Falling leaves. Broiling storm overhead. Pouring rain.

It started just like my dreams usually did.

Except then. It wasn't.

The autumn melted away, dissolved as if washed away. The sky above was blue and the ground below was the star-shaped cobblestones of one of many Skyfall Academy garden paths.

An unnaturally elongated stretched wolf, the flesh shifting and warping into a very handsome, overly muscular man, the wolf bits adjusting themselves like a living canvas perfecting, optimizing appearance. A perfect, dashing smile that accelerated my heartbeat.

I tried not to focus my eyes on him, looking instead at the pretty white towers in the distance. I thought about leveling up again, about sitting, meditating and spreading my rainbow wings, humming. Singing.

White just like the dress on my body.

Dress. What am I seeing? This isn't my dream. This isn't me! Wake up!

I tried to snap my fingers, tried to step away from the dream, but it was impossible. I felt ground into the narrative, events moving too fast and too slow like drowning in molasses, suffocating me in alien feelings and thoughts.

"Your voice..." the Skinwalker's perfect teeth gleamed as he spoke, each word dripping with honeyed charm. "It called to me. I heard you sing at the Spring Equinox Festival and I knew... I just knew we were meant to be."

Skyfall. This was Skyfall Academy. This was Cinder's dream.

I felt Cinder's heart flutter - her heart, not mine. Her emotions washing over me like ocean waves. The excitement, the flattery, the dangerous thrill of being noticed, being wanted, being loved.

"Really?" Cinder's voice - my voice in this dream - came out soft.

"Yes," the Skinwalker moved closer, his perfect face catching the light just right. "Your voice... it speaks to something deep inside me. The way you can make people feel things... it's incredible."

I felt myself blush, feathers shifting through pleased pinks and flattered golds. His words were like honey, sweet and intoxicating.

Cinder. Cinder!

What are you doing? Don't listen to him. Look at him. He's obviously up to something. He's in phase-shift, rearranging, optimizing his appearance to appear perfect. A hunter looking for easy prey. An upperclassman.

Except this isn't Cinder. This isn't January. It's the end of March and there are a million gardens blooming around Skyfall, the trees painted pink and violet.

"Your voice is a gift," the Skinwalker upperclassman purred, the tonality of his baritone shifting around. "A rare and precious ability that deserves to be nurtured. Together, we could do amazing things."

I felt Cinder's heart race faster. The way he looked at her - at me in this dream - made her feel special, chosen. His perfect features seemed to shift subtly, becoming ever more appealing, ever more mesmerizing.

"Together?" I asked. "Are you a musician too?"

"Not quite," the Skinwalker's perfect smile widened slightly. "I'm in Acting Club though. Comes with the phase-shift skill territory, you know."

I watched through Cinder's eyes as he demonstrated, his form shifting subtly - becoming taller, more imposing, more perfectly aligned with whatever idealized image of a perfect boyfriend she held in her mind.

His movements were calculated, each gesture designed to draw attention, to create an illusion of genuine interest. I recognized the techniques because I'd used them myself - the subtle mirroring of body language, the careful calibration of personal space, the way he let silence hang just long enough to create tension before speaking.

"I've been watching you," he continued, his voice modulating to hit exactly the right emotional notes. "The way you hold yourself apart from others, occasionally wrap those wings around yourself like armor... but when you sing, that's when the real you shines through..."

He ranted on, pouring honey across her mind. Clever, catchy words.

Classic cold reading. Start vague, then get more specific based on reactions.

A perfect bad boy with just enough edge to be exciting but not truly threatening. Every movement calculated, every word chosen to create an illusion of depth and understanding as they chatted in the garden about teachers and classes.

The Skinwalker leaned in slightly. "You're not like the other students here," he said softly. "They're all so... shallow. Focused on power, on status. But you... you see beauty in the world. Your songs speak of deeper things."

I felt Cinder's heart flutter again.

