“Where exactly are we going?” the alpha asked.

Seulgi was so acutely aware of her proximity to Irene in the pickup's cramped cabin that she fairly thrummed from the sound of her voice. She was wedged between Yeri and Irene, the former latched onto her arm while the latter reclined with her weight against the door. But to Seulgi, Irene was the only other person in the entire cab. She couldn’t explain it. The place where their thighs touched, every crackle of the leather seat as she shifted her weight, the faint reflection of Irene’s perfect face in the door’s window as she stared out at the scenery, Seulgi was riveted.

“Closer to the sept,” Wendy answered, sounding so distant in Seulgi’s ears. “The veil’s much thinner there than in town. Should be easier to step sideways.”

“I don’t think we should enter the sept,” Irene said. “The others might ask a lot of questions that we won’t be ready to answer.” She glanced at Seulgi. “No offense.”

Seulgi felt her cheeks grow hot. She had been staring.

Irene smirked as she returned her gaze to the trees zipping past in a blur. “Wendy can you… do something about this? I think I hit her a little hard.”

“I was going to once we got there. That Gift is meant to be used against other Garou, not on one of the Kinfolk. She didn’t stand a chance.”

“Gift? What did you do?” asked Yeri as she hugged Seulgi’s arm tighter to herself. She felt more than a little apprehensive about what the two older Garou had in store for Seulgi.

Irene turned a soft smile her way, leaning forward to address her as if Seulgi weren't between them. “Something the Spirits taught me; I simply asked for their help convincing Seulgi to go along with our plan.”

“To go along with anything you said, you mean,” Wendy laughed.

Seulgi dipped her head, feeling foolish. They had used some sort of spirit magic on her? Is that why she wasn’t even remotely afraid of riding deep into the woods with a bunch of werewolves? At least now she understood why Irene was affecting her this way. Or at least she hoped that was why.

“Either way,” Irene said a little huffily, “It should have worn off by now.” She straightened, turning to Seulgi a bit more seriously. “So if you change your mind…”

“No, I’ll do it.” She purposefully avoided looking at Irene’s small smile. “But... I’m still not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do.”

“Pretty simple,” Wendy said staring straight ahead at the dirt road. “You’ll lead us to Ursa, and we can ask the questions from there.”

But Seulgi didn’t think that sounded very simple at all.

+++

“Hey,” Amber called.

Eunji didn’t raise her head, so exhausted was she from the clean-up and recovery. The last thing she was expecting was a stranger to strike up a conversation.

“Hey, uh…” Amber tried again as she came closer to the EMT seated on the bumper of the bright red paramedic ambulance. Seated… more like slumped. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Eunji repeated hollowly. As a first responder, how many bodies would she have to lift before she could answer ‘no, I’m not okay’? One? Five? What if the bodies were in pieces? What did those count for?

Amber stood there awkwardly, knowing it was a bit of a rhetorical question all things considered, but she had still felt compelled to ask. “... Right.” The forest clearing was a mess of mud and rivets dug into the earth from the gurneys and emergency vehicles passing through, but Amber’s attention had been drawn to the other damage that didn’t have such an easy explanation: the gouged tree trunks, the massive, blood-filled dent in the hood of a pickup truck, and all the leftover viscera that the EMTs had left strewn about. Torn chunks of flesh that would have been impossible to trace back to an owner. Max had been right about the scene, and she had questions.

“Is there someone I can talk to about what happened here?” she asked, startling Eunji.

The EMT slowly straightened from her hunched position. She hadn't realized Amber was still standing there. She looked up at Amber and then down to the camera hanging around her neck and frowned. “What are you, some kind of internet personality? Buzz off - this isn’t something to put on your blog.”

“There’s no need to get nasty,” Amber said with her hands raised. “I’m with the paper. I’m just trying to do my job.” She dropped her hands to her camera reflexively. “I knew some of these kids. I want to know what happened to them just as much as everyone else.”

