Forests have always evoked a sense of wonder in me, not so much for the trees or the creatures within them, but for what they represented, the sense of adventure they inspire, as if anything could happen. The forest I find myself in now is breathtaking, opening before me like a realm untouched by time.
Sunlight spills through the leaves in golden streams, and I move carefully to avoid it, not out of fear it would harm me, but that it would make my inhuman nature too obvious for the world to see—turning the air into a shifting dance of light and shadow. The scent of pine and wildflowers mingles, rich and sweet, an amalgam suddenly so easily identifiable, as though the earth itself exhaled in welcome. Every step stirs the hush of unseen creatures—birds darting between branches, a fox slipping into the undergrowth, the murmur of a stream hidden somewhere beyond. It is not silence, but a living chorus.
I should have loved this. I should have felt joy, wonder, contentment. But all I feel is exhaustion and disorientation. The throes of my three-day ordeal still echo in my mind. Dying is a cruel thing. Even crueler is dying alone, in a sterile hospital room, rotting from the inside.
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I remember the day the doctors told me. The sterile white pressed down like a weight. The rhythmic beep of machines punctuated their words. "It's advanced," he said, calm and clinical, as if tone could soften the blow. I remember the sharp edge of disbelief, the hollow thrum of my own pulse in my ears. The words Acute Myeloid Leukemia lingered long after he moved on to charts and treatment plans. My future fractured into fragments I could not piece together—days counted, opportunities lost, the slow unraveling of a body I had always taken for granted.
I tried. I really did. The treatments clawed at me—chemotherapy that left my veins raw, radiation that burned beneath my skin—but nothing could stop it. I remember lying in that cold, impersonal room, the antiseptic smell clinging to everything. The machines ticked and beeped around me, grim reminders of time slipping away. The pain was sharp, unrelenting, but worse was the loneliness. Fear gnawed at me, raw and honest, as I realized I would face this alone.
I couldn't help but regret it—regret chasing a dream of music while pushing away friends and lovers who might have stayed. Perhaps if I had focused on relationships instead, I would not have been alone on that bed. But despite the regrets, that was me: alone. No one held my hand. No comforting words reached me. Only the sterile walls and the dim hum of fluorescent lights bore witness as my body betrayed me completely. And then, at last, I was gone, my life extinguished. The final note in the tragedy of Matthias Harlow.
That is why it was such a shock when I opened my eyes. I was not in the hospital. Not anywhere I recognized. Darkness pressed in around me, heavy and strange. The air was damp and cold. My heart hammered in my chest, its rhythm both comforting and terrifying. Where was I? Limbo? Hell? Or some forgotten corner of the world I was never meant to see?
Then came the pain. A fire splitting through my chest, sliding into every vein and sinew. My body betrayed me again, unmaking itself. Bones stretched, muscles convulsed, tissue and sinew remade. The scream that tore from me was inhuman. I was being undone and rebuilt from the inside out. My human shape dissolved, replaced by something sharper, stronger… something unnatural.
The agony was absolute. Days—or hours, I cannot tell—passed in this crucible. Every heartbeat was a hammering drum in my skull. My senses exploded. I heard the faintest whisper of wind, the pulse of life in every creature nearby. And yet, somehow, my mind clung desperately to what I had been, even as it fractured. Memories, thoughts, emotions—they all warped under the intensity, slanted through a lens of raw, unbearable sensation.
Time became meaningless. Only suffering existed. My body writhed, fragile yet brimming with power. Every twitch of a muscle was agony and ecstasy intertwined. I was death and life, past and future, pain and hunger.
Then, at last, the work was done. My human body died quietly within the cave. I rose—or perhaps I was reborn—as something unholy and magnificent. Strength surged through my limbs. My senses sharpened to a point that hurt to bear. A craving welled up inside me, primal and irresistible.
I burst from the cave, muscles taut, lungs full of cold, sharp air. The forest stretched before me; even at night it was alive in ways I had never perceived—the rustle of leaves, the subtle pulse of life in every creature around me. But it was the bear I sought, or rather, that something inside me demanded I find.
It was a massive presence, a tremor through the earth that my enhanced senses could not ignore. I ran, faster than I had ever thought possible, limbs carrying me over roots, rocks, and fallen logs without falter. The wind whipped against my face, the scents of the forest a riot in my nostrils, every heartbeat amplified in my ears, counting down until I caught up.
