Chapter 10 – The End

When I opened my eyes, the sky was wrong. Not the soft blue I remembered, not the island haze, not even the sterile white of Kessler’s laboratories. This sky was made of steel and glass and fire.

I was standing—no, naked—atop a skyscraper, so tall that clouds drifted below my feet. My skin shivered against the cold wind, but that wasn’t what shook me. It was the city.

Cars soared like birds, glowing with trails of neon. Ships hovered between towers, silent and sleek, their metal bellies reflecting a thousand lights. On the ground, machines walked alongside humans, their faces blank, their voices synthetic. A world so alive, so far beyond me, that I could not breathe.

I stumbled, crouching low, pressing my palms against the skyscraper’s glass. “Where…?” The word was ripped from my throat, ragged, useless. There was no answer.

I don’t remember how I got down. Perhaps I climbed, perhaps I fell and survived, perhaps the building itself spat me out into its belly. What I do remember is the streets. They stretched endlessly, glowing with signs I couldn’t read, faces I didn’t recognize, machines that hummed without human touch. I moved like a ghost, unseen, unfelt. No one looked at me. Not once.

And in that moment, I realized the most terrifying truth of all. Here, I was not Lars McKnight. I was no one. No parents. No friends. No records. Not even scars that anyone would acknowledge. I thought, maybe, I could start over. Be who I once dreamed of becoming—a respected man in a formal suit—a businessman, clean and untouchable. Build something. Own something. But dreams need a foundation. And I had nothing. That’s when it began again.

The ache. The crawling beneath my skin. The swell of something ancient and violent. My cursed powers were returning, surging, clawing to be free.

I clenched my fists, trying to hold it back, but the city seemed to tremble with me. The glass around me quivered, and the streetlights flickered. Someone finally looked—eyes wide, mouth open in silent horror. And then the shot came. A bolt of light tearing through my chest. I staggered, expecting death. But death did not come.

Instead, my body bent. Broke. Reformed. Bones splitting, flesh twisting, the skins beneath writhing into one. I was no wolf, no bear. I was something else. Something nameless. Something… wrong. The last thing I remember before the darkness swallowed me was a single wish clawing through the storm of pain:

I just want to see my family again.

***

When light returned, I was not in the city. I was in my room. My old room. The posters. The desk. The faint smell of laundry detergent. Eighteen years of my life gathered into a box that should have been gone forever. For a moment, I almost believed it had all been a nightmare. But then… the ache began. Deep, relentless, undeniable.

And I knew, the nightmare had only just begun.

THE END