While Eunji wasn’t any more interested in talking to a reporter for that glorified tabloid than she was talking to a potential blogger, she did feel bad for the way she snapped. She sat back against the ambulance and gestured vaguely at the clearing. “There’s not a whole lot I can help you with, unfortunately.” The other paramedics, called in from the other local hospitals in the area, were finishing up their sweep of the area, checking to see if the police had missed any bodies. “Just a lot of questions no one seems to want to answer.”

Amber caught on to that unspoken bitterness. “Who doesn’t want to answer?”

Eunji looked up at her with a raised brow. “The police. The sheriff gave me the runaround when I told him what I thought about this place. We don’t need EMTs, I said. We need animal control.”

“Animals? What, you think a cougar did all this?” A bear? Maybe a pack of rabid coyotes and a bear to do this much damage. Amber was more than a little skeptical, but then again, the way the underbrush had been thrashed and no one was saying what the murder weapon was…

Eunji sighed. “I don’t know. But I do know that whatever killed all those students wasn’t a weapon I’ve ever seen before. Christ, even a chainsaw cuts cleaner than this.” And why was it that whenever something like this happened, it always seemed to involve them? Eunji recalled her encounter with The Ones from the Lake in the sheriff's office, and the way Yunho had so stiffly dismissed her concerns. None of this added up.

“So you don’t think there’s any way a seventeen-year-old girl could have caused all of this,” Amber stated, relieved that her friend might be off the hook.

Eunji scoffed. “I’m saying I don’t think any human being could have caused it.”

+++

Daniel stumbled, falling heavily against a wall as he pushed through the veil. A wall? He whipped his head around, his breathing hoarse with anxiety as he gripped the Compass in a tight fist. Where was he?

It looked to be a long, windowless hallway, dark save for a pale green glow effusing through the cracks in a doorway at the far end. Daniel carefully pushed himself up and tried to quiet his breathing, but as he slowly inhaled, a horrible smell entered his nostrils and he had to suppress a gag.

He quietly choked for a moment, realizing there was a sharp, rancid scent that permeated the air around him. What was it? It didn’t seem poisonous, but it burned his sinuses and made his eyes water. It smelled unnatural. His instincts told him to run, but his morbid curiosity kept him rooted in place. The Compass had led him here, but why? What was it trying to show him? If his suspicions were correct... His eyes were trained on the glowing doorway. It was ever-so-slightly ajar, as if beckoning him to come look inside.

With the Compass still in his white-knuckled grip, he cautiously approached. Every muscle in his body resisted as he crept closer with his silent, wolf-like gait. He hadn't so much as ran from Unicorn's domain so much as he had fallen, straight out of the Wild, through the Umbra before landing here, wherever 'here' was. He had so carelessly fled from literal paradise into the foul belly of some fresh hell the humans had built for themselves.

Or was it the humans? As he gradually became used to the lip-curling smell, he realized that beneath it wafted something else: the hollow scent of death.

And now there were voices. With his heartbeat drumming in his ears, he carefully peered through the crack in the door.

“How many is that now?”

“Twelve- but don’t worry, it shouldn’t be difficult to… acquire a few more.”

“Not difficult? Don’t get cocky.”

Daniel could barely make out two people in the room conversing; a woman, someone with long hair, black in the sickly, cheap fluorescent light, and a man. He was facing the doorway, and much easier to get an impression of: tall, and perhaps handsome had he not been wearing some sort of opaque safety glasses that gave his pale face an insect-like appearance. His long, buttoned-up coat obscured his frame, but he hunched a little as he spoke with the far shorter woman. His grin was especially unsettling as he responded to her warning.

“It’s not cockiness, it’s confidence. Confidence in our numbers, confidence in their... impulsivity,” he spat. “You of all people should know how easily they are manipulated by their own emotions.” Daniel shifted, trying to get a better vantage of the scene inside the room as he listened in on their conversation. He could barely make out that one whole wall was made of metal, with tiny doors evenly spaced across its surface.

Was this a morgue?

