The drums were not meant to summon anything. They were meant to remind the tribe who owned them. The gang beat them louder than the festival songs, louder than the flutes, louder than the children laughing in the firelight. Their rhythm cracked like whips, carrying into every chest.
Then the sky split.
It wasn't a storm. It wasn't thunder. The masquerade tore itself open above the fire pit, a wound glowing with pale violet light. Shadows fell like liquid, writhing against the dirt. The first villager screamed as his legs bent backwards and fused, claws gnawing their way out of his feet. Others fell to their knees, clutching heads as if splitting in half.
Mitso Marie stood among them, clutching the wooden beads at her throat. She had always been soft, always quiet, her mother's obedient daughter. But when the masquerade's breath touched her skin, she felt her bones turn against her.
Her scream cut through the firelight.
Fingers broke, twisted, lengthened into hooked talons. Her spine curved forward until her chest nearly scraped the ground. Hair burst from her arms like needles, dark and coarse. She clawed at the dirt as her jaw split wider than it had any right to, fangs sliding into place. The scent of blood and ash filled her nose so sharply it almost blinded her.
She crawled. She couldn't stop crawling.
Villagers scattered, their cries swallowed by the masquerade's glow. Some fell, convulsing, mutating into horrors of their own. Others ran, leaving kin behind. The gang who opened the rift laughed at first—until one of them was dragged screaming into the violet light and torn apart from within.
Mitso's mind split in two.
Make it stop, make it stop.
Hunt. Tear. Rip the weak apart.
The dual voices battled inside her skull, neither louder than the other. She slammed her claws into the dirt, fighting the urge to leap at the nearest heartbeat. But her ears betrayed her—every thrum of blood, every gasp, every pulse in the firelight beat inside her skull like war drums.
When the light finally dimmed, the masquerade did not close. It pulsed, a breathing wound in the sky. And Mitso—whatever she had become—collapsed on the blackened ground, claws sinking into the earth.
She woke to silence.
The fires had burned out. Smoke drifted through the broken huts. A few villagers gathered at a distance, whispering like she couldn't hear them. But she heard everything—the crack of wood shifting, the faint rattle of beads on a child's wrist, the panicked heartbeat of the elder who stepped forward.
The old man's voice was rough. "Fangcrawler."
Mitso flinched. The name dropped onto her shoulders like a chain. She wanted to scream at him, I am Mitso Marie. I am my mother's daughter. I am not this thing. But her throat only growled, guttural and alien.
"You carry the curse," the elder said, eyes hollow. "So you will carry the fight. The masquerade stays open. More will come. You will stand between us and them."
The villagers shifted, some nodding, some glaring, others backing away like she might lunge at them. One boy spat in the dirt, trembling.
Mitso's chest burned. I don't want this. I don't want their eyes. I don't want their hope. Her claws dug grooves into the ash. I didn't ask to be born into this body.
The wolf in her stirred. They will follow because they fear you. Bite down. Rule them.
Tears pricked her eyes, but the beast licked them away with hunger.
That night, she slipped to the edge of the village, crouched in the shadows. The masquerade still glowed faintly in the sky, violet threads bleeding into the stars. She could feel its pull in her bones, the same rhythm that had broken her.
She remembered her mother's voice: Be kind, Mitso. Even when the world is cruel, you must not be.
But her claws told her otherwise. Her fangs told her otherwise. Her very body betrayed that promise.
Behind her, the elder's words still rang: Fangcrawler.
Her name, her curse, her sentence.
Mitso closed her eyes. She wanted to be soft again. She wanted to rest. She wanted to forget.
Instead, she opened her jaw, and the forest shivered at her howl.
The masquerade pulsed back in answer.