally. Her voice had changed—lost some of that cute affect, gained something harder. Survival instinct kicking in. "Just... hide here until they give up?"
"They won't give up." Everest studied the hollow's breathing walls. "This forest is mad. It doesn't hunt for food. It hunts because that's what it is. Because that's the delusion it's built on."
"Delusion?"
"The thing that makes madness real. The impossible belief that becomes possible through sheer conviction." He paused. "You'll understand soon enough. We all will, if we survive long enough to go properly insane."
Aya stared at him with those dead crimson eyes. "You're completely mad already, aren't you?"
He considered lying. Decided against it. "Probably. My family—the real story, not the careful version—doesn't breed sanity. We breed useful monsters."
"And which are you?"
The question hung in the air between them. The hollow breathed around them. In-out. In-out.
"I don't know yet," Everest said honestly. "That's what I'm here to find out."
Silence again. But different now. Not hostile. Not entirely trusting either. Just... acknowledging. Two people trapped in a breathing tree, surrounded by mad wolves, admitting they might both be monsters.
It was almost companionable.
Then the wall behind Aya moved.