“These backwoods bloodlines are incredibly weak,” the man continued, and Daniel’s attention snapped back to the conversation. “It’s quite telling when the Kims are the dominant clan." He grinned wickedly, a tight-lipped smirk that made the hairs on the back of Daniel's neck stand on end. "That knowledge must rankle you.”

“She can't hear you right now. And I don’t give a who's in charge - I just want them wiped out. I don’t care how you do it, but if you screw this up for me,” the woman said, leaning in close, “then you can bet I’m going to get a little emotional. Don’t forget I know where you leeches rest.”

The man frowned and straightened up a bit. “And don’t you forget our agreement,” he intoned darkly. “Your loyalty will be remembered," he hinted darkly. "And we will remember.”

The woman laughed bitterly and tossed her head, and with her long hair swept out of her face, Daniel felt the blood drain from his own. He could see her… and her features… those eyes… Daniel placed his hands against the doorway pressed in as close as he dared to the door, cracked open as it was, trying to get a better look at the woman’s features.

Just as it seemed the woman was about to retort, there was a small tink that brought their conversation to a sudden halt, and as the man looked towards the door, Daniel realized with horror that it had come from him. Or rather, from the Compass as it lifted from his chest and tapped against the door, pointing inside.

When he looked back up to see if he had been caught, he saw the woman staring straight at him.

Ah, Daniel thought to himself as the man was suddenly at the door, tearing it open and grabbing him by the throat with his gloved fist. That’s where I recognize her from.

She looked a little like the old beta from the Lionheart pack. Like Jessica.

+++

“So… why exactly are you looking for Daniel again?” Seulgi asked as she tensed for another turn. The winding road constantly climbed, taking them higher and higher in elevation as they left the town far behind, and Seulgi was doing her best not to get into Irene’s personal space.

“He took something,” Yeri volunteered. “From Taeyeon.” She looked over Seulgi to Irene for help.

“He took a - a spirit artifact. It’s called the Compass,” Irene explained. “No one’s really sure what it does, and that’s part of the problem. The other part is… well, you can’t just take a away from the protection of its rightful owner. The spirit bound inside the made a deal with the creator, so if it gets stolen, it's like...”

"Like slavery," Wendy finished. "The spirit is being made to serve the thief against its will. It's just... wrong."

Seulgi nodded vaguely. Stealing and slavery were bad, even in werewolf society. Seemed simple enough.

Irene watched as she squinted in mild confusion. Cute. She smiled faintly as she decided to delve a little deeper. Perhaps it was part of her half-moon nature. “The Garou, we protect the spirits from this world, and the spirits help us. They teach us things-”

“- and give us advice,” Wendy added.

“And, sometimes, give us things,” Irene nodded. “es, tools, anything we can use to help fight the Wyrm.”

Seulgi had been listening intently until the end, when she blinked, her features clouding once again. “The Wyrm?”

Irene shared her confusion. She thought Kinfolk at least knew about the Wyrm, the common enemy of all inhabitants of Gaia. “The… Wyrm?” she iterated, leaning over Seulgi to get Yeri’s attention.

Yeri shrugged. “The Kangs… well, you saw Seulgi’s dad. He never talked about the Garou, even with me.” Even after what had happened to her family. “Seulgi doesn’t really know anything.”

Seulgi felt embarrassed, but she couldn’t deny the statement. “He told me some stories when I was young, I think…” She had some foggy memories of sitting on the living room floor and listening to harrowing legends of werewolves as tall as a house battling demons or something, but she had to really dig back for them. “But that stopped. He hates them,” she finished quietly.

The inside of the truck was silent for a moment and Irene sat back in her seat, her shoulder brushing up against Seulgi’s.

“Well, the Wyrm is kind of like… this taint that… well, it corrupts things. People. Places. It destroys and slowly eats away at the delicate balance of the world.” Irene paused for a beat before adding, “That’s why we exist - the Garou. To fight the Wyrm.”

“So…” Seulgi tried, “Daniel took something you use to fight the… the Wyrm?”

