The throbbing in Eric's head pulled him from unconsciousness like a sadistic dentist extracting a tooth without anesthesia. His eyes flew open, body jerking upright before he fully registered where he was. His bedroom. San Francisco. The digital clock on his nightstand glowed an angry 3:17 AM through the darkness, the red numbers seemingly taunting him.
"Shit," he muttered, pressing his palms against his temples. "Double shit with a cherry on top."
The inside of his mouth tasted like something had crawled in there and died after hosting its own funeral party. Eric couldn't remember the last time he'd been this hungover—wait, that was a lie. Last month, after that disaster of a blind date with what's-her-name from accounting. The one who'd spent two hours talking about her collection of ceramic cats while ordering the most expensive items on the menu. He'd needed three martinis just to make it through dessert.
Fragments of the previous night flashed through his mind in disjointed snapshots, like a slideshow put together by a hyperactive toddler. Luke's party. The ridiculous Hawaiian theme that nobody but Luke had actually committed to. Luke, strutting around in board shorts and a flower lei, mixing drinks that tasted like fruit punch but hit like freight trains.
"It's the pineapple juice," Luke had insisted, his eyes already glazed over. "It masks the alcohol. Science, bro."
Science, his ass. Eric remembered downing those concoctions, one after another, while Luke's apartment filled with the usual crowd—plus a few faces he didn't recognize. Including Samantha. Especially Samantha.
Samantha with her cropped top and high-waisted jeans. Samantha with her laugh that somehow cut through the cacophony of the party. Samantha with her boyfriend Ben glued to her side until he wasn't.
Eric groaned at the memory of Ben's face—a mask of pure fury as Eric leaned in to whisper something in Samantha's ear. What had he even said? Something witty, he hoped. Something that justified the risk of getting his face rearranged by Ben's fists, which looked about the size of Christmas hams.
Eric remembered Ben taking a step toward him, remembered Luke intervening, placing a placating hand on Ben's chest. He remembered Samantha's laughter, delighted at being the center of male attention. And he remembered the petty satisfaction he'd felt at Ben's obvious jealousy.
What he didn't remember was how he got home.
Eric swung his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet hitting the cold hardwood floor. The room spun slightly, as if he were on a merry-go-round that had just begun its rotation, and he squeezed his eyes shut until the sensation passed. He needed aspirin and water, desperately. Maybe a new head, if those were available somewhere.
He fumbled for the light switch, wincing as brightness flooded the room from the overhead fixture. The sudden illumination felt like an ice pick to his frontal lobe. "Why," he groaned to no one in particular, "do I keep doing this to myself?"
Three unsteady steps toward his bathroom, then he froze, blinking stupidly at the sight before him.
Something was wrong.
Where the wall next to his closet should have been—the wall with the framed San Francisco skyline print that his mother had sent him last Christmas—there was... nothing. No, not nothing. Something else entirely.
A shimmering, undulating portal hovered where drywall should be, its edges rippling like fabric caught in a breeze. Beyond it lay darkness, but not the ordinary darkness of night. This was something deeper, alive somehow. If the void had a personality, Eric thought deliriously, it would be that of a sociopath with a God complex.
"What the hell?" Eric backed away, convinced he was still drunk or hallucinating. Maybe Luke had spiked those fruity drinks with something stronger than rum. Wouldn't be the first time his friend had experimented with recreational supplements.
He blinked hard, expecting the vision to dissolve like morning mist, but the portal remained, pulsing gently as if breathing. The longer he stared, the more details emerged. The darkness wasn't uniform; there were currents in it, swirls of deeper black and hints of something that might have been color, but not any color Eric had ever seen before.
"Okay," he said aloud, his voice sounding thin and reedy in the quiet room. "Either I'm having the mother of all hangovers, or I've finally lost my mind. Neither option is great, if I'm being honest."
He reached for his phone to call Luke—to call anyone—but his hand never made it to the nightstand. An invisible force seized him, gentle but insistent, like being caught in a current he couldn't see. It drew him toward the portal with the inexorability of gravity. He resisted, digging his heels into the floor, but his body moved forward against his will.
