I freeze.
My lungs stop. My pulse stutters. The temple around me falls into a silence so deep it feels like sound itself has been swallowed. The figure in front of me lifts both hands slowly, almost ritualistically, and pulls back its hood.
The fabric falls behind their shoulders like falling moonlight.
What stands before me is not human.
Not wolf.
Something in between, something older than both worlds and shaped by neither. Their skin looks like carved stone but also like living light. Silver runes spiral up their throat, across their cheeks, down their arms, glowing faintly as though blood flows beneath them in liquid moonlight. Their eyes glow softly, pale and endless, and when they blink the light pulses.
A shiver crawls down my spine.
Every instinct in me rises at once. Fight.