"When you sing," the Skinwalker continued, his voice dropping to an intimate whisper, "it's like you're speaking directly to my soul. The way your feathers shift through colors, telling stories without words... it's magical."

I felt Cinder's younger self practically melt at his words. Her feathers shifted through more pleased pinks and warm golds, betraying her emotions completely. She was so much more open then, wearing her heart on her entire body.

"I've written something," he said, producing a folded paper from his perfectly tailored jacket. "A poem... inspired by your voice. Would you... would you like to hear it?"

The younger Cinder nodded eagerly, completely caught in his web. The poem was beautiful - of course it was. If I had Yulia I could tell exactly where it was pawned from.

"That's... that's beautiful," Cinder breathed, her wings shifting through amazed silvers and touched blues. "Thank you."

"Just like you," he replied smoothly, reaching out to brush a feather with perfectly manicured fingers. "You inspire such beauty in others. Such passion."

"T-thank you," Cinder stammered out.

"I'm Valor," he said, his perfect smile widening. "Valor Thornheart. Senior year."

That sounds made up. If I had Yulia I would find his real name, look up his online profile in seconds. But this wasn't me. This was...

"Cassiopeia Nova," I heard myself reply shyly. "But... my friends call me Cassie."

"Cassie," he tested the name, making it sound like music. "A beautiful name for a beautiful soul."

He pulled out his phone - the latest 2022 IOmniss model of course - and held it out. "Perhaps we could exchange numbers? I'd love to hear more of your singing... maybe over dinner?"

I felt Cinder's younger self practically vibrating with excitement as she entered her number into his phone.

"Tonight?" he asked. "Seven o'clock? I know this lovely little place in Leviathan's Cradle... With the view of the water."

"Yes!" Cassie agreed eagerly. "I'd love to!"

"Perfect," Valor's smile was dazzling. "I'll pick you up at the main gate. Wear something pretty. White for the occasion of spring."

He turned to leave, then paused, looking back over his shoulder. "Oh, and Cassie? Don't tell anyone about this. Let's keep it our little secret for now. You know how the rumor mill is in this place."

Cassie nodded vigorously.

No damn it! Tell someone. Tell anyone! You have friends, right? Io? Vee? Sol? Emerald even! No. No! Cassie!!! Listen to me! He's...

The dream lurched sickeningly, time folding like origami, and suddenly I was outside the gates at seven, wearing a different, floaty, white dress with a wide slit on the back that made me look more innocent. More vulnerable.

Valor was waiting, looking even more perfect than before - if that was possible. His sky glider was expensive, sleek, black as night.

"You look stunning," he said, opening the shimmering wings with a flourish. His eyes seemed to glow in the gathering dusk. He looked like a hungry wolf, but he was already changing, already shifting to adjust to her preferences.

I wanted to scream at Cassie to run, to fly, to do anything but get in that glider. But I was trapped in her memories, forced to watch as she slid into the hexamesh bone seat, her heart racing with excitement of her first date rather than fear.

We weren't heading toward the nice areas of town. The Strand-Glider flashed past the ring of mountains, outside of the city's limits.

"Um, Valor? Where are we going?" Cassie asked, the first hint of uncertainty creeping into her voice.

"Somewhere special," Valor's perfect smile hadn't changed, but there was something predatory in its depths now. "I want to show you something amazing. My favorite place. Have you ever been to the lake Eerie? They say that, it was formed by the spilled blood of the Leviathan. They say that whoever makes a wish on the shore... while casting a beast core of over level 100 into the lake will have that wish come true. Any wish at all."

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Ask him about the core! Come on!

"So like do you have a core then? 'Cus I don't carry beast cores that high level on me," Cassie said, feeling nervousness flood her body.

"Of course! One for you, one for me," Valor's eyes ignited with yellow. He pulled a suitcase open. It was there. Two level one hundred beast cores, sitting on a velvet pillow. Expensive. So expensive.

Too expensive. Where did a student get those? Even an upperclassman. The math wasn't adding up. Who would spend so much money on a beast core just to throw it into a lake on a first date like a common coin?!