"No, no, no," he gasped, but the force pulled him closer, closer, until the shimmering edge of the portal brushed against his skin.
The sensation was electric and ice-cold, raising goosebumps across his flesh. For a split second, Eric existed in two places at once—half in his bedroom, half somewhere else—and then the transition was complete.
And then he was through.
The air changed first—metallic and thick, filling his lungs with something that wasn't quite oxygen. It tasted ancient and alien, like breathing in the atmosphere of a planet that had never known human habitation. Eric coughed, his body rebelling against the foreign substance.
The sky above wasn't the light-polluted darkness of San Francisco, but a deep crimson expanse, like blood diluted in water. There were no stars, no moon, just that endless red void pressing down on a landscape that seemed designed by someone who'd taken "Salvador Dali meets H.R. Giger" as an aesthetic direction.
Twisted, organic-looking structures rose from the ground, not quite trees but serving a similar purpose. Their surfaces gleamed wetly in the red light, and they swayed slightly despite the absence of any detectable wind. The ground beneath his feet wasn't soil but something more like flesh—yielding slightly with each step, and warm. Too warm.
"This is a dream," Eric assured himself, his voice small and swallowed by the strange atmosphere. "Just a really vivid, really messed-up dream. I'll wake up any second now."
He pinched himself hard on the arm. Nothing changed.
"Okay, not a dream. An extremely realistic hallucination, then. Thanks, Luke. Your pineapple science has finally broken my brain."
Eric spun around, searching for the portal back to his bedroom. It was gone, the space behind him occupied by more of those not-quite-trees, their branches—tentacles?—reaching toward the crimson sky.
"Hello?" he called out, immediately regretting the decision as the sound of his voice seemed to attract the attention of the vegetation. The nearest not-tree bent its upper portion toward him, as if listening. "Is anyone there? Anyone human, preferably?"
No answer came, but a movement caught his eye—a flash of something darting between the twisted trunks in the distance. It was too fast, unnaturally so, leaving only a blur in his vision. Then it happened again, closer this time.
Eric tensed, preparing to run, though he had no idea where he would go in this alien landscape. "Hello?" he tried again, his voice cracking slightly.
The blur resolved itself for just a moment—long enough for Eric to make out a figure darting between the trees. It was feminine but not human—not entirely. Her skin had a luminescent quality, and what he first took for clothing seemed to be gossamer wings, folded close against her back. A fairy? That couldn't be right. Fairies were supposed to be tiny, weren't they? Tinkerbell-sized, not the nearly six-foot-tall being he'd glimpsed.
She moved with impossible speed, stopping occasionally to survey her surroundings. Though she never looked directly at him, Eric had the unsettling feeling she knew exactly where he was.
"Hey!" he called out. "Excuse me, wing-lady! I'm kind of lost here. Any chance you could help a guy out?"
The fairy-woman paused, her head tilting slightly in his direction. For a breathless moment, Eric thought she might respond. Then she darted off again, a blur of motion through the grotesque forest.
"Wait!" Eric shouted, taking a stumbling step forward.
And then it happened again—that invisible force seized him, but this time it didn't just pull him forward. It transformed him somehow, lending his limbs a strength and speed he'd never possessed. His feet barely seemed to touch the ground as he was propelled after the fairy-woman, the landscape blurring around him as he matched her pace.
"What the actual—!" he tried to say, but the wind whipped the words from his mouth. His body moved of its own accord, legs pumping with mechanical precision, lungs drawing in the strange air without effort. He should have been exhausted after just seconds of this pace, but instead, he felt oddly exhilarated.
It wasn't him, though. Eric was just a passenger in his own body, watching through his eyes as whatever force had brought him here used him like a marionette.
The fairy-woman zigged and zagged through the forest, occasionally glancing back as if to ensure he was following. Eric noticed that she seemed to be following a path that only she could see, avoiding certain areas and speeding through others without any obvious pattern.
