The forest was wrong.
Every tree seemed to lean inward, every shadow swallowed light instead of casting it. The ground was damp, and each step made a soft sucking sound, as if the dirt itself wanted to drag them under.
Oni crouched low, nostrils flaring. He smelled wet fur, copper, and rot.
"Fuck," Rain whispered, crouching behind a gnarled root that looked disturbingly like a twisted rib cage. "I can smell them. I can literally smell their asses from here."
"That's their breath, idiot," Oni muttered. "If we can smell them, they can smell us."
A branch snapped somewhere in the dark. Both boys froze.
Silence.
Then… the long, low howl.
It wasn't a normal wolf howl. It was… wrong. It vibrated in their chests, like a voice coming from inside their bones.
Rain swallowed hard. "Yup. Hate that. 0/10. Would rather fight literally anything else."
"Shut up," Oni hissed. He tried to keep his breathing steady, but his heart felt like it was trying to punch its way out of his ribs. "Kazin said first trial's the werewolves. This is it."
Another howl, this one closer. Then another. Then five more, overlapping in a symphony of dread.
"They're circling us," Rain whispered.
"No shit. Get ready."
They never saw the first one until it hit.
It came out of the shadows like a furry missile, a mass of muscle, teeth, and claws. Oni barely got his arms up before the beast slammed him into the mud, claws sinking into his shoulders. Its breath was hot and rancid, saliva dripping into his face.
He screamed and headbutted it, feeling its snout crunch. The werewolf yelped but didn't let go.
Rain swung a jagged branch like a bat, smashing it across the wolf's face. Bone cracked. Blood sprayed across Oni's chest. The beast toppled sideways, growling and shaking its head.
"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" Rain yelled, swinging again. "DIE, YOU FURRY SHIT!"
Another blur of fur came from the left. Rain barely ducked as claws shredded the tree trunk where his head had been. Bark rained down on his shoulders.
"Holy—FUCK—they're everywhere!"
Oni scrambled up, shoulder bleeding, mud streaked across his face. His hands shook, but adrenaline kept him moving. "We need to move, or we're dead!"
They bolted through the undergrowth, branches whipping their faces. Behind them, the werewolves gave chase, claws scraping bark, paws pounding mud.
A howl pierced the air, and two wolves flanked them, cutting off escape.
Oni skidded to a halt, almost eating dirt. "Fuck. Me."
The wolves stalked closer. Their eyes glowed sickly yellow in the dark. Their jaws hung open, saliva dripping in thick ropes, their teeth longer than Oni's fingers.
Rain whispered, "Kazin can shove this training up his magic old ass…"
The first wolf lunged.
Oni sidestepped and shoved his arm into its mouth, jamming it past the fangs before they could close. Pain exploded up his forearm as teeth pierced flesh. He roared in pain and rage, grabbing its lower jaw with his free hand.
With a primal yell, he wrenched sideways, snapping the jaw half off. Blood and drool splattered his chest. The wolf yelped and thrashed, spraying blood from its torn face.
Rain tackled the second wolf, driving the jagged branch into its eye. It squealed like a dying pig, rolling in the mud.
Rain rolled off, panting and wide-eyed. "HOLY FUCK I DID IT—"
A third wolf blindsided him, knocking him into a tree so hard his breath exploded out of him.
"FUCK—!"
The Pack Descends
The forest erupted.
Howls from every direction. Six—no, eight—shapes moving through the trees. Eyes gleaming like lanterns.
Oni hauled Rain to his feet. Both of them were bleeding, shaking, but instinct was kicking in now. The wolf in Oni's grip twitched and went limp; the one Rain stabbed was dragging itself into the shadows, leaving a trail of blood.
"More coming," Oni said, voice raw.
"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock." Rain spat blood and forced a grin. "How many do you think?"
"Too fucking many."
The first wolf leapt. Oni swung it like a flesh bat, smashing it into the charging wolf. Bones cracked, yelps filled the air.
Rain couldn't help it—he laughed. "Oh my god, you just used a wolf to beat another wolf!"
"Shut up and grab a rock!" Oni roared.
They fought like cornered animals—because they were.
Oni tackled one wolf, biting its ear off in a frenzy before stabbing it with a sharp stone.
