Masuk
Zara's POV
The mop bucket clattered against the marble floor as Zara Night pushed it down the empty hallway of Shadowmere Academy.
At three in the morning, the elite werewolf school was finally quiet.
No more laughter echoing from the common rooms.
No more whispers about "the broken omega" who couldn't shift.
Zara squeezed the dirty water from her mop and sighed.
While other nineteen-year-olds were sleeping in comfortable dorm rooms, she was cleaning up their mess.
Again.
"This is pathetic," she muttered to herself, pushing a strand of black hair from her sweaty forehead.
"Even the other omegas can shift. What's wrong with me?"
She'd been asking herself that question for five years.
Five years since her parents dropped her off at Shadowmere Academy's gates and never looked back.
The academy claimed to prepare the strongest werewolves for leadership roles in modern society, but Zara knew the truth.
She was here because her pack didn't want her.
A broken omega who couldn't shift was worse than useless.
She was an embarrassment.
Zara pushed her bucket toward the computer lab, where tomorrow's elite students would learn advanced tactics for something called "The Final Hunt."
She'd heard whispers about it, some kind of important mission that only the strongest werewolves could handle.
Not that anyone would ever explain it to her.
The computer lab door was already open.
Strange.
Professor Hayes always locked it after classes.
Zara flicked on the lights and gasped.
Every computer in the room was destroyed.
Screens cracked, keyboards smashed, cables ripped from the walls.
It looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to everything.
"Great," she groaned.
"They'll probably blame me for this."
She started sweeping up the broken glass, careful not to cut herself.
As she worked, something caught her eye.
One computer in the back corner looked different.
The screen was dark, but it wasn't cracked like the others.
In fact, it looked completely untouched.
Zara walked over to investigate.
The computer looked normal enough, but when she got closer, she noticed something odd.
The screen had a faint crack running down the middle, but it was perfectly straight.
Too perfect.
Like someone had drawn a line with a ruler.
"What the hell?" she whispered, reaching out to touch the crack.
The moment her finger made contact with the screen, everything changed.
The computer hummed to life, its screen blazing with brilliant blue light.
But instead of the normal login screen, symbols appeared.
Strange, flowing symbols that looked nothing like any language Zara had ever seen.
Yet somehow, impossibly, she understood them.
HARVEST PROTOCOL ACTIVATED
SUBJECT IDENTIFICATION: INCOMPLETE
SCANNING...
Zara jerked her hand back, but the screen kept glowing.
More symbols appeared, scrolling faster now.
GENETIC MARKERS: ANOMALOUS
POWER CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN
RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION
"What is this?" Zara breathed, her heart pounding.
The symbols made no sense, but she understood every word.
How was that possible?
A new message flashed on the screen:
WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED
INITIATING SECURITY PROTOCOLS
The screen went black.
Then, slowly, the crack down the middle began to glow with the same blue light.
Zara realized it wasn't a crack at all.
It was some kind of scanner.
Before she could move, footsteps echoed in the hallway.
Someone was coming.
Zara grabbed her mop and bucket and rushed toward the door, her mind racing.
What had she just seen?
What did those symbols mean?
And why could she understand them when she'd never seen anything like them before?
The footsteps got closer.
Zara quickly turned off the lights and slipped out of the computer lab, pulling the door shut behind her.
She hurried down the hallway, trying to look like she was just doing her job.
But she couldn't shake the feeling that everything had just changed.
The symbols on that screen weren't from any human technology she knew.
They looked... alien.
And they'd been scanning her.
As Zara pushed her bucket toward the basement stairs, she didn't notice the security camera in the corner following her movement.
Its red light pulsed once, twice, then began transmitting data to coordinates far beyond Earth's atmosphere.
The hunt was about to begin.