After what could have been minutes or hours—time felt wrong here, stretching and compressing in ways that made his head spin—the fairy-woman stopped in a clearing. The not-trees had thinned out, revealing a circle of what looked like normal earth beneath the red sky.
Two figures stood waiting in the center of the clearing: a man and a woman, both unnaturally beautiful with pale skin that seemed to glow under the red light. They could have been models or movie stars, except for something indefinable about them that marked them as not quite human. The woman cradled a bundle in her arms—a baby, Eric realized—and a young girl with the same ethereal beauty stood beside her, clutching the woman's free hand.
The fairy-woman approached them, her movements more measured now. Eric's body stopped at the edge of the clearing, hidden among the twisted trunks. Whatever force controlled him seemed content to observe from a distance.
Eric strained to hear their conversation, his ears picking up only fragments of speech that sounded almost—but not quite—like English.
"—not enough time," the fairy-woman was saying, her voice like wind chimes in a gentle breeze. "They're coming. They've picked up your scent."
The man spoke, his words too low for Eric to catch. His posture was protective, one arm around the woman's shoulders, his body angled to shield her and the children.
The woman with the baby shook her head vehemently, tears streaming down her perfect face. "No," Eric heard her say clearly. "I won't leave you. We stay together or not at all."
"Please," the man replied, his voice carrying now. "Think of our children. They're innocent in this. Would you have them suffer for our choices?"
"There must be another way," the woman insisted, shifting the bundle in her arms. The baby made a soft cooing sound, and Eric was surprised he could hear it from this distance.
The man took the woman's face in his hands, his expression pained but resolute. "You know there isn't. The Council has made their decision. I've broken their laws, and the punishment is mine alone to bear."
"It's not fair," the woman whispered.
"No," the man agreed. "But it's the only way they'll let you and the children live."
The fairy-woman shifted uncomfortably. "We must go now," she urged. "The portal won't remain stable for much longer."
After a long moment, the woman surrendered the bundle to the fairy, who took it with reverent care. "Watch over them," the woman instructed, her voice breaking. "Keep them safe until I can return."
"With my life," the fairy promised.
The young girl stepped forward, taking the fairy's free hand, but her eyes remained fixed on her parents. "Papa," she said, her voice small but steady. "I'll take care of Mama and the baby. I promise."
The man knelt to embrace his daughter. "I know you will, little warrior. You're strong, just like your mother." He pressed something into the girl's hand—a small object that glinted in the red light. "Keep this with you always. It will remind you of who you are, where you come from."
The girl nodded solemnly, tucking the object into a pocket. The man straightened and addressed the fairy. "Go now," he said. "And don't look back. No matter what you hear, no matter what happens, keep moving forward."
The woman embraced him fiercely, desperately, clinging to him as if she could keep him tethered to her by sheer force of will. The man whispered something in her ear that made her sob harder, before gently disentangling himself from her arms.
"Go," he repeated, his voice firm but tender. "Live. For all of us."
The woman looked at him one last time, memorizing his face, before turning away to follow the fairy and the children. Eric could see her shoulders shaking with silent sobs as they disappeared into the strange forest in the opposite direction from where he hid.
The man stood motionless until they were gone, his posture rigid, his hands balled into fists at his sides. Then, with a deep breath that seemed to settle something within him, he turned—directly toward Eric.
Eric froze, certain he'd been discovered. He waited for the man to call him out, to demand to know why he was eavesdropping on such an intimate family tragedy. But the man walked forward with purpose, his eyes focused on something beyond. And then he passed through Eric as if he were smoke.
The sensation was electric and ice-cold, sending shudders through Eric's entire body. He gasped, clutching his chest where the man had intersected him. It was like being doused in liquid nitrogen, a cold so intense it felt like burning.
"What the—" Eric gasped, but the words died in his throat as the man continued walking, completely oblivious to Eric's presence.
Some compulsion drove Eric to follow as the man moved with inhuman speed through the alien landscape. They left the clearing behind, venturing into parts of this strange world that seemed even more foreboding. They passed through swamps that glowed with bioluminescence, the water bubbling with unseen creatures. Across plains of black grass that cut like razors, drawing thin lines of blood from the man's exposed skin. Through forests where the trees whispered in voices almost human, their words just on the edge of comprehension.