Rain dodged a swipe, jammed his hand down a wolf's throat, and gagged as it tried to bite his arm off.
Mud, fur, and blood turned the forest floor into a nightmare slip'n'slide.
Rain's hand came back covered in gore. "Ugh, I think I touched its fucking tonsils!"
"Be glad it didn't shit on you!" Oni barked back, ripping his stone free with a wet sound.
The forest went silent.
Every surviving wolf backed off, whining. Shadows shifted as something huge approached.
The Alpha stepped into view.
It was twice the size of the others, standing almost upright like a man. Its fur was black and slick with old blood, scars crisscrossing its chest. One eye was milky white, the other a burning yellow slit that locked on Oni and Rain.
Rain whispered, "Oh… fuck me sideways with a chainsaw."
Oni spat blood and grinned. "…I got left."
"FUCK you, I wanted left!"
The Alpha roared, a sound that shook leaves from the trees.
And then it charged.
The Alpha's charge was a goddamn earthquake.
The ground shook beneath Oni and Rain's feet as the monster barreled toward them, claws tearing trenches through the mud. It moved like a freight train wearing a wolf's skin—fast, unstoppable, and mean as hell.
Oni braced, chest heaving, blood still dripping from the bite in his arm. "Rain, you distract it!"
Rain's voice cracked. "WITH WHAT, MY CHARM?!"
"YES!" Oni bellowed, lunging aside.
The Alpha swiped with a paw the size of a shield, splintering the tree Rain had been leaning against. Wood shards peppered his face.
Rain scrambled away, clutching a jagged branch like it was Excalibur. "Okay! Okay! Uh—HEY, YOU FURRY COCKSUCKER!"
The Alpha snapped its head toward him, snarling, saliva dangling in ropes. Its stinking hot breath hit him like a blast furnace.
Rain nearly gagged. "Jesus Christ, what the hell did you eat? OTHER WEREWOLVES?!"
It lunged.
Rain dove, but the Alpha's claws raked his back, tearing three deep furrows through skin and muscle. He screamed—a raw, animal sound—rolling in the mud as blood poured down his side.
"RAIN!" Oni roared.
"I'M FUCKED! I'M—OH GOD IT HURTS!" Rain's voice cracked between laughter and sobbing. "I'M GONNA DIE SMELLING DOG BREATH!"
Oni charged, adrenaline drowning fear. He leapt onto the Alpha's back, arms locking around its thick neck like a suicidal rodeo clown.
"GET OFF ME!" the Alpha seemed to snarl in thought as it bucked and twisted.
Oni bit down on its ear—hard enough to tear a chunk free. Blood filled his mouth, hot and coppery. He spat it into the mud and roared, "I'M GONNA FUCKING WEAR YOU LIKE A COAT!"
The Alpha rolled onto its back, smashing Oni into the dirt. Bones in his shoulder snapped like dry twigs. He screamed, coughing mud and blood.
Rain saw red—literally and figuratively. His vision tunneled as he forced himself up, back screaming. He grabbed a fallen branch thicker than his arm and charged, roaring like a lunatic.
"HEY, UGLY! CHEW ON THIS!"
He swung with every ounce of strength he had. The branch cracked across the Alpha's muzzle, breaking teeth and sending blood spraying in a fine mist.
The beast reeled, more in surprise than pain. Oni rolled away, groaning. "I… think I'm paralyzed… nope, just dying slowly…"
"GET UP, YOU BIG BASTARD!" Rain yelled, swinging again.
The Alpha snapped the branch in half with a bite and lunged. Rain fell back, kicking it in the jaw as teeth scraped his boot sole.
Oni staggered to his feet, eyes wild. His training, his months of pain, all boiled over into feral instinct.
He grabbed a jagged stone, sprinted at the Alpha, and slammed it into the side of its neck, feeling flesh part and hot blood gush over his hand.
The Alpha howled, spinning, claws shredding Oni's side, but Oni didn't let go.
"DIE, YOU FURRY PIECE OF SHIT!" he roared, stabbing again and again, painting himself in gore.
Rain laughed—half-insane—rolling to his knees. "Oh god, you're actually winning! KEEP STABBING HIS STUPID DOG NECK!"
The Alpha staggered, bleeding from multiple wounds, but it wasn't done. It lunged one last time, jaws snapping.