KAI’S POVThe portal wasn’t expanding. It was unfolding.Like something on the other side had decided our reality was too small and was gently peeling it open.The eye remained fixed on us.Not blinking. Not wavering.Watching.The hunters had stopped fighting. That alone told me everything I needed to know. These were beings who stepped into fractured timelines without hesitation. Who pruned realities like gardeners trimming branches.And they were stepping back.Zara’s fingers tightened around mine.“Tell me that thing can’t come through,” she whispered.I didn’t lie to her.“I don’t think it needs to.”The eye wasn’t trying to squeeze into our dimension.It was assessing whether we were worth stepping out for.The Moon Goddess shifted back into his human form, white hair falling over his shoulders, silver eyes sharp with something I had never seen in him before.Fear.“That is the Architect.” He said quietly.The elegant hunter’s voice was tight now, stripped of her earlier composur
ZARA’S POVIt smiled at us. That was the worst part. Not the claws that scraped against the fractured air as it stepped through the black portal. Not the way its body seemed stitched from shadows and starlight. Not even the scent of something ancient and metallic that clung to it like dried blood.It smiled.Like it had finally found what it had been looking for.My grip on Kai tightened instinctively. I could feel the new energy humming between us, the merged force of creator and devourer coiled beneath our skin like a living current. It wasn’t wild anymore.It was aware.The creature tilted its head slightly, studying us.“So,” it said, voice smooth and almost amused. “The anomaly.”Its eyes shifted to Kai first.Then to me.Then to the small, contained shadow hovering between us like a dim star.Behind it, more silhouettes moved within the portal. Taller. Broader. Some hunched. Some elegant. All wrong.The Moon Goddess stepped forward, his white fur bristling.“You were not invite
KAI’S POVThe Moon Goddess was afraid.That realization hit me harder than the shadow rising from beneath the fractured city.Zara’s fingers were still tangled in my shirt, her power flaring wild and brilliant after what she had just done. She hadn’t consumed. She had given. She had rewritten the instinct that was supposed to define her.And something ancient had noticed.The shadow towered over us, stretching beyond the burning skyline, its shape unstable, as if it couldn’t decide what form it wanted. Wolf. Void. Starless sky.Its eyes burned like collapsing suns.“You broke the containment,” it said, voice vibrating through bone and memory. “You were never meant to give.”Zara stepped forward before I could stop her.“I’m not meant for anything,” she snapped. “I choose.”The bond surged between us, bright and almost painful. I felt her heart racing, but not from fear.From conviction.The white wolf, no longer pretending to be human, lowered his head slightly.“This entity,” he sai
ZARA’S POVThe air tasted like ash. That was the first thing I noticed. Not fear. Not power. Not even the full moon suspended above us like a silent judge.Ash.Silver buildings stretched across the horizon, their towers cracked open like bones. Flames moved strangely here, slow and deliberate, as if they were being fed by something deeper than wood and stone. Wolves ran through the streets. Some fought. Some fled. Some knelt.The white wolf sat at the highest point of the city, untouched by the fire.Watching.“This isn’t a simulation,” I said quietly.Kai didn’t answer immediately. His hand tightened around mine, grounding but tense. I felt it through the bond, that split in him widening again. The part of him that remembered this place. The part that had stood here before.“No,” he said finally. “It’s the origin.”The word settled into my bones. Origin.The first mistake. The first creation. The first fracture in time.A howl split the sky. Not pain. Not warning. Summoning. The whi
ZARA’S POVThe silver city stretched before us like a nightmare made real. Streets burned in slow-motion waves of violet and silver flame, the light reflecting off the buildings in impossible angles. Smoke rose like serpents, curling toward a sky painted with moons, dozens of them, each pale and cruel. I tightened my grip on Kai’s hand, feeling his pulse steady beneath my palm, but the bond thrummed with an urgency that made the hairs on my arms stand on end.“Kai…” I whispered, voice tight. “Where are we?”He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes scanned the horizon, calculating, measuring, remembering. “This isn’t anywhere in our timeline,” he said finally. “It’s… a projection. A simulation of everything that could go wrong.”I shivered. The wind carried a smell I couldn’t place, iron, ash, and something metallic, almost alive. My Devourer stirred, coiling within me like a spring, wanting to consume the chaos before us, to feed on it, to obliterate it.“No,” Kai said sharply, readi
KAI’S POVThe academy pretended nothing had happened.That was the first thing that scared me.Students moved through the corridors like ghosts with borrowed faces, laughing too loudly, arguing about classes that suddenly felt irrelevant. The walls are re-locked into their neat geometric lines. The wards hummed at a frequency I recognized. Stable. Sanitized.Lying.Zara’s hand was still in mine. She hadn’t let go since the lights came back on, and I hadn’t tried to release her. The bond between us pulsed steadily now, but underneath it was a low vibration, like a countdown ticking somewhere beyond sound.“Ghost protocol,” I murmured.Zara’s jaw tightened. “I don’t like how calmly he said that.”“Neither do I.” I flexed my fingers slowly. My body felt… aligned. Too aligned. The glitching had stopped, but the silence it left behind was worse. “When Ajax resets something, it isn’t a fix. It’s a checkpoint.”Her eyes flicked to me. “You remember him.”“Everything,” I said. “Or at lea







