Someone should really write a handbook for this. "So You Think You're Turning Into Something Supernatural: A Gen Z Guide to Existential Crisis." Chapter One: What to do when your adoptive father, renowned surgeon and champion of rational explanations, is driving you to the hospital for the third time this month because you keep waking up naked in the woods covered in blood that might not be yours.
Michael Blackwell grips the steering wheel like he's trying to strangle rational explanations out of it. His mouth is set in that particular line that means he's about to suggest more tests, more specialists, more attempts to science the supernatural out of his son. For a man who fixes people for a living, having an unfixable kid must be its own special form of torture.
"Maybe it's a rare form of sleepwalking," he offers, in the tone of someone who stopped believing his own theories several mysterious incidents ago.
Ethan watches his reflection ghost against the passenger window, a preview of coming supernatural attractions. Green eyes too bright to pass for human, black hair with a mind of its own, and a complexion that's starting to suggest "creature of the night" more than "college student who needs more sun." In the past twenty-four hours, he's developed spontaneous parkour abilities, possibly murdered some local wildlife, and made the weather develop concerning co-dependency issues with his mood swings.
Just another Tuesday in the life of whatever the hell he is.
The hospital looms ahead like architectural foreshadowing—all glass and steel and promises it probably can't keep. Michael's doctor status parts the crowds like a medical Moses, though Ethan's pretty sure the original Torah didn't include chapters on "What To Do When Your Adopted Son Starts Displaying Supernatural Tendencies."
Under fluorescent lights that do nothing for his already suspicious complexion, Ethan submits to the battery of tests that will inevitably tell them exactly nothing. Blood work, CT scans, MRIs—the full "what's wrong with this perfectly healthy specimen" package deal. He's becoming something of a legend in these halls, though not the kind that usually gets its own Netflix adaptation.
Dr. Patel, who's probably regretting every life choice that led him to this particular medical mystery, stares at the latest results with the kind of intensity usually reserved for quantum physics equations or particularly obscure memes. The silence stretches long enough that Ethan considers checking WebMD—because clearly, being too healthy to be human isn't a symptom they thought to list.
"Ethan," Patel says finally, "you're the epitome of health. Your results could set new standards."
"Cool," Ethan mutters. "Put that on my tombstone when whatever's happening to me finally goes full horror movie. Maybe add 'He was too healthy to live' for extra irony."
They end up at Dot's Diner, because apparently life-altering supernatural revelations go down better with coffee that tastes like it was brewed during the Nixon administration. The vinyl booths have absorbed enough family drama to fuel several CW series, and the place smells like fried regret and coffee that could strip paint.
"Remember when we used to joke about finding you in a crashed spaceship?" Michael asks, stirring his coffee like it might hold answers. The spoon clinks against ceramic in Morse code for 'help'.
"Yeah," Ethan snorts, "back when that seemed less plausible than the actual truth." He pokes at a french fry that might be older than he is. "Ever wonder if she knew? My birth mother. If she picked your hospital that night because she knew you'd take me in?"
The question hangs between them like smoke—impossible to grasp but equally impossible to ignore. St. Bart's Hospital, twenty-one years ago: woman in dark hoodie, designer scarf worth more than most people's rent, one mysteriously healthy newborn with umbilical cord still attached. No note, no name, just a birthmark shaped like a wolf's head that looks more like a warning label than a quirk of genetics.
She took most of her secrets to an early grave, leaving behind a mystery that seems designed to drive him slowly insane. Just another plot point in the ongoing supernatural drama that is Ethan Blackwell's life.
The existential crisis gets interrupted when Ethan spots him—a man built like someone ordered a brick warehouse from a "build your own supernatural enforcer" catalog, with a side of "mysterious stranger who definitely knows something but will only speak in riddles." Their eyes meet through the glass, and something ancient and primal clicks into place in Ethan's chest, like a key turning in a lock he didn't know existed.
The chase that follows defies several laws of physics and probably a few of gravity. They scale buildings like urban mountaineers on supernatural steroids, leap between rooftops like Olympic athletes who've transcended the need for training. Ethan's body moves with liquid certainty, executing complex parkour maneuvers that would make video game protagonists jealous. His mind races to catch up with his muscles, which apparently came pre-programmed with skills he never learned.
Rain begins to fall—rain that wasn't supposed to exist today according to every weather app in existence, because apparently the weather itself has decided to get in on this whole supernatural drama thing. Ethan half expects dramatic thunder and lightning to start punctuating his emotional states like some cosmic special effects department gone rogue.
Sleep, when it finally comes, drags him under like a tide until—nothing. Just darkness and the sensation of something vast and ancient stirring in his blood. There's a moment, right before consciousness fully dissolves, when Ethan swears he can hear howling—not from outside, but from somewhere deep in his own mind, where rational thought goes to die and primal instincts throw raves.
He wakes up tasting copper and moonlight, which sounds poetic until you realize it means you're probably lying naked in the woods with blood in your mouth. Again.
The pre-dawn forest wraps around him like nature's own crime scene, dew gathering on his bare skin like the world's least effective attempt at modesty. Blood—his? something else's?—has turned his black hair into a modern art installation, and there are leaves stuck to him in places that would make a Greek statue blush. He's pretty sure this isn't what people mean when they talk about getting back to nature.
His body aches in ways that suggest he's either been running marathrons or fighting bears—neither of which he can remember, though the scattered animal remains nearby suggest it might be option B. There are scratches on his arms that are already healing, fading like they're being edited out of existence in real time. His muscles feel like they've been rearranged and put back wrong, like someone tried to solve a human puzzle without looking at the box.
Officers Chen and Martinez find him, because apparently this is their life now too. They've got their designated Ethan-catching towel ready—complete with police department logo, because someone in the universe's prop department has a sick sense of humor.
"You know," Chen says conversationally as Ethan wraps up, "most kids your age just do drugs or sneak into bars. This whole 'naked performance art in the woods' thing is getting a bit extra."
"What can I say?" Ethan shrugs, wincing as his shoulders protest. "I'm an overachiever. Really committed to the whole 'college experience' thing. Taking it in new, avant-garde directions."
Through the cruiser window, he watches the woods recede into darkness, but he can still feel them calling to him, a siren song in his blood that no amount of distance seems to quiet. The wolf's head birthmark on his shoulder blade throbs like a warning, or maybe a promise.
Later, with a hunting ticket crumpled in his fist like a verdict he can't escape, Ethan paces his childhood bedroom. The walls are lined with academic trophies that feel like they belong to someone else—someone who wasn't busy turning into the monster under their own bed.
The thing about discovering you might be supernatural is that there's no handbook, no support group for "Humans Anonymous." No one tells you what to do when your body starts remembering skills you never learned, or when the weather starts taking emotional cues from your mood swings. There's no WikiHow for "What To Do When You Wake Up Covered In Blood With No Memory Of The Night Before (And It's Not Even Spring Break)."
Night falls over Silverbern like a velvet curtain, and Ethan can feel darkness seeping into his bones, calling to something primitive and powerful that coils beneath his skin. His reflection in the window looks strange, almost fluid, as if his form can't quite remember how to be human. Which, fair enough—he's not sure he remembers either.
His birth mother may have taken most of her secrets to the grave, but she left behind one hell of a supernatural inheritance. The kind that comes with fine print written in ancient runes and side effects that definitely weren't FDA approved. Now he's just got to figure out what to do with it—preferably before whatever's awakening inside him decides to write its own ending to this story.