The hunger rose, every cell in her body screaming with famine.

  The strength that had silenced the fires now turned inward, clawing for something to feed upon. She had extinguished an entire inferno with her will alone, but divine power demanded payment.

  "Oh? Already crying about it?" The voice rippled through her blood, casual and amused. "How tedious. Just take what you need."

  Selis held her as she wept, blood tears soaking into her shoulder. The researcher’s steady presence should have been comforting, the warmth of another body, the gentle hand smoothing her white hair, the quiet reassurances murmured against her ear.

  But then Selene heard it.

  Footsteps. Running. Rapid and desperate, heading toward the hills, a survivor fleeing into the darkness.

  Her entire body went rigid in Selis’s arms. Her tongue brushed against her fangs. The runner’s heartbeat thundered in her ears, impossibly loud, impossibly clear. She could smell his blood from here, copper and fear and life.

  "There we go," the divine presence purred. "Much better than wallowing in the ash like some broken mortal. Go on, little vessel. Feed."

  Selene’s breathing changed, shallow and rapid. Her lower lip caught between her teeth as the sensation overwhelmed her. She bit down hard, fangs piercing her own flesh.

  Divine blood welled up. The taste of it on her tongue only made the hunger worse. A soft, involuntary sound slipped from her throat, part pleasure, part desperation.

  The pocket watch slid from her loosening grip, falling into the ash with a soft thud. Her fingers trembled against Selis’s coat, no longer with grief, but with need.

  The nails began to lengthen, hardening into something between claw and crystal. She had not meant for it to happen. She tried to pull her hands back, but they moved on their own, tightening their grip.

  Then they pierced through fabric and skin, sinking into Selis’s shoulders.

  Selene’s fingers had carved into Selis. Her nails had sharpened during the embrace, leaving crimson crescents in the researcher’s shoulders. But it was not Selis’s blood she wanted. The divine presence recoiled from it, recognizing its own essence already flowing through those veins.

  "Not this one. She's already mine. The other one though..." A soft laugh. "He's practically begging for it."

  "Selene, please—" Selis gasped through the pain, her voice still impossibly calm despite the blood running down her back. "Whatever you're about to do—"

  With a sound caught between sob and snarl, Selene placed both palms against Selis’s and pushed.

  The eruption of divine force shattered the air itself. Selis’s body flew backward faster than sight could follow, hair streaming behind her like a comet’s tail. She struck the nearest collapsed tent in a symphony of breaking bones and crumpled into the scorched canvas. Blood spilled from her mouth as her eyes rolled back, consciousness fleeing.

  Where Selene had stood, the ground simply ceased to exist. A perfect circle of earth had been vaporized, leaving a crater. Cracks radiated outward like frozen lightning, the soil fused into glass by the force.

  She didn’t just run toward her prey. She moved.

  "Faster," the voice urged, delighted. "You can move faster than that. Stop pretending you're still human."

  The sound came after, a thunderous crack that shattered what remained of the camp’s silence. One moment she stood in the crater. The next, she was gone, the ground beneath her former position exploding upward in a shower of molten earth.

  Another sonic boom. Another crater. She moved faster than physics should allow, each step leaving devastation in her wake. Where she passed, the air itself tore open, silver-blue wounds in reality hanging for a heartbeat before sealing, as though the world were struggling to heal from her presence.

  The fleeing figure had reached the edge of the forest, a man in charred academic robes. The tatters of cloth exposed burned flesh beneath. His left leg dragged uselessly behind him, the ankle twisted at an unnatural angle. Blood streamed from a gash across his scalp, matting black hair to bone.

  He collapsed against the blackened husk of a tree, its hollow interior still glowing with dying embers. His chest heaved with exhaustion, each breath a wheeze through smoke-damaged lungs. He pressed his back against the charred bark, trying to disappear into the shadow.

  A chill ran up his spine—the fine hairs on his neck stood rigid.

  He turned his head slowly.

  She was already there.

  For just a moment — a fraction of a heartbeat — something in her silver eyes flickered. A professor’s face. Equations on a board. A girl with dark hair who called him Papa—

  “Don’t bore me with hesitation,” the blood whispered. “He’s meat. They’re all meat.”

  Her hand closed around his throat before he could scream, lifting him effortlessly from the ground. Her arm extended fully above her shoulder, holding him suspended like a broken doll.

  He choked, clawing at her arm, but she didn't feel it. Didn't care. The hunger drowned out everything else.