The bear saw me—or maybe it didn't, maybe it only sensed something, some unnatural predator moving in ways it could not comprehend. It growled, a low, menacing rumble, and charged. Its bulk seemed terrifying to a human, but to me it was merely an obstacle. I shifted, dodged, weaved, moving like liquid around its swipes, feeling my newfound strength respond instinctively.
Every strike I delivered was precise. I twisted the momentum of its charge against it, slamming it into trees, into rocks, and finally to the forest floor. Its roars turned to cries of panic. Its massive claws attempted to tear at me, and I twisted aside almost effortlessly, feeling the wind of its strikes graze my arm. Shock and fear surged, but so did something darker, more primal a power coursing through me, taut and humming, that made the bear's size and strength seem inconsequential.
When it struggled beneath me, the bear's strikes now slower, clumsier, ineffective against the precision and speed my body commanded. It tried to claw at my face, to bite, to tear, but my reflexes were instantaneous. One motion, and I pinned it, limbs coiled like steel. Its struggles weakened under my grip, desperation replacing rage. My hands found its neck, teeth sinking into the thick hide. The final thrashes were brief, pathetic in comparison to the creature I once feared.
I somehow felt a pang of fear and rage not my own. The creature I had once feared as a human was utterly powerless in my hands. The final moments were surreal: the bear's thrashing slowed, then stopped entirely. My hands were slick with blood. It was only then -when my chest was not heaving despite the carnage that had just occurred- that I realized I had not breathed once since the cave, except to track my quarry by scent. No blood rushed through my veins in exertion. No heart beat in my chest in triumph. And all at once, I knew the truth with brutal clarity.
I had become something else. Something far beyond human. And this hunger inside me was only beginning.
I raced back to the cave I had burst from like some pale demon clawing its way out of a chrysalis. Only then did I notice my state of undress, my body slick with blood that was not mine, my skin unblemished where the bear's claws should have torn me apart.
I stumbled into the cavern's depths and collapsed against the cold stone, curling in on myself as if I could somehow shut it all out. Hours passed—or perhaps it was only minutes—as I huddled there, whispering to myself in disbelief.
"This isn't possible." I muttered, the sound of my own voice startling me. It was smoother, richer, almost melodic, nothing like the rasp I remembered from the hospital. "Whatever this is, it will pass. I'll wake up… sooner or later. I have to."
But the evidence lay all around me. My trembling hands were slick with blood, my breath ragged in my throat. The scent of iron was thick, intoxicating, every inhale filling me with a terrible satisfaction and a deeper hunger I couldn't name but already understood.
It terrified me. Terrified me more than dying ever had.
I had thought death was the worst thing a man could face. I had been wrong. This, this hunger, this power coiled inside me, this knowledge of what I could do to a human being was worse. If I stayed, if I let it grow, there would be no stopping me. I would become a predator of people, not beasts.
I sat there in the dark, shaking, whispering lies to myself I didn't believe. "This isn't real. This isn't me. I'll wake up". But the cave stayed cold and damp, my hands stayed bloody, and the hunger still prowled inside me like a living thing. There was no waking up.
At some point, I stopped whispering. My voice, that strange new melody, faded into silence. I stared at my hands, at the streaks of red smeared across my pale skin, and felt something hollow and heavy settle in my chest.
If I stayed like this-if I let this hunger grow-sooner or later I would kill a person. Not a beast. Not some predator in the woods. A human being. And the thought of it made me recoil as if burned.
I pressed my forehead against the stone wall, breathing hard. 'I can't let that happen.'
My eyes found the cave mouth, where light slashed through the darkness like a blade. Sunlight. A remnant of the world I had left behind, the world of ordinary men who died in hospital rooms but didn't wake up like this.
I swallowed hard, tasting blood. My own thoughts sounded alien to me, echoing through a skull that no longer felt like mine. I forced myself to my feet. The stone beneath me felt warm, my muscles taut with strength, but inside I was shaking.
'End it now. Before I harm anyone. Before the monster takes full control.'
Slowly, I turned toward the mouth of the cave. Outside, the forest had begun to lighten. The first thin strands of dawn filtered through the trees, pooling in golden streaks on the moss and stone. Sunlight. Once, it had meant warmth, safety. Now it looked like salvation—the only thing left that could end this nightmare before it truly began.
I rose to my feet, still trembling, every movement deliberate. My bare skin prickled as the light crept closer, inching along the floor toward me.