The Strand-Glider banked sharply, descending toward a secluded shoreline. The lake spread out before them, dark waters reflecting the stormy sky above. No other vehicles in sight. No witnesses.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Valor's voice had changed subtly, losing some of its honeyed warmth. "Almost as beautiful as you'll be when..."

He caught himself, that perfect smile returning. "When we make our wishes together. It's so romantic, don't you think?"

Cassie nodded, but I felt her uncertainty growing. Her wings shifted through nervous lavenders and cautious greys. Something was wrong. The isolation. The expensive cores. His shifting appearance becoming slightly less perfect as his concentration wavered...

"Maybe we should go back," she said softly. "It's getting late and..."

"Oh no," Valor's smile widened unnaturally. "We can't leave now. Not when we're so close. Don't you want your wish to come true, little songbird?"

Cassie! CASSIE! You have to contact someone you know damn it! This is some kind of a trap! Emerald, you know Emerald don't you? Call Emerald!

Through Cassie's trembling fingers, I felt her pull out her phone, trying to keep it hidden as she typed: "Em. Lake Eerie. Help."

The message didn't send. No signal.

Of course there wasn't any signal. Of course. This was planned.

I pressed the emergency panic button, hoping that it would get through to our familial Corpse Seeker via the Astral flesh-chip embedded in the depths of my phone.

"Something wrong?" Valor's voice had an edge now, his perfect features starting to slip, becoming more angular, more predatory. The phase-shift was changing up, revealing glimpses of something else beneath the handsome facade.

"N-no," I stammered, wings pulling tight against my back. "I just..."

"Give me the phone, little songbird," he said softly, dangerously. His hand extended, no longer perfectly manicured - the fingers too long, the nails darkening into claws.

"I don't..."

"The phone." His voice distorted, multiple tones overlapping discordantly. "Now."

My hands shook as I handed over the device. Valor's unnaturally long fingers crushed it effortlessly, letting the pieces fall to the ground.

"There," he smiled, and it was no longer a perfect smile. Too many teeth.

"Why can't I..." I hissed, trying to target him with my wings. My Chaincharm magic was simply spilling around him like water.

"A Null-shard from Arx," Valor pulled a dark-pyramid artifact on a chain from his robe. "You won't be able to use your Charisma or claws against me, little songbird."

"Just... just what do you want?" My voice trembled, wings flaring defensively as I backed away from the increasingly monstrous form. "M-my dad is the Justice of Leviathan's Cradle! If a single hair falls off my head then..."

His perfect features were melting, running like wax, revealing something vile and hungry beneath. The phase-shift was now showing what he truly was, a predator, a half wolf half man covered in glistening pale bone-muscles.

"Your voice, little songbird," he rasped, multiple tones grinding together like broken glass. "Such a rare gift... the ability to make others feel, to influence their very souls through song. Do you have any idea how valuable that is?"

He stalked forward, his movements no longer smooth and calculated but jerky, predatory. His skin rippled and shifted, patches of white fur breaking through at random.

"The cores..." I gasped, understanding finally dawning. "They're not for wishes, are they?"

"Of course they are," the thing that had been Valor laughed, the sound like metal scraping bone. "Just not your wishes, little songbird."

The storm overhead intensified, lightning crackling across black clouds. Wind whipped around us, carrying the scent of ancient magic and something older, fouler.

"You see," he continued, circling closer, "there's an old ritual. Very old. Requires specific ingredients... pure, perfect, Omnids. Singers. Charisma users. Callers. People who can draw the crowd or other things... in."

More Strand-Gliders descended from the stormy sky, landing in a loose circle around us. Transparent bug wings unfurled, opened with synchronized precision, and other lanky figures emerged - leading terrified young women and carrying identical suitcases.

I felt Cassie's horror as she looked at the other girls.

Each one dressed in white, like sacrificial lambs. Each one accompanied by a perfectly handsome "date" who was now shifting, melting, revealing their true forms.