The man never hesitated, never slowed, his path as straight as an arrow through the treacherous terrain. Eric followed, his body moving with the same supernatural speed, his mind racing with questions. Who was this man? What had he done to warrant separation from his family? And why couldn't Eric shake the feeling that he'd seen him somewhere before?
Finally, they reached what appeared to be a gathering. Dozens of creatures—some humanoid, others decidedly not—had formed a loose circle in a massive clearing ringed by those strange, organic pillars. Among them, Eric recognized shapes that resembled wolves, but larger, their eyes glowing with intelligence and something close to hatred. There were others too: beings with elongated limbs and too-wide mouths filled with needle-like teeth, creatures that seemed made of shadow and smoke, and things Eric's mind couldn't quite process, as if his brain refused to accept the evidence of his eyes.
The man stepped into the circle, his body language changing from defeated to defiant. He stood straight, chin lifted, facing the assembled monstrosities without a trace of fear.
"I've come as summoned," the man announced, his voice carrying clearly now. "I stand before the Council to answer for my crimes."
A figure separated from the others—a tall, emaciated being with skin like parchment stretched over bone. When it spoke, its voice was like the rustling of dry leaves. "You stand accused of breaching the ancient compact. Of consorting with the Blood-Drinkers, our sworn enemies. Of diluting your pure lineage with their tainted essence." The being's lipless mouth twisted in disgust. "How do you plead?"
The man lifted his chin higher. "I plead guilty to loving beyond the boundaries set by tradition. I plead guilty to choosing my own path, rather than the one dictated by ancient hatreds. I plead guilty to bringing new life into this world—life that threatens none of you."
A murmur ran through the assembled creatures, a sound of displeasure and restless anticipation.
"You admit your guilt," the parchment-being hissed. "The penalty for such transgression is death."
"I know," the man replied calmly. "But before you carry out your sentence, I request the rights granted to any member of my kind. I challenge for leadership."
The murmur grew louder, surprise mixing with outrage. The parchment-being stepped back, its face unreadable.
A larger wolf, black as midnight with eyes like burning coals, stepped forward from the others. Before Eric's eyes, the wolf's form shifted, bones cracking and reforming, fur receding into skin, until a man stood in its place—tall, powerfully built, with the same coal-black eyes.
"You dare?" the man growled, his voice rumbling like distant thunder. "You, who have betrayed everything we stand for?"
"I dare," the first man replied, using a tone like a weapon. "Unless you're afraid to face a traitor in fair combat?"
The black-eyed man snarled, the sound entirely inhuman despite his human form. "I fear nothing, least of all you. Very well. Challenge accepted. When you lie dead at my feet, your mate and your abominations will be next."
The first man's composure cracked for the first time, a flash of rage crossing his perfect features. "You will never find them," he spat. "They are beyond your reach."
"We shall see," the black-eyed man smiled, his teeth too sharp for a human mouth. "There is nowhere in any realm that can hide them from the Hunt once it begins."
Ancient words were exchanged, ritual words, setting the terms of combat.
Before Eric's eyes, the first man's form shifted, bones cracking and reforming, skin giving way to thick silver-gray fur. Where the man had stood, a massive wolf now faced the assembly, its fangs bared in challenge. The black-eyed man likewise transformed, his black wolf form even larger, muscles rippling beneath midnight fur.
The two circled each other, hackles raised, growls reverberating through the clearing. The assembled creatures formed a tighter circle around them, ensuring there was no escape.
The silver wolf lunged first, a blur of movement and fury. His jaws snapped at the black wolf's foreleg, drawing first blood. The black wolf howled in pain but countered with a powerful swipe of his paw, catching the silver wolf across the muzzle.
What followed was a battle too fast and brutal for Eric to fully comprehend. The wolves moved with supernatural speed, their bodies colliding with forces that should have shattered bone, their teeth tearing chunks of flesh and fur. Blood sprayed across the clearing, sizzling where it hit the ground, and howls of pain and rage echoed through the strange world.