Oni ducked, but his shoulder gave out. The teeth clamped onto his arm, crushing bone with a wet crack. He screamed, vision white with pain.
"FUCK, IT'S GOT ME—IT'S GOT ME!"
Rain's heart nearly exploded. He grabbed the broken branch stump, sprinted, and rammed it into the Alpha's other eye with a scream that was more animal than human.
The Alpha shrieked, releasing Oni and thrashing wildly. Blood and ichor sprayed in arcs, drenching both boys.
Oni fell to his knees, arm dangling useless. His voice was raw. "FUCK… YOU…"
He grabbed the stone with his good hand and leapt onto the wolf's back one final time.
Stab.
Stab.
Stab.
Each strike sank deep into fur and muscle, spraying hot blood across his face and chest. Rain joined in, using his branch like a spear, impaling the beast's throat.
The Alpha collapsed, gurgling, twitching, its blood turning the mud into a thick red swamp.
Both boys collapsed on top of it, panting, shaking, and laughing hysterically.
Rain coughed, spitting blood. "…We did it. Holy shit. We… actually did it…"
Oni lay spread-eagle on the bloody corpse. "I think… I need therapy… and a steak… in that order."
Rain started to laugh, high and cracked. "Therapy's gonna quit on us, man…"
From the shadows, Kazin emerged, calm as ever. "Good. You killed the weakest Alpha in the forest."
Both boys turned their heads slowly toward him.
"…Weakest?" Rain croaked.
"Yes. Now your real training begins."
They both screamed in unison, voices echoing through the bloody forest
.
The forest stank of blood.
Hot, sticky, metallic. It clung to Oni's skin, matted his hair, and painted his teeth from when he'd bitten a werewolf's ear clean off.
He lay flat on his back on the Alpha's cooling corpse, staring at the sky that wasn't really a sky—just a ceiling of twisted black branches, interlaced like a cage. His chest rose and fell in jagged heaves.
"Ughh… fuck," he groaned. His whole body ached like he'd been run over by a wagon full of bricks and then chewed on by hell itself.
Rain limped past him, clutching his side where the claws had opened three nice, leaking stripes. He muttered, "If I live through this shit, I'm buying a fucking bakery and never leaving it."
"Cool," Oni mumbled. "Make me a cake… shaped like a wolf head… so I can bite it in half."
Rain just groaned and collapsed onto the mud next to him.
They didn't notice it at first—the heat.
Oni's chest and forearm started to simmer like someone had pressed hot coals against his skin. He winced, sitting up.
"What the hell…?"
The scar of the Werewolf Mark—earned by killing the Alpha—began to glow faintly red, then burn bright enough to pierce the darkness. Veins lit under his skin like molten cracks.
"Uh… Oni?" Rain scooted back, eyes wide. "You're… glowing. Like… demon-nightlight glowing."
"Fuck," Oni hissed, grabbing his chest. His pulse slammed like war drums, each beat rattling his bones. "It's the mark—fuck—"
He collapsed to his knees as pain ripped through him. His bones creaked, and his fingernails started splintering into claws.
"Ahhhhhh—FUUUUUCK!"
Rain scrambled backward, panicked. "Oh my god, you're—uh—you're wolfing out! Do I… hit you? Or like, throw a stick?"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Oni roared, his voice already warping into a growl. His back arched as his spine popped audibly, his jaw elongating just slightly.
It wasn't a clean transformation. It was ugly—blood ran down his arms where claws tore through skin, teeth rattled in his skull as they shifted against his gums.
He gagged and spit blood into the mud, panting. His voice was a ragged growl:
"F… fuck… me…"
Kazin emerged from the treeline like he'd been waiting for this. He didn't look surprised.
"Good," he said calmly. "The Mark has chosen you. Now you either master it—or die as a rabid animal."
"Thanks for the pep talk, asshole!" Oni snarled, his hands trembling as his senses exploded.
He could smell Rain's blood, sharp and intoxicating.
He heard the heartbeat of something small under the roots nearby.
The taste of the Alpha's blood on his tongue made his stomach growl.
A dark whisper slid into his mind, alien but familiar, like it had always been there.
Hunt. Rip. Feed.
Oni's lips peeled back into a snarl before he realized he was moving—charging Rain on all fours.