Irene smiled. She knew it was too much to throw at Seulgi all at once. “We just need to get it back, and bring him back too, before anything bad happens.”

And right on cue, Wendy slowed and pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, if it could be called that. It was more like a bed of pine needles beneath the trees before the true forest began.

“Here?” Irene asked, livening up a bit as they came to a stop. “I thought you said we weren’t going to the sept.” With languid motions befitting a cat more than a wolf, she opened the door and slid out of the cab, stretching her limbs after riding in such confined conditions for so long.

Wendy hopped out of the driver’s side and came around the front of the truck before answering. “It’s not going to be easy to get two people through the veil who aren’t attuned, especially one who isn’t even Garou.” She put her hands on her hips as she arched her back. “I guess I just kept driving until it felt right, you know?”

“Where are we?” Seulgi asked, sitting on the edge of the seat, hesitant about getting out of the truck.

“The Lake,” Irene said, peering through the trees, trying to catch a glimpse of it. She could feel it, but she could only barely make out the glimmer of the low sun reflecting off its surface between the trees. “But on the opposite side.”

“The opposite si-?”

“-No wonder it took so long,” Yeri grumbled to herself as she pushed Seulgi out and hopped down.

"I think we're still far enough away from the heart of the sept to draw any attention," Wendy said. And even if they were discovered, she was sure Yeeun and Sunmi would understand. Or she hoped they would, anyway. The important thing was to accomplish their task and find Daniel. They could make up excuses later.

A whimpering from the bed of the truck caught their attention and Irene smiled faintly as she went around to open the shell. A small black wolf jumped out and followed her back to the group, and that pair of piercing blue eyes Seulgi remembered from the forest stared up at her. Seulgi gasped and backed into Yeri as Jisoo shifted up into her human form, her body contorting and twisting, her bones groaning as they bent into place, her sleek black coat receding until all that was left was milky white skin exposed under the late afternoon sun. She was .

Seulgi stared in wonder for a moment before inhaling sharply and pivoting 180 degrees.

“Jisoo,” Irene chided as Wendy went back into the cab of the truck to get Jisoo’s clothes.

Seulgi took that moment to admire the serenity of their location. Despite her nerves in the car at the thought of driving into the wilderness with a pack of werewolves, on a mission to do something she could only get a vague explanation of, she felt a strange calmness overcome her. The tall, austere forest that surrounded them on either side of the lone road, the faint sounds of its inhabitants, the clear air that filled her lungs, and the soft light of the sun filtering through the branches as it settled ever-lower in the sky, it all gave her a sense of peace. A primal tranquility.

“Should be really easy to step through up here,” Wendy repeated, coming up beside Seulgi. “Are you ready? Daniel’s already got quite a lead on us, and time… works differently in the Umbra.”

Seulgi heard Yeri blow through her lips. “Should we hold hands?” she joked, though it was evident she wasn’t quite feeling the same calmness that Seulgi got from this place.

“Actually that’s a good idea. Wendy, you first - lead us to Ursa as best you can. I’ll stay in the middle with Yeri and Seulgi since it’s their first time, and Jisoo will watch the rear,” Irene commanded. She took both of their hands, giving Seulgi’s a little squeeze as she looked up into her eyes. “Don’t let go.”

Seulgi felt her sense of serenity corrode with anxiety as she laced her fingers with the alpha’s.

“Wendy,” Irene prompted, and with a simple nod, Wendy suddenly disappeared. Before Seulgi could even ask, Irene’s voice cut through her shock. “Just relax. We’re practically in the sept, and the spirits are watching over us. Let them guide you into their world. Trust them.” And after another moment, “Trust me. I’m right here.”

More than letting the spirits guide her, entities Seulgi had no relationship with, she focused on Irene’s hand in hers. This was a connection she felt safe with. She closed her eyes and let Irene lead her, feeling a pull as if she were walking through clotheslines of laundry hanging in the sun to dry. There was a drag against her skin, against her soul as she pushed through the Veil, and into the darkness beyond.

