Stillness devoured him, slowly and meticulously, and where once there had been darkness, only a thin line of light remained. Beneath the dense bramble of a forest he could not recognize, Arkyn awoke to the velveteen melody of birdsong. A quiet chatter that had his ears twisting and his eyes refocusing into the dimly lit day that lay ahead. He knew not of this place, a fact that became more evident the more he turned to drink in his surroundings, but with each tentative breath he inhaled, the more at peace he found himself becoming.

He took a wobbly step forward, unaware that his two legs had turned to four, and that his body was no longer covered with the fresh linen of fabric, but instead was composed of fur.

Hello? He called out against the chatter of chirps and the whistling breeze. His voice, although familiar to his ears, was hoarser than he had expected. Unused, he imagined, and rough. He cleared his throat once and then twice before encouraging his body into movement once more.

The forest shifted easily with the purposeful strides he took, though where once he saw greenery, now his eyes had focused on the budding red that swarmed the horizon. Trees of unnatural colors he had yet to see before spanned out before him, drawing limbs of rose-colored petals down to the earth below.

They looked like tears, he thought as he drew his gaze toward them and back toward the weeping forest ahead.

Yet, his attention was quickly displaced by the iron-tainted smell that wafted toward his senses.

Blood.

He glanced down. Carefully.

And with a hesitant, sharply inhaled breath, Arkyn spotted not just his canine-like body—the legs and chest of a wolf once prophesied—but the dried trail of blood that appeared to have begun at the base of his neck and seeped down the length of his chest.

What the—