Chapter 3

I opened my eyes to a world wrapped in cloudy mist, everything soft and blurred at the edges like looking through frosted glass.

Something sharp jabbed at my face, over and over, accompanied by the frantic fluttering of wings.

Bird. My mind supplied the word slowly, like pulling it from deep water. A bird was pecking at my face.

I could feel my skin breaking under its beak, warm wetness trickling down my cheek. But I didn't move. Couldn't move. I simply lay there, staring up through the canopy of trees at a sky that seemed impossibly bright.

The bird kept pecking, growing more aggressive, its sharp beak drawing blood with each strike. Then suddenly it stopped. Its small body toppled sideways, falling against my shoulder where it lay perfectly still.

Dead.

I sat up slowly, my movements mechanical and strange. The dead bird slid off my shoulder onto the forest floor, its black eyes vacant and staring. I looked down at it with no emotion, no understanding of what had just happened. It had been alive, pecking at me. Now it was dead.

No voice came from my throat when I tried to speak. The sound just wasn't there.

I looked down at my body and froze. I was naked, completely hairless, covered from head to toe in some kind of white mucus that clung to my skin like a second layer. It was thick and viscous, like the fluid inside an egg, and it smelled of something I couldn't identify. Something ancient and strange.

I placed my hands on the two soft mounds on my chest, frowning at the foreign sensation. Everything felt new, unfamiliar, like I was experiencing my own body for the first time.

"My God, is that a naked lady?"

I turned toward the voice, moving with the jerky coordination of a newborn learning to control its limbs. A girl stood at the edge of the clearing, her mouth hanging open in shock.

She was small, maybe five feet tall, with straight black hair that fell to her shoulders and dark eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. Her skin was pale, her eyes suggesting east Asian heritage, and she wore hiking boots, cargo pants, and a backpack covered in patches.

She looked young, maybe eighteen or nineteen.

"Are you okay?" The girl took a tentative step forward, her voice gentle but concerned. "Were you kidnapped? Do you need help?"

I just stared at her, my mind struggling to process her words. Deep in my head, something whispered a single word: Kill.

But the girl was already moving, pulling a emergency blanket from her backpack and shaking it out. "You shouldn't be out here like this. It's not safe."

She approached me carefully, like I was a wild animal that might bolt. "Here, let me wrap this around you. You must be freezing."

"This is why I hate camping," she muttered under her breath as she draped the metallic blanket over my shoulders. "I just wanted to study the local flora for my botany project, and now I'm finding naked ladies covered in... what even is this stuff?"

Footsteps crashed through the underbrush, and a man appeared behind her. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with the kind of rugged handsomeness that belonged in outdoor magazines. His dark hair was messy from hiking, and his clothes marked him as expensive outdoorsy type.

He stopped short when he saw me, his face twisting with distaste.

"What's this, Zara?" His voice was clipped, authoritative.

"I'm not sure," the girl, Zara, replied. "I found her like this. I think someone might have hurt her."

The man studied me with cold calculation, his gaze moving over my mucus-covered skin and blank expression. "We need to leave. Now."

"What? No!" Zara spun to face him, her small hands clenched into fists. "We can't just leave her here! She needs help!"

"She needs medical attention we can't provide," the man said firmly. "And your father wouldn't approve of you bringing home strays."

Zara's face flushed red. "Don't call her a stray! She's a person!"

She turned back to me and began making rapid hand gestures, her fingers moving in complex patterns. Sign language, my mind supplied. She was trying to communicate with me in case I couldn't hear or speak.

I watched her hands move, fascinated by the fluid motions, but I couldn't understand what she was trying to say.

"She's coming home with me," Zara announced, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and taking my arm gently. "I'm not leaving her here to die."

The man's expression hardened. "Your father specifically said no complications on this trip. No drawing attention to ourselves."

"My father isn't here," Zara shot back.

The man sighed and reached into his jacket, pulling out a wicked-looking dagger with a curved blade. The metal gleamed silver in the dappled sunlight.

"I'm sorry, Princess," he said, his voice genuinely regretful. "I can't let you take this... person... home."

He pointed the blade at Zara, not me.

Something inside me snapped awake, primitive and violent. The kill instinct that had been whispering in my head suddenly roared to life. Not against Zara, who had shown me kindness, but against this man who threatened her.

I didn't know what happened next. One moment the dagger was gleaming in his hand, the next I was touching the blade and it was melting. The metal dissolved like ice under a blowtorch, pooling into silver liquid that dripped through his fingers onto the forest floor.

The man stared at his empty hand, then at me, his face going white with terror.

"What the hell are you?”