And she entered into a world very unlike the tranquil, mountainous wilderness she had been standing in moments before. Her eyes opened onto a landscape of rippling shadows, a dark, insubstantial echo of the world she knew. She could make out the blurred shapes of the trees, with the void curve of what must have been the road snaking between them, and even the outline of the truck next to them. Seulgi watched as tiny spiders climbed across its hood, skittering here and there, disappearing inside, beneath the lip of the metal and leaving strands of webbing in their wake.

“Where are we,” she whispered, though a bit rhetorically. Hadn’t they been telling her this whole time?

They were in the Umbra.

+++

Krystal groaned.

“Oh, come on,” Amber complained. “If you’d answer my texts I wouldn’t have to bother you at work.” If anybody'd answer her texts. Seulgi had been ignoring her for the past couple days as well.

The eager journalist had taken to pestering Krystal, asking questions, trying to invite her to go places and talk, even leaving a handful of voicemails, but Krystal wasn’t in the mood to answer.

“What do you want?” she asked a little icily. Amber wasn’t affected by this stand-offish facade Krystal sometimes tried to put up, but she did pout.

“I want to see how you’re doing,” she answered. “And to tell you what I’ve found out.”

Krystal raised a brow. Amber had cornered her in the stock room of Brinton’s only grocery store, the place she had been working at since graduation. At least it was secluded and they could talk privately, if they had to talk at all. Amber always had a way of getting under Krystal’s skin, and Krystal had never been afraid to let her know it.

But there was more. Krystal knew what had happened in the forest that night, even though she hadn’t been there to see it. It was the same thing that happened whenever any of their kind made their first change. A change she had spent her entire adolescence dreading she may make herself. How could she explain to Amber what it was like to live in constant fear that you could one day snap and kill all of your friends? Did they think she was so distant with everyone because that’s what she wanted? It was lonely.

It was so lonely.

And now she didn’t even have her older sister Jessica to turn to. Or Seulgi.

Amber took the drawn-out silence as permission to continue. She couldn’t read the look on Krystal’s impassive features anyway. “Everyone keeps saying Yeri started it, but after going there and seeing it for myself,” she paused, still trying to erase the horror of the scene from her mind, “and after talking to the paramedics, there’s no way it was Yeri. Krystal, something had torn those bodies apart. It was like a pack of lions attacked that party.”

“Or wolves,” Krystal heard herself say.

“Yeah!” Amber agreed, then narrowed her eyes. “Wait, did you go take a look, too?” It had been days since the massacre, and the investigation was all but concluded, meaning the site was open to the public again. Amber was sure lots of people from the town were making their pilgrimage up to the clearing, the morbid spectacle that had brought the entire town to a standstill.

Krystal shrugged. “I’ve just heard people talking. We live in the middle of a forest, though.”

“Wild animals wouldn’t just attack a group of like, twenty humans, though would they?” Amber scoffed.

“Then what?” Krystal was no longer annoyed, she was probing. What had Amber discovered?

But Amber just shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s like some bad horror movie.” She leaned up against a shelving unit and brushed her fingers through her short hair. “Why does stuff like this only happen here?”

“It doesn’t,” Krystal countered softly.

Amber looked over at her with a mute expression, watching the way Krystal loosely crossed her arms and avoided her gaze.

“It doesn’t?”

Krystal shook her head, her expression closed off. “Why do you think we moved up here?”

+++

“Don’t let go,” Irene ordered, holding onto Seulgi and Yeri’s hands tightly. She gave a nod up to Wendy to begin their journey, and like the Garou she was, the omega began sniffing around in the air.

They were the only substantial things Seulgi could see in this silent, shadowy world. Every slow step they took forward through the wispy, undulating darkness felt unsteady, like Seulgi was about to fall through some invisible floor into the void below. She didn’t want to cling onto Irene’s hand but she was becoming more scared with each passing moment.

Irene could sense Seulgi’s discomfort. Humans shouldn’t be here. She was already surprised that it had been so easy to bring Seulgi here, but she could tell it was wearing on the poor Kinfolk’s psyche. They needed to get to Ursa’s domain fast.

