Chapter 01 – The Transition

14 April, Thursday

I woke on my eighteenth birthday not to cake or gifts, but to burns crawling through my veins.

It began just after midnight, a slow itch beneath the skin, like the way your foot tingles after falling asleep, but spreading, growing hotter, until it felt as though my blood had been replaced with molten metal. I sat up in bed, gasping, the sheets sticking to me with sweat. My bedroom walls looked wrong in the moonlight, very sharp and tall, and felt somewhat predatory. At first, I thought it was a fever. Maybe food poisoning from the greasy burgers I had earlier with my friends. But then, my nails started to outgrow, tearing into the sheets. My jaw ached as if my teeth were pushing outward, and when I tried to call for my mother, the sound that tore from my throat wasn’t a word at all. It was a howl. I fell from bed, clawing at my arms as coarse black hair sprouted in uneven patches. The room tilted; my legs bent backward, reshaping themselves with shocking efficiency. The pain was blinding. I knocked over the lamp on my desk, sending light spilling across piles of books and clothes. The bulb flickered and went out, plunging the room into a silver wash of moonlight.

When my vision cleared, I was no longer staring at the familiar posters of bands and faded childhood drawings taped to my walls. I was staring at the room from closer to the ground, my nose full of scents I had no words for—dust in the carpet, sweat on my sheets. I looked down and saw paws. Not hands. Not feet. Just fur-covered paws flexing against the floorboards. I reeled backwards, but my body moved without my consent. Instinct had overtaken me, raw and animal. I crouched and leapt with a fluid yet terrifying motion that carried me halfway across my room. My heartbeat thundered in my chest, faster and faster, until I thought that it would burst. When the mirror on my closet door caught me in its dim reflection, I saw yellow eyes, a snout, and a wolf’s mouth dripping with saliva.

I tried to scream, but my throat was incapable of it now. Instead, I patrolled the room, circling the bed, claws clicking softly on the floor. My breath came in sharp bursts. I tried to stand upright but failed. The wolf’s body obeyed laws I had never learned. For hours, I was trapped inside it. The sounds of the night outside—a passing car, the wind blowing against the house—filled me with a violence I couldn’t understand. At one point, I leapt at the window, snapping my teeth against the glass, wanting to run into the dark. At another, I collapsed in the corner of the room, my sides heaving, foam filled my lips, and then, just before the dawn, it ended as suddenly as it had begun. The fur withdrew. The bones reset with sickening cracks. The claws retracted into fingernails. I lay naked and shivering on the floorboard; my skin was slick with sweat, while my throat was raw. My sheets were torn to ribbons, and the lamp lay in shattered pieces beside my desk. But worst of all was the smell. The room stank of me—not the human me, but the wolf one. It was animalistic, feral, and sharp enough to sting the back of my throat. I crawled into bed and pulled the blanket over myself, trembling.

Happy birthday, Lars. You’re a monster now!

16 April, Saturday

I didn’t tell anyone anything. How could I? “Hey Mom, I turned into a wolf last night, but don’t worry, though, I’m fine now.” She’d have me instantly committed. Instead, I blamed my fatigue on “birthday stress” and downed three cups of coffee before running off to school. My friends cracked silly jokes about my hangover, which was very convenient since I could nod along without explaining the truth. But all day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the wolf was still under my skin, waiting for the right time, to emerge again. My nails felt too sharp, my teeth too loose. Every noise in the classroom was too loud, every scent too strong. I could smell chalk dust, mildew in the walls, even the faint perfume on the girl two rows over. It was unbearable. So, when the final bell rang, I practically ran home, slamming the door of my bedroom shut behind me.

That night, I stayed awake as long as I could, in waiting to see if it would happen again. Midnight passed in silence. Then one o’clock. Then two. My eyelids drooped. I finally drifted into uneasy sleep. But no change came. By morning, I almost convinced myself I’d imagined it. Yes, Almost. Because when I pulled on my jeans, a patch of black fur still clung to the inside of the leg. That was the night everything ended. Or maybe it was the night everything began. I didn’t know then about the book, or the prophecy, or the sphere that was even then washing ashore on a quiet stretch of beach not far from where I lived. I only knew that I was eighteen, a very calm human in the daylight, and something else entirely in the dark.