"Welcome, one and all!" Valor called out. "We have gathered the final components. Tonight, we shall attempt to reawaken the Leviathan herself and wish upon her just as Slayer Nazareth had once, long ago!"

The other Skinwalkers responded with inhuman sounds of howl-triumph, their forms rippling and stretching in the storm light. Their captives huddled together, wings and tails and ears trembling in fear. Some had bruises, evidence of being forced into the glider.

"Into the lake, little songbirds," Valor commanded. "And sing. Sing like your lives depend on it." He paused, that terrible grin widening. "Because they do."

Cassie and the other girls were forced into the frigid water, white dresses billowing around them like funeral shrouds. The lake felt wrong - too thick, like wading through soup.

"Begin!" one of the Skinwalkers roared, and threw the first beast core into the depths with a sickening splash.

Terrified and trembling, the captives began to sing. Their voices rose in desperate harmony - some trained, some raw with fear.

"Valor! You can't bring the leviathan back! It's been..." I stammered out, trying to appeal to reason where there was none.

"It hasn't been any time at all," Valor laughed. "Can you tell me the date of when the leviathan died exactly? Because nobody can. All of the books have different dates because the Wormwood Leviathan bends time itself. With enough magic, enough power, enough resonance, we can reach back through the folds of time itself," the mad man-wolf continued. "Back to when she still lived, still granted wishes. And with your voices, your pure Omnid essence, we'll bind her to our will!"

Another beast core splashed into the dark waters. The liquid began to glow with an unnatural light, pulsing in rhythm with the forced, discordant song.

"Sing!" Valor kicked Cassie into the water. "Sing for me as you sang at the Spring Equinox Festival! Tear through the veil with your voice!"

One of his hands stretched into a sword of bone, pointed at my neck. "SING!"

I felt Cassie's terror as the bone blade pressed against her throat, forcing her to join the chorus. Her voice, usually so controlled and beautiful, came out raw with fear. The other girls' voices wavered and cracked around her, their combined song creating something terrible and wrong.

More beast cores splashed into the lake, each one making the waters glow brighter, pulse faster. The liquid felt alive now, writhing against our legs like countless serpents. Through Cassie's eyes, I watched as shapes began to move beneath the surface - massive, ancient, ghostly things stirring from centuries of sleep.

"Yes!" Valor's distorted voice thundered over the storm. "Can you feel it? The barriers between then and now growing thin! Sing louder! Break through! Summon her!"

The water was up to our waists now, though none of us had moved deeper. The lake itself was rising, reaching for us with hungry tendrils of dancing, glowing water.

The air thrummed with power. Then something snapped, like a rubber band.

The water suddenly retreated, flash-freezing around our ankles, trapping us in place.

I felt Cassie's panic spike as she tried to wrench free, her wings beating uselessly against the storm.

Through her eyes, I watched as the lake's surface began to ripple and distort, not with waves but with... something else. Like reality itself was folding, unfolding, refolding in impossible ways.

"Perfect!" Valor laughed. "Now for the final part. Sacrifice."

"What?!" I cried out, my song halting.

All around me, Skinwalkers slashed their elongated bone-swords and bone-knives at the girls, blood splattering across the frozen lake.

I looked around in rising terror as the girl to my left bled out with a scream. Then Valor's sword-hand went through my chest. It hurt. It hurt more than anything. I didn't die right away.

Again. Another stab right through my stomach. More blood.

The ice below thrummed, crackling with blood-red fissures reaching to the gargantuan bones looming in the distance.

"Rise! Rise and grant me my wish!" Valor howled, soaked in my blood. Other Skinwalker voices joined the chorus of desire for power.

The storm above us spun in a perfect circle, the eye of the hurricane twisting and warping, a wall of dark, gray clouds going up and up, now showing the shattered, crystal-infected moon.

"My family... they're... going to find you," I wept, bleeding to death. "They're going to rip out your heart... make you pay..."

"They won't," Valor said. "There is enough wild magic here to overwrite all Scrut-sight. Nobody will find your little incarnator bracelets."