  He dangled from her grip, his boots scraping helplessly at nothing, unable to reach the ground. His hands tore at hers, nails breaking against skin that would not bleed, would not break.

  He tried to speak — half-words, broken sounds choked by her grip. “P-please…” Saliva ran from the corner of his mouth. His face shifted slowly from pale to red, then darker, sliding toward purple.

  Selene’s face was half-hidden behind tangled white hair, her expression unreadable. Ash streaked her cheeks. Bblood marked her lips. Only her eyes shone through — vast, dilated, luminous silver. In them burned a terrible hunger, ancient and absolute, the malice of a predator that had waited too long to feed.

  She looked at him as sustenance, and there was a dark ecstasy in her gaze, the terrible relief of finally being allowed to take what she craved.

  The man’s pulse thundered beneath her palm, faster, louder, intoxicating. Each beat echoed inside her skull until it drowned out every other sound. Her lips parted. Her breath quickened. The edges of her fangs caught the nebula’s light.

  He stared back, trembling, terror mingling with something close to awe, the helpless reverence of a mortal staring into the eyes of a god.

  His robes hung in charred tatters, exposing his entire torso. Burned skin showed through the ruined fabric, blistered and weeping.

  For one second, she thought of tearing the heart from his chest, ripping it out to taste that sweet nectar at its source. But instead, she drew him closer, positioning his body before her. She placed her tongue on his abdomen and began to lick slowly upward.

  He tasted of salt and sweat and fear. But beneath that, something sweeter. Something vital.

  "Finally," the voice purred through her veins. "Do you feel it? This is what you are now. What we are. Isn't it beautiful?"

  Sweat. Hormones. Salt and fear and life. Intoxicating. She trembled with it.

  Her tongue traced upward, from abdomen to chest, to throat, to the line of his jugular. She felt it, the pulse beneath his skin, the rush of blood just below the surface, the aorta pounding with each frantic surge. Her mouth watered. The hunger roared.

  She did it slowly. Her teeth penetrated the skin with care, sinking down to the artery.

  She bit down.

  The blood rushed forth.

  It flowed hot down his neck, dripping to his feet. Spurts of crimson struck the ground in rhythmic patterns, each pulse weaker than the last. The man’s body jerked in her grip, but she held him steady.

  She drank.

  The world exploded.

  Every sense ignited at once. The taste of him, and something indescribably rich, filled her completely. It was not just blood. It was life, raw and pure and overwhelming.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Selene drank, her focus absolute, fixed on the movement of his throat, the slowing rhythm, the sound of her own swallowing. Ecstasy flooded through her, ancient and complete.

  She felt his heartbeat falter, the rhythm stuttering and slowing as she drank deeper. His struggles weakened. His hands slipped from her arms and fell limp at his sides.

  And then something else came.

  Flashes. Images. Memories that were not hers.

  A classroom filled with starlight. Equations on a board. A small girl with dark hair raising her hand — "Papa, why do the stars move?" Pride in his chest, warm and golden.

  The same girl, older now, laughing as she tries to stay on a horse. Another girl beside her — honey-gold hair catching sunlight. "Selene's better at this than me, Papa!"

  Papers scattered across a desk. A letter of recommendation. "My daughter Thena shows exceptional promise..."

  A wife's hand growing cold in his. "Promise me you'll take care of her." The weight of raising a child alone.

  Thena at her mother's grave, so small, asking why the stars had to take Mama away. His own helpless silence.

  Equations on a board, his last lecture — unfinished now, forever unfinished.

  The name cut through the hunger like a blade of ice.

  Aldric.

  But she couldn't stop.

  Her fangs were still buried in his throat. Her throat still swallowed reflexively, pulling more of his life into her even as her mind screamed in horror. She was killing Aldric. Thena's father. Her friend's father.

  Stop. Stop. STOP.

  But her body wouldn't obey. The divine hunger had taken control, and she was merely a passenger watching herself feed. She felt his pulse weakening under her teeth, felt his struggles cease, felt the exact moment his heart gave its last, stuttering beat.

  How long had she fed? Seconds? Minutes? The divine hunger had warped everything. It felt like an eternity of ecstasy and an instant of satisfaction all at once. Later, when she replayed the memory, she would realize with horror that it had taken only moments. A man’s entire life, drained in less time than it takes to speak a prayer.

  The blood turned to ash in her mouth. She released him, too late, far too late, and his body crumpled to the ground, eyes vacant, throat torn, life gone.

  A soft laugh echoed through her veins, casual and delighted.