“We’re lucky,” Wendy murmured, a few paces ahead of the others, “Ursa’s one of the oldest spirits in all Gaia, so it shouldn’t… be… too… hard…” She reached out in front of herself, letting her fingers lightly brush against the ghost-like trees as they went deeper into the woods. She wanted to give them some kind of reassurance as she led them along, but she didn’t want to make any more noise than was absolutely necessary.

They were guests in the Umbra. This was not their world, and this was not the world of the spirits. This was the space between, and only those who did not belong anywhere else wandered here.

Yeri was on high alert. While she wasn’t as susceptible to the ethereal nature of the Umbra, she still had a tight grip on Irene’s hand as her eyes darted all around. She wasn’t going to let anything happen to Seulgi… even if she wasn’t sure what could happen to Seulgi in a place like this.

“... Here,” Wendy said tentatively. They stopped in front of a large tree, impossibly large, with a gaping hole in the trunk big enough for their pickup to drive through.

It looked no more inviting than standing out here in the rippling gloom, however, and Seulgi gripped Irene’s arm, too frightened to speak.

Irene adjusted to wrap her arm around the Kinfolk’s waist, pulling her close. “Are you sure?” she asked Wendy gruffly. She wasn’t sure how much more Seulgi could take.

“Pretty sure,” Wendy said, closing her eyes as she stood on the threshold of the void. She breathed in deeply, feeling at the darkness with the tips of her fingers, the soles of her shoes, doing something Irene could only barely manage on her own, and usually through pure instinct. Wendy was more attuned with the spirits than the rest of the pack, and she just knew how to get them wherever they needed to go.

Without another word, Wendy slipped inside, vanishing from view once again and Seulgi almost called out. She shivered in Irene’s grip. They were going in there? This place, like a quiet, menacing hell was bad enough, but that void in the tree screamed doom for her. With every ounce of her being, she could tell she didn’t belong there. She had to go. She wanted to run, and she would have if Irene didn’t have such a strong hold on her.

“Jisoo, take Yeri inside, stay with Wendy and don’t let either of them out of your sight,” Irene said as she released the pup and held Seulgi close. “Shh, it’s alright. Seulgi, I need you to calm down.” She felt Seulgi's desperate grip, her hands balled into fists as she clung to Irene for dear life.

Jisoo did as she was bid. She took Yeri by the shoulders and guided her to the tree, ready to head through to what was hopefully Ursa’s demesne. Yeri took one last glance back at Seulgi, worried for her friend, before she was pushed inside and they both disappeared.

Seulgi’s breathing came faster. Seulgi felt like the whole world had fallen away except for Irene - the alpha’s frame was slighter, but there was a strength there that she tried to take comfort from. Why had she agreed to come along? What was she thinking? Why did Yeri let them trick her? How could she possibly be any help to them like this? This world was too different from her own. She may have the Blood, but she wasn’t a werewolf like them. She wasn’t supposed to be here.

She wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Seulgi, look at me- look at me,” Irene commanded as she leaned away and took Seulgi’s face in her hands. She didn’t want to use her Gift again when they were about to speak to Ursa - she needed Seulgi to be lucid, but she wasn’t sure Seulgi could even enter the Wild in this panicked state.

Seulgi tried to focus on Irene, the details of her face, the curve of her brows, the line of her jaw, her large, dark eyes. In any other instance, she would have been too afraid to look at her so openly, the irony of finding solace in the visage of this monster didn't even register to Seulgi as she desperately sought Irene's features for assurance. To Seulgi, she was a lifeline. Seulgi's racing heartbeat slowed, her muscles relaxing against the alpha just enough to where Irene thought she could finally coax the kinfolk through the threshold. She pulled away, leading Seulgi by the hands as she backed into the opening in the tree.

And for reasons Seulgi couldn’t immediately parse out, she trusted Irene. She gave over all worries and followed her into the Wild.