"Awakening is not opening your eyes—it is losing the reason to ever close them again."
Inside the small cave, the darkness was absolute. Lycaon was lost in a searing delirium. He saw himself back in that horrific night, the flames licking at his flesh, the screams of his parents, the cheers of the villagers, and above all, Lyra's cries calling his name. The fever from his infected wounds merged with the fire in his memory, consuming him from the inside out. His body was at one moment as hot as a coal, the next as cold as if he were lying in the snow. He was slowly dying.
Just as his consciousness was about to fade, as his final breath became a feeble wisp of air, the one command left in his shattered soul erupted.
Save Lyra...
That will, forged from supreme love and hatred, refused to accept death. It struggled madly, and in its final, desperate throes, it touched the "Crack of Fate."
A terrifying change occurred.
Lycaon felt as if thousands of invisible, hungry roots were stabbing out from his soul. They pierced through his flesh, plunged deep into the damp earth of the cave floor, crept into every fissure of the rock, and wrapped around the roots of the ancient trees outside.
And then, he began to draw.
He felt a cold, wild, and incredibly pure energy being violently torn from the surroundings, pulled brutally into his body through those invisible roots. This current of energy was both icy and scorching. It flooded his body, at once fighting the infection and threatening to tear his very veins apart.
His body convulsed violently in his delirium. This was not a healing. This was a brutal process of regeneration, a survival bought with a pain even more terrible than death.
An unknown amount of time passed before the process of absorbing energy finally ended. The fever was gone. Lycaon awoke, incredibly weak, but he was alive.
The wound in his chest had stopped bleeding and begun to close. The burn on his face was no longer searing. The broken leg was still there, but the throbbing pain had subsided considerably. Most importantly, he felt a strange, primal power flowing through him.
The world through his eyes had changed. He crawled out of the cave. He didn't just see a patch of moss on a rock; he could feel its faint life force. He didn't just hear the wind; he could feel the life in every trembling leaf. He was no longer a stranger in this forest.
But then, another instinct arose, overwhelming all others. A raw, primal hunger.
He saw a rock lizard basking on a nearby stone. There was no hesitation in his grey eyes. He moved, slowly and painfully, but with the precision of a predator.
His charred hand shot out.
There was no fire. No disgust.
He ate it raw.
That act was a confirmation. The serf boy Lycaon had died in the fire. The survivor was a creature of the deep forest, abiding by the most brutal laws of survival.
A monster had truly been born.