22 April, Friday

The national fitness test always fell on the week after your eighteenth birthday. It was the law. No one escaped it. By then, you’d spent your entire life being reminded: Your body belongs to the nation until it is deemed otherwise. They said it in school assemblies, in TV broadcasts, even printed on the forms you filled out for bus passes. For some, it was a celebration, A gateway to citizenship, adulthood, a proper national ID. While for others, it was a day of fear, an inescapable spotlight on every defect of the flesh. For me, it was a trap. I knew what they would find if they looked too closely.

The morning of the test, I dressed carefully. Long sleeves to hide the faint scratches I’d left on myself during the transformation. Baggy jeans to cover any stray patches of fur that might emerge without warning.

The testing center was in an old government building downtown, a stone cube with no windows. Inside, the air smelled of disinfectant and cold iron. A line of eighteen-year-olds stretched through the lobby, all fidgeting with paperwork, all waiting to be swallowed by the system. Above the double doors leading into the testing hall hung a phrase in block letters:

“FITNESS IS FREEDOM.”

I stood beneath it with my stomach churning.

***

The hall beyond was vast, divided into numbered stations. White-coated technicians guided us like livestock: vision tests, reflex drills, blood samples, lung capacity. Each station stripped away a piece of you. Each clipboard scribble felt like a silent judgment. I did my best to appear normal. I forced steady breaths into the spirometer, even though my chest itched as if something beneath the ribs wanted to break free. I focused on keeping my pupils still during the vision exam, though every flick of the fluorescent lights made me snarl. When they drew blood, I almost panicked. The needle slid into my vein, and for an instant, I was sure the liquid in the vial wasn’t human-red but something darker, thicker. The nurse frowned as she held it up to the light. My heart seized. But then she simply labeled it, set it aside, and waved me forward.

The worst was the body scan. They lined us up, stripped us down to shorts and undershirts, and took us one by one into a humming chamber once more.” the technician droned. When I stepped inside, my bare feet felt too cold against the steel floor. The machine glowed, sweeping beams of light over my body. Every instinct screamed at me to run. What if it saw the wolf in me? What if it caught the wrong shape of my bones, the echo of claws beneath my nails? The hum grew louder. My skin prickled. I clenched my jaw until it ached. Then the lights flickered. The machine powered down with a cough of static. The technician cursed, slapping the control panel. “Again. Step back in.” But in that flicker, just for an instant, I saw the screen. Not my body as it was. My body as it could be. Limbs elongated, spine hunched, jaws stretched wide. There was a silhouette of something inhuman overlaying the human frame. I staggered out of the chamber. “Is there—was something wrong?” I asked. The technician didn’t look at me. He was already scribbling on a form. “It’s a bit Glitchy, happens sometimes.” But the way his pen pressed too hard into the paper told me he had seen it too.

The final station was the “interview.” It was a gray room with only a single chair and a single officer in a pressed uniform. He didn’t ask me about my health, or my goals, or my history. He simply asked me to describe myself. “Describe yourself,” he repeated when I hesitated. I swallowed. “I’m… normal.” I said. His pen hovered. “Normal?” he asked. “Yes. Just… an average eighteen year old student.” I replied with a slight hesitation. His eyes were pale, unreadable. “Do you believe you are fit for the future of the nation?” “Yes.” I said. He leaned back, considering me. The silence stretched. Finally, he stamped the form in front of him. The sound echoed. “Proceed,” he said.

When I emerged back into the sunlight, the relief nearly knocked me to my knees. I’d survived. Somehow, impossibly, I’d passed. But even as I walked home with the stamped form clutched in my sweating hand, I knew it wasn’t over. Because I could still feel the hum of the body scanner in my bones. And I knew the machine had seen me—the real me—even if the humans had chosen to look away.