"OH SHIT—NOT ME!" Rain yelped, diving aside as Oni's clawed hand splintered a tree trunk like rotten wood.
"SON OF A—FUCK, I ALMOST KILLED YOU!" Oni roared, slamming his head into the tree to fight for control. "Get… away… from me!"
Losing and Regaining Himself
Hours blurred.
Oni ran through the woods like a nightmare, chasing shadows and tearing apart anything smaller than him. By the time the sunless sky shifted from black to a deep blue haze, he was on his knees in a clearing, covered in blood and fur.
Half of it wasn't his.
Rain approached cautiously, sword in hand. "You, uh… done having your doggy meltdown?"
Oni spit out something that might have been a rabbit leg. "…Maybe."
"You look like shit," Rain said, then grinned. "Also, I'm never cuddling you. Ever.
Oni coughed a laugh and wiped blood from his mouth. "I… I heard it, Rain. The wolf. It wanted everything dead. But… I think… I can make it mine."
Kazin's voice drifted from the shadows. "Good. Tomorrow, you hunt the pack… as its Alpha."
Oni's lips curled into a feral grin. His eyes glinted yellow in the dark.
"Fuck yeah."
The night air was alive.
Not with whispers this time—with him.
Oni crouched in the black undergrowth, bare-chested, barefoot, eyes glowing yellow in the dark. Every hair on his body felt like an antenna. He could feel the forest like it was an extension of his veins.
He smelled blood in the wind.
He heard the whimper of distant wolves.
He felt the pulse of the earth beneath his clawed fingers.
The Mark thrummed under his skin, not as pain this time, but power.
A growl rumbled from the treeline.
Three werewolves stepped out, their fur bristling, teeth glinting. These weren't the same ones from before—they were bigger, scarred, and cautious. The pack had come to test the newcomer.
Oni rose slowly, mud and dried blood streaking his chest. His voice came out a low, animal growl, but the words were still his:
"Kneel… or die."
One wolf lunged.
Oni didn't dodge. He caught its throat mid-leap, muscles snapping with a sickening crunch as he slammed it into the ground. His claws dug in, and hot blood pumped over his hands. He didn't even need to kill it.
The second wolf hesitated, growling low. Oni snarled back, a sound that made even Rain—watching from a safe distance with his sword—shiver.
"Holy shit…" Rain muttered under his breath. "He's… actually one of them now…"
The third wolf lowered its head. The second followed.
Oni grinned, teeth sharp in the moonless dark. "Good dogs."
The pack moved as one.
Oni didn't need to speak. His will radiated through the Mark, and the wolves followed his movements like shadows chasing firelight.
They stalked the forest, hunting the stragglers of the weaker packs.
The first kill was a blur of fur and blood—Oni leaping from a branch, driving a clawed hand through a wolf's spine while his pack tore it apart from the legs up.
The forest floor turned into a butcher's shop—muddy, wet, and reeking of blood.
Rain arrived a few minutes late, sword still in hand, and just stared.
"…Jesus Christ, Oni. I was gone for like five minutes."
Oni wiped blood from his face, grinning like a devil.
"Five minutes too long. I'm fucking alive, Rain. I can feel everything."
By the third night, the pack was his.
They moved silently through the labyrinth of trees, responding to the smallest twitch of his fingers or tilt of his head. Oni was faster than he'd ever been, senses sharp enough to track a heartbeat from fifty feet away.
Trees splintered as Oni leapt from trunk to trunk, ambushing prey.
Wolves screamed as he tore through rival packs, leaving limbs dangling from branches.
His dark humor only grew darker. "Fetch this, motherfuckers," he muttered, hurling a severed arm into a pack of challengers.
By the end of the week, every wolf in that section of Shafu bowed to him.
Even Kazin had to admit it, stepping out of the shadows with his usual ghostly calm.
"You've done it. You are no longer prey… You are Alpha."
Oni stood atop a pile of carcasses, blood dripping from his hands, chest heaving.
A howl ripped from his throat, and the forest howled back.
Rain muttered from the edge of the clearing, "Cool. My best friend's officially a psychotic murder dog."
Oni turned his head slowly, eyes still glowing.
"…But I'm your psychotic murder dog."
Rain just groaned. "We're so fucked when we meet the Minotaur."