Note from the writer: Chapters have been under revision for the past week, so if you haven't read chapters 10-15 since after the 6th of April 2025, there is some added context and description that otherwise may be lost on you and I would go back and re-read those if you find yourself cking that context. Thanks for reading!
The moon shone through the trees and Kiera screamed as zombies slowly walked toward her from all sides. She felt a shiver down the back of her neck, as her muscles tensed. This part of the transformation always hurt. Muscle cramps in every conceivable pce, she felt a remarkable amount of pain as she felt strings pull each of her limbs up for just a moment before falling ft. An incredible surge of anger and rage washed over her, as the very skull beneath her face shifted, forming a snout. Her skin got loose, and fur began to spread over it in small patches at first, but then like a contagion as it covered her body. Her form had been growing. The five foot ten girl shifted, her limbs lengthening, her muscles pulsing and engorging. The strength came to her with the rage, and she threw the tree and growled at the creatures around her. Her nostrils fred. These were not good food. But they were standing in a dangerous pce, where she saw them as threats. The hunger consumed her, and her nails grew into sharp, massive cws, which she used to tear through the amassing zombies that stood before her. On a pile of corpses, she bellowed a deafening howl at the moon, silencing the groaning of the corpses surrounding her. As the st shred of humanity left her for the night, memories of a girl named Eliza flooded into her mind.
"What was that?" Heidi asked, putting a thumb to her lips and wiping away the saliva.Faith ughed, "It was a kiss.""I- I know that, Faith, why did you... window.""Why did I window?"Heidi looked away from her, "No, no, sorry, why did you do that, I was going to ask, I'm sorry I just realised something that could help us. There's a window here."Indeed, the room was being illuminated by the glowing blue light of the darkness outside, through a very small window that seemed to be just above ground level. Heidi jumped as another knock and groan came from outside the door."Shit." Faith said, "Alright, I have a pn."Barricading the door with one of the pews lying around the storage room, the pair looked up at the window. For whatever reason, much of this area of the church was built below-ground, so this window was at the top part of the room. As the undead kept knocking at the door, causing Heidi to jump in fright each time, she helped lift Faith to the window."Alright," Faith said, holding onto the bottom of the window and peering out, "It's big enough, I think. There are um..."She opted not to tell Heidi about the decaying feet that crossed past the window, "There might be a few challenges, but I think we can squeeze-"The window shattered, and Faith tumbled back as an enormous cw tore through, sshing her across the face. In the darkness, Heidi felt a dark substance sptter over her face, causing her to shriek as giant dog's nose poked into the gap in the wall, barking. Drool dripped onto her and she squealed again, backing away from the wall. The dog's face disappeared, and she turned to see an unconscious Faith, her face covered in blood.
***
Lycanthropes | Werewolves
Werewolves are actually one of my favourite species to write about, so I'm gd that I could get to dedicate a description to them here. I've studied them extensively, and I'm very lucky to be able to trace their history back to their very origin in this world. Of course, my research is not fully extensive; sightings of lycanthrope-like creatures in the ancient world are heavily documented, however in this case I will be approaching those records with caution, knowing that it was a time before magical creatures sought to hide themselves from the world at rge.
Lycanthropes are an odd bunch. The first lycanthrope was a brilliant scientist, and a woman who sought to cure her affliction. Her name is sadly lost to history, but I do at least have her notes stored away safely in my archives. She was in actual fact cursed. By her father no less, a powerful warlock that viewed his daughter as a weak, worthless child. He'd cursed her at a young age to transform on the night of the full moon into a ravenous wolf-creature, never again to re-enter human society until she learned to be just as tough as the beast she became. She, however, saw his lesson as the cruel punishment of a shallow fool, and sought to reverse the curse on her own. She studied alchemy for a long time, but deep down knew that she needed to seek the methods of another world to cure herself. With her father being her only connection to that world, and the famine she brought to every town as she ate their livestock, eventually she understood she had to act quickly.
She broke into her father's cottage one day, having watched him for weeks, waiting for a day where he would leave to visit the city. When the day finally came, however, she found precious little of value, and her father returned as she was inside. He was aware of her pn, he'd known she was coming, and for her trespass, he cursed her a second time, ensuring her bloodline would be afflicted with the same curse. But he hadn't had enough. She would find herself reborn once every few decades, cursed to watch the men in her family revel in the curse, treat it as a form of bonding and a symbol of their strength as men, and she would be bound to her torturous fate, to murder her friends and never feel at home in her skin, to suffer at what brought them joy. Until she was content with who he wanted her to be, this cycle would repeat.
It's an incredibly interesting story. I've since interviewed a handful of lycanthropes who descended from her, although I suspect his curse was mistaken. While there have been many werewolves who found they did not enjoy the curse and might even seek to cure it, I have yet to meet a single woman born of the lineage, let alone one who cims to be her. At this point, the curse is sadly one that uses forgotten magic, as warlocks have been a dead race for centuries, and any chance I might have of curing the illness is something that would likely have died with whatever deity they worshipped, regrettably.
***
They'd nded a good way back up in the graveyard, and it was a bit of a way to get down to where the church was, but the screams had stopped so they stopped trying to run. Being a ghost in the physical world was a lot more surreal than Alicia had realised, and it bothered her a little that she could still find herself winded. Having been along the usual pipeline of a meeting with Death, then quickly sent out to board a ghost train, she didn't really get to experience the cool aspects of ghosthood. As she watched Eliza walk through a tombstone rather than around it, she knelt down by one and tried to put her hand through it. To her surprise, however, she was sucked through.On the other side of the tombstone, a decaying head that had been uprooted during the crash came to life, looking around with its one good eye."Ah!" A raspy, deep voice that was not Alicia's said with great difficulty, "I'm a zombie!"Eliza turned to look the source. The man's head was draped in greying flesh which pulled tightly as it spoke."Eliza!" It said, spitting out a tooth, "What did I do?"Eliza cracked up ughing out of nowhere, "Oh my god, that's hirious, Alicia, you possessed a corpse.""Ah... how do I... get out? This is extremely uncomfortable. For multiple reasons."As the head chewed on its own lip, Eliza went over to another dead body and swan dived at it, causing her body to disappear entirely into it. The woman's corpse she possessed stood up, looked around, and awkwardly walked toward a shovel, which she used to dig Alicia out of the ground. Alicia slowly cmbered up, her own movements rigid and slow. Another of Heidi's screams came from the church, and the pair looked over to see the giant wolf they'd seen tearing zombies apart earlier, now digging at the ground of one of the walls.