"You... are... insane," I gurgled. "You... can't bring... the leviathan back... with... so little... magic..."

"This isn't our first rodeo songbird," Valor smiled. "And not our last. With enough Omnid blood spilled in one place at a specific time, the door will open sooner or later."

The sounds of snapping bone and tearing flesh all around. The other Skinwalkers were tearing out, carving away the hands of their victims, ripping out Lazarus bracelets.

This was how I was going to die. Permanently. Forever. No, no, no...

Valor took his time with me, his bone-blade gradually sawing my left wrist off, while his other hand held it like a vice. The blasted null-artifact on his neck left me powerless, as weak as a human.

What were they even going to do with the bracelets? Hide them somewhere deep underground? Throw them into the ocean?

I watched as the Skinwalkers pulled their sleeves up and snapped the Lazarus bracelets belonging to their victims to their own wrists. They had five or more bracelets on their wrists already.

Valor caught my horrified expression.

"It's hard to remove a soul permanently from existence so that there is nothing left for the Scruts and Corpse Seekers to sniff out," he purred, pulling back his own sleeve to showcase nine Lazarus bracelets strapped to it. "Except this one simple trick. A stronger soul always wraps around, absorbs and devours the weaker one. I will enjoy digesting you. It will take a few months until you're fully part of me, dissolved into my psyche."

Most of the Skinwalkers were done strapping newly acquired Lazarus bracelets to themselves. They pointed fire wands at the bodies, igniting them to ashes walking to their gliders and taking off.

Valor was slower than the rest. He enjoyed how I shattered from fear, my sanity tearing, coming apart at the seams. He squeezed my half-sliced wrist and my bones cracked. The pain was all-consuming, impossible to fight off. I screamed again.

Then his head detonated, exploding into bits and pieces.

I blinked tears out of my eyes.

Emerald stood there, standing atop of her glider, holding Dr. Greyfield's black railgun EVA in her hands, her entire body blazing with brilliant flames of dragonfire.

She found me! She saved me! My text must have gotten through somehow!

Emerald rushed to my side and the ice around my feet melted from her blaze. The fire around her body extinguished as I dropped into her hands, weeping and trembling.

"How did you..." I let out as she dragged me to back to the glider, injecting something into me that drew away the awful, gut-wrenching pain from my bleeding body and broken wrist.

"I'm always in contact with my family's Scrutimancer," she sad. "Always. Don't trust anyone. When you didn't answer my call after school and ignored my texts, I called him up and he said that you're most likely in big trouble. I claimed your phone as part of my hoard... that one time during a sleepover, and I can sort of sense where my hoard items are. Scrut Davosh guided me the rest of the way."

She shoved me into her glider and went back, igniting her flame-sword and returned with Valor's bracelet-covered hand.

"Why?" I groaned. "Shouldn't we..."

"Contact the authorities?" Emerald arched an eyebrow. "I don't think so. His glider looks fine n' 'xpens. They'll probs just slap him n' his pals on the wrist for this. No. We're going to incarnate him in my basement and then my Scrut will interrogate him and find the names of all of his buddies and then take them all out. One by one."

"You...?" I let out.

"Me?" Emerald raised an eyebrow and slipped the railgun into my lap. "Naw. You're going to do it. This is your vengeance, your step forward to your new self. You'll rise from their ashes like a phoenix reborn a thousand times stronger. I'll totally assist tho, plus some some hired goons will back us if anything. Got good stuff in my parents' hoard. Quality armor. Amps. Best potions from Arx. Beast cores. All the good shit needed for slaughter. We won't stop till this Skinwalker Clan is no more. Can't have them hurting my precious bestie."

Emerald grinned wide, looming over me. "Remember what I told you about Equalizer Predator Theory, Cass? Now you know it to be true. The strong always devour the weak. You have no choice but to get strong now, become top predator! Think of a good Kaleid name for yourself... Reject your past self, reject love, become reborn!"