Despite being the smaller wolf, the silver one fought with desperate intensity, as if the thought of his family fueled his every attack. For a brief moment, it seemed he might actually win. He managed to get his teeth around the black wolf's throat, red blood matting the black fur.
But the black wolf was stronger, more ruthless. He twisted violently, breaking the silver wolf's grip, and countered with a savage attack of his own. His massive paws knocked the silver wolf to the ground, and before he could recover, the black wolf was upon him.
It ended with the silver wolf pinned beneath the larger one, his throat exposed. The black wolf didn't hesitate. His jaws closed around the silver wolf's throat, and with a savage jerk, it was over.
The silver wolf's body went limp, eyes glazing over as life fled. The black wolf stepped back, transforming once again into his human form, blood dripping from his mouth.
"Let the traitor's fate be a lesson," he announced to the assembly. "No one defies the ancient laws. No one betrays the purity of our kind." He turned to the parchment-being. "I claim the right of the victor. I will lead the Hunt for the traitor's mate and offspring."
The councilor inclined its head. "So it is granted. The Hunt begins at moonrise."
Eric screamed, the sound ripping from his throat as he felt phantom pain tear through his own body. It was as if he could feel the silver wolf's death, feel the life draining from him even as Eric stood apart from the carnage. The pain was excruciating, worse than anything he'd ever experienced, radiating from his throat to envelop his entire body.
He fell to his knees, clutching at his throat, certain he would find blood pouring from a wound that mirrored the silver wolf's. But there was nothing, just the phantom agony and a sense of loss so profound it felt like a physical weight crushing him.
"This isn't real," he gasped between sobs. "This can't be real."
But the pain felt real enough, as did the grief that accompanied it. Eric had never met this wolf-man before this strange vision, yet he mourned him as if losing a dear friend.
The scene before him began to blur, the faces of the Council and the Hunt fading like a television losing signal. The red sky darkened to black, and the ground beneath him seemed to dissolve.
Eric was falling, tumbling through empty space, the phantom pain still lancing through his body. He tried to scream again, but no sound escaped his lips. He was back in the void, the darkness absolute, time and space meaningless concepts.
Then, with jarring suddenness, he bolted upright in his bed, sweat-soaked sheets tangled around his legs. Sunlight streamed through his window, illuminating a perfectly normal wall where the portal had been in his—what? Dream? Vision? Hallucination?
"Just a dream," he gasped, running shaking hands through his damp hair. "Just the same damn dream."
But that wasn't quite right, was it? It wasn't the same dream. It was a continuation, another chapter in a story that had been unfolding in fragments for—how long now? Weeks? Months? The more the dream repeated, the clearer it became, the more details he could remember upon waking.
Eric's head still ached, but the pain was ordinary now, just a hangover rather than the soul-deep agony he'd experienced in the vision. He reached for the water bottle he kept on his nightstand, draining it in long, desperate gulps.
As he lowered his arms, he noticed the three parallel scratches running from wrist to elbow—fresh, red, and definitely not there when he'd gone to bed. Just like every other time.
"Goddammit," he muttered, examining the wounds. They weren't deep, but they stung as if they'd been made by something coated in mild acid. The scratches were perfectly parallel, evenly spaced—not something he could have done to himself accidentally while thrashing in his sleep.
He fumbled for his phone, checking for messages. There were several from Luke:
*Dude, you ok? You left in a hurry last night.*
*Ben's pissed but I calmed him down. You owe me BIG TIME.*
*Seriously, text me when you wake up. Make sure you're alive.*
Eric stared at the wall where the portal had appeared in his dream. Just a normal wall now, with its framed print of the San Francisco skyline silhouetted against a sunset.
"It was just a dream," he said aloud, as if hearing the words might make them more convincing.
But as the morning light illuminated the fresh scratches on his arm, a small voice in the back of his mind whispered: *Then why does it keep happening? And why does it feel more real each time?*