  “Oh, that’s unfortunate. The father of your little friend? How… delicious.” The divine presence savored her horror like wine. “These connections you mortals cling to always make the feeding sweeter. Don’t worry, little vessel. You’ll get used to it. Or you won’t, and I’ll enjoy watching you break. Either way…” Another laugh followed, lazy and cruel. “I win.”

  Selene fell to her knees, both hands still pressed against her face, Aldric's blood dripping from her chin. Each drop a scarlet accusation against the ash.

  The taste of him lingered, iron and memory, and a life she had stolen. Her stomach churned violently. She could feel it all inside her, his final heartbeat, his dying thoughts of Thena, the equations that would never be finished.

  "No... no no no—"

  Her body convulsed. She doubled over, retching violently. Divine blood and human blood mixed as it came up, splattering across the scorched earth in dark crimson pools. But it was not just blood. Fragments of memory came with it, half-formed images that burned as they left her—a child’s laughter. A wife’s funeral. Papa, why do the stars move?

  She vomited again, harder, her whole body shaking. Tears streamed from her silver eyes, still red, always red now, as she expelled everything. But the guilt remained, carved into her bones.

  "I'm sorry," she sobbed between convulsions. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean— I couldn't stop—"

  The sword above pulsed with curious light. Then the air before her shimmered.

  A figure materialized from golden motes of light. Through her tears, Selene’s heart leapt—Thena? Dark hair falling past her shoulders, amber eyes bright with life, that familiar half-smile. She stood there in her academy robes, untouched by fire or death.

  “Thena?” Selene whispered, hope and horror warring in her voice. “You’re here? You’re…”

  "Selene?" the figure said in Thena's exact voice. "What happened to you?"

  Something was wrong. The tone was perfect, but there was no recognition in those amber eyes. No shock at seeing Selene transformed. Just... curiosity.

  "Don't—" Selene scrambled backward, leaving bloody handprints in the ash. "You're not her. You can't be her."

  The projection tilted its head with innocent curiosity, eyes narrowing slightly. “I don’t understand. Why do you weep? You are becoming what you were meant to be.”

  It stepped closer, still wearing Thena’s face but speaking with something far more ancient behind the words. “You must feed. The lesser nourish the greater. It has always been thus.”

  A pause, then softer, almost tender. “You drank life from flesh, as it has always been done since before the stars learned to burn. Why mourn what is natural? Sheep do not weep when grass is consumed. Grass does not apologize to the soil.”

  "Stop wearing her face!" Selene screamed.

  The figure dissolved, golden motes scattering like fireflies.

  Selene tracked movement at the edge of her vision. The projection had reformed near the treeline, walking slowly between the blackened husks of trees. Each trunk still glowed from within, embers breathing in their hollow cores.

  The projection passed behind a burning oak. When it emerged on the other side, it was Eldric. Silver beard, kind eyes.

  “My dear girl,” it said in his measured tone. “Such tears for such a small thing. One life among billions. Why does it matter?”

  Selene pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to block out the sight. "You're not him! You're not—"

  It walked behind another tree. What stepped out was taller, darker.

  A figure stood before her, skeletal and draped in absolute darkness. Its eyes glowed like embers drowned in ash, and when it moved, reality itself seemed to bend around it. The sword’s fire opal pulsed in rhythm with those terrible eyes.

  The dark figure approached slowly. Where its feet touched the ash, the ground seemed to forget what it was, becoming neither earth nor air, but something in between.

  When it spoke, the voice came broken and wrong, like words forced through a shattered jaw, consonants catching on splintered bone, vowels stretching where they should not. Each syllable fought its way free, wet and grinding.

  “The blood remembers… what the mind forgets,” it rasped, something clicking behind its teeth with each word. “The flesh knows… truths the soul denies.”

  A pause. When it continued, liquid gurgled somewhere in its throat, making the words bubble and catch.

  “You drink… therefore you become. You become… therefore you are.”

  It extended one thin finger toward her forehead. When it spoke again, the broken voice made the words more terrible, more final, as if the damage itself gave the prophecy weight.

  “You drank him into yourself.” The jaw clicked wetly, reset, continued. “Now wear… what you’ve taken.”

  “Don’t—” Selene closed her eyes in a quick, involuntary reaction.

  It touched her.

  The world exploded into sensation.

  Her body began to shift, bones restructuring, flesh reforming. She felt herself changing, becoming something else, someone else. Black hair sprouted from her scalp. Her skin aged decades in seconds. Her hands grew weathered.

  She had become Aldric.