"This ends now," I whispered to no one, my voice breaking, and took a step forward.
The sunlight struck me full-on. I braced for pain, for fire, for ash.
And then… everything changed.
My skin caught the light, breaking it into a thousand tiny reflections, like diamond-speckled marble. Every movement scattered glimmers across the cave walls. The warmth pressed against me, but instead of pain, instead of the end I had resolved myself to, there was this-this unbearable, impossible brilliance. I was beautiful and terrifying, radiant in a way no human could endure.
I opened my eyes and blinked against the intensity. My hands were still there, still stained red. My body still thrummed with impossible strength. The hunger still clawed at me, an unrelenting drumbeat in the back of my skull.
A broken, almost soundless laugh escaped my throat. "Of course," I whispered, voice trembling between hysteria and disbelief. "Of course I'd end up in Twilight. Goddamn you, Stephenie Meyer." The absurdity of saying her name out loud in this nightmare felt like the only thing keeping me from shattering completely.
I had tried to end it before it began. Tried to burn away the monster in sunlight. But I was still here, trapped in this body, in this hunger. The world around me looked sharper, brighter, crueler than ever, every detail etched in impossible clarity.
For the first time since I woke, I understood: there would be no easy escape from what I had become.
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The laugh died in my throat, leaving only silence. The light spilled wider now, stretching across the cave floor like a hand reaching for me. I forced my legs to move, each step a deliberate act of will. My bare feet scraped against the stone until, at last, I crossed the threshold.
The forest opened around me.
It was the same place I had run through to hunt the bear, but now every detail was magnified beyond comprehension. Sunlight filtered through the canopy in shifting golden sheets, every beam sharp enough to make my eyes ache. Leaves shivered with the faintest breeze, their edges so crisp I felt as though I could count every vein. I could hear the heartbeat of birds before they took flight, the whisper of ants marching across a fallen branch, the sigh of distant water curling through the undergrowth.
And beneath it all the steady, ceaseless drum of life. Hundreds of heartbeats overlapping, a chorus I had no name for, a symphony that both awed me and made the hunger twist in my gut.
I staggered forward, raising a hand to shield my eyes, though it did little to dull the brilliance. My skin sparkled with every movement, fragments of light scattering like broken glass. The sight turned my stomach—it was grotesque, unnatural—but there was no denying its beauty. I looked like something carved from diamond and marble, dazzling and monstrous in equal measure. It was the sight of it that prompted me to stick to shadows that the trees cast.
The wind shifted, carrying with it a thousand scents pine, damp earth, wildflowers, the musk of animals far off. It was intoxicating, every breath rich with flavors I'd never known. And yet beneath it all, like an undercurrent I couldn't escape, there lingered something sweeter, sharper. Something my mind shied away from naming.
I closed my eyes and sank to my knees in the moss, overwhelmed. The world was too much too alive, too loud, too sharp. This wasn't the rebirth I had imagined. This was a prison gilded in light.
I had survived death, only to wake into a nightmare far brighter and crueler than the darkness I had feared.
I had survived death only to wake into a nightmare far brighter and crueler than the darkness I had feared.
I lifted my head, nostrils flaring. The undercurrent of that sweeter scent—the one that had haunted me since I first emerged from the cave pulled at me, sharp and insistent. I turned toward it, scanning the forest with eyes that drank in every detail. Far off in the distance, through the rolling haze of dawn, I saw it: smoke rising, curling into the sky, black against the pale morning light. Something had been burning, something alive, or something that had been.
I froze for a moment, the primal instinct in me screaming to stay, to retreat, to turn back into the shadows where safety whispered. My mind leapt to conclusions: fire meant humans. Fire meant danger. Fire meant… me, and the uncontrollable hunger coiled inside, threatening to explode if I strayed too close.
But then I inhaled again, letting the sweet, sharp undercurrent wash over me, calling me. Whatever it was, whatever had drawn that smoke, it felt… necessary. I could not ignore it. My thoughts, screaming warnings and possibilities, I set aside, silent for once. I would not let fear decide my actions not now.
I straightened, muscles coiling, senses flaring. The forest stretched ahead, full of light and shadow, every rustle amplified, every scent a story. I could taste the smoke, faint and acrid, carried on the wind. And though a part of me trembled at what it might mean, I stepped forward.
Toward the smoke. Toward the unknown.
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