Shadows over Xiangcheng
The lanterns flickered along the narrow streets of Xiangcheng, their golden light struggling against the encroaching darkness. Mist curled between the wooden eaves and stone pathways, whispering secrets the city had long buried.
Lin Yue wrapped her shawl tighter, her breath forming tiny clouds in the cold night air. She had always felt the city's pulse in moments like this, a heartbeat that throbbed beneath its cobblestones. Tonight, however, the pulse felt wrong—uneven, frantic.
Footsteps echoed behind her, soft but deliberate. She turned, expecting a street vendor or a drunken merchant, but the alley was empty. A shiver traced her spine as a low growl rolled from the shadows.
Lin Yue's instincts screamed to run, but her feet remained planted. Her grandmother's stories—tales of creatures that roamed the city under the crimson moon—surfaced in her mind. Tales she had always dismissed as old superstition. Now, those stories felt too real.
A figure emerged from the fog, tall and lean, his eyes glinting silver in the lantern light. The growl had not come from the shadows alone—it came from him.
"You shouldn't be out here alone," the man said, his voice a mixture of warning and amusement. "The streets… they are not safe for someone like you."
Lin Yue's pulse quickened, but she met his gaze steadily. "And what kind of someone am I?" she asked.
He stepped closer, and the moonlight revealed more—a hint of elongated canines, a subtle aura of danger surrounding him. "Someone who doesn't know the city's true heart… yet."
Before Lin Yue could respond, a howl pierced the night, long and chilling, echoing through the alleys and over the rooftops. The man's eyes flickered to the darkness, tension coiling in his posture.
"They're awake," he muttered. "And they're coming."
Lin Yue's hands clenched the edges of her shawl. The city she thought she knew—the streets, the lanterns, the gentle hum of life—suddenly seemed foreign, alive with hidden predators and whispered threats.
As the howl faded into silence, Lin Yue realized one truth with a clarity that left her breathless: Xiangcheng was no ordinary city, and she was no ordinary girl.
Somewhere in the shadows, her destiny awaited—entwined with creatures of the night, secrets of old families, and a crimson moon that watched over them all.