  Then the pain hit. All of it. All at once.

  Burned flesh across her torso screamed. Her left ankle, twisted and broken, sent lances of agony up her leg. Blood poured from a gash in her scalp, matting black hair to bone. Every injury he had suffered in his final moments was hers now.

  His dying body’s trauma had been preserved in the transformation.

  The veil shifted with her transformation, its ethereal fabric darkening to match his attire. A dark green coat with gold trim formed over layered garments, the material adjusting to his broader frame. It even mimicked the leather gloves he always wore. At the edges where divine light had once bled through, the fabric now appeared perfectly ordinary. No luminescence. No otherworldly shimmer. A perfect disguise.

  She looked down at hands that were not hers, felt the weight of a body she had just drained of life. When she tried to speak, to scream, Aldric’s voice emerged from her throat.

  "No—" But even that single word came out in his measured tone.

  She was in shock, trapped in the shape of the man she had killed, wearing his face like a confession, bearing his wounds like penance.

  The dark figure spoke again.

  “We are born of the blood, made whole by the blood, undone by the blood. All answers lie within the blood.”

  The figure began to dissolve, but its words lingered, echoing from nowhere and everywhere.

  “From the moment of your birth—every step led here. Every choice, every loss, every joy. All threads in a tapestry already woven. This was your fate, written in the blood before you drew your first breath.”

  The darkness reformed briefly, taking on something almost contemplative.

  "Fate cannot be escaped.” The sword’s light pulsed, thoughtful. “Yet you reject what you have become?”

  The projection faded completely, the dark figure dissolving into shadow and ash.

  Then the voices came.

  Whispers circled her like wind, brushing past her ears from the left, then behind, then above. Each phrase came from a different direction, sometimes overlapping, sometimes fading before it could finish.

  "Not yet worthy..." (from behind)

  "The blood knows..." (left ear)

  "...what you refuse to see..." (above)

  "When you understand..." (right, so close she could feel breath that wasn't there)

  "...what you truly are..." (beneath, as if from the earth itself)

  The voices converged, speaking as one from all directions: "The blood will show you the way."

  The sword's fire opal pulsed once, brilliant and blinding.

  More whispers, fragmentary and strange:

  "Where first we touched..."

  "Where promises turned to ash..."

  "The chamber remembers..."

  "As do I..."

  The voices faded to a single whisper, intimate as a lover's confession: "I will be waiting."

  The sword erupted in divine light, so bright that even through Aldric’s eyes she had to close them against it. When the brilliance faded, the blade was gone.

  Silence fell across the ruined camp.

  Selene stood slowly on legs that were not hers, in a body that felt both perfectly familiar and utterly wrong. Each movement brought fresh awareness: the way Aldric favored his right leg, the slight stoop in his shoulders from years bent over texts.

  She could feel his knowledge pressing at the edges of her mind, equations, theorems, memories of lectures, but she couldn’t quite reach them, as if they were locked behind glass.

  She turned toward where Aldric's actual corpse lay crumpled in the ash, throat torn open, blood pooling beneath him.

  She walked closer, each step strange in the borrowed form. The broken ankle sent spikes of pain through her leg, forcing her into a limp. When she knelt beside the body, she was looking at herself, or rather, at what she appeared to be. The same black hair. The same weathered face.

  A perfect replica. And yet, so false.

  The corpse’s eyes stared sightlessly at the nebula above, while she, wearing his shape like stolen clothes, stared back with eyes that held his memories but none of his soul. She could feel his knowledge lingering in her mind, his mannerisms trying to surface in her movements, but it was all hollow.

  A mockery of the man who had raised Thena. Of the man who had been Eldric’s brother. Of the man who had died terrified and alone.

  A monster wearing a dead man's skin, tasting his memories with every breath, feeling his death with every heartbeat.

  She reached out with Aldric's hand toward Aldric's face, but stopped just short of touching. What was she now? Not Selene, not Aldric, not the divine being, but something caught between all three.

  Then she remembered.

  Selis.

  The memory hit her like ice water, that sickening symphony of breaking bones, the divine force that had hurled the researcher like a rag doll into the collapsed tents.

  Selene staggered to her feet, Aldric’s body feeling heavy as she turned back toward the camp. The broken ankle screamed with every step, forcing her to drag the leg behind her, just as he had while fleeing. Somewhere in that wreckage, Selis was either dead or dying because of her.

  She had to know if she had killed two people in one night, and with unsteady steps she walked back through the ashes, following the trail of destruction she had left behind.