Three years did not pass in days or months for the boy; they passed in the steady stacking of logs for the fire and the gradual filling of his hollow cheeks.
He had arrived as a splinter of a human being, fragile, jagged, and terrified. But under the roof of the brick cottage, the ice in his spirit began to thaw.
He had no memory of the life before the snowstorm. Whenever he tried to reach back into the fog of his mind, he found only a wall of obsidian silence and the phantom sensation of being hunted.
The woman never pushed. She didn't need a history to offer a home. She named him Zephyr, after the first soft breeze of spring that finally broke the winter of his arrival.
To him, she became Flor, a name that tasted like the wildflowers she pressed into books.
She didn't treat him as a stray; she accepted him as a son, a quiet pact sealed over bowls of soup and shared silence.
Zephyr learned to speak again, his voice rusty at first, like a gate that hadn't been opened in years.
He learned the rhythm of a normal life, the smell of baking bread, the texture of wool, the safety of a locked door. Yet, despite the peace, a shadow remained.
He was a prisoner of the threshold.
For three years, the world outside the windows was a monster. To Flor, the meadows were beautiful; to Zephyr, they were a killing field where shadows lurked.
His instincts, sharp and jagged as a wolf's tooth, screamed that the open sky was a target. Every time he looked at the front door, his heart would hammer a frantic warning against his ribs. Stay inside. Hide. Be silent.
Flor tried. She would stand by the garden gate, her hand outstretched. "The sun is kind today, Zephyr. Come, see the lavender."
He would only stand in the shadows of the doorway, his fingers white-knuckled against the frame, and shake his head. The outside was where the cold lived. The outside was where he had almost died.
The change happened on a Tuesday, a day of aggressive sunlight and a sky so blue it looked painted.
Flor was at the market in the distant village, leaving Zephyr alone with his thoughts. He stood before the open door, the golden light spilling across the wooden floor like a dare. He was sixteen now, no longer a twig, but a young man built of lean muscle and lingering trauma.
I cannot stay in the dark forever, he thought. The thought wasn't a choice; it was a demand from his soul.
He took a step. His boots touched the porch. The air was different here, wilder, filled with the scent of pine and damp earth. His breath came in shallow, jagged hitches. Another step.
The grass was beneath him now, soft and terrifyingly open. He felt exposed, like a nerve stripped of its skin. He waited for the arrow, the blow, the shadow.
It never came.
Instead, a sudden gush of wind swept down from the mountains. It didn't bite; it ruffled his hair and filled his lungs with a clarity he had never known.
A laugh, strange and foreign to his own ears, bubbled up in his chest. He took a step, then another, his walk turning into a trot, and then, for the first time in three years, he was running.
But this wasn't the run of a victim. He wasn't fleeing. He was chasing the horizon. The wind seemed to roar in approval, singing in his ears as he sprinted toward the edge of the woods. He felt light, almost weightless, as if he were part of the breeze himself.
He slowed to a stop near a cluster of ancient oaks, his chest heaving with exhilaration rather than exhaustion. That was when he saw it.
Perched upon a moss-covered stone was a creature of liquid gold and shadow. A cat.
Zephyr froze. His instincts scanned for a threat, but found none. The creature was small, its fur thick and well-kept, its eyes two glowing emeralds that held a startling intelligence.
It didn't hiss.
It didn't flee.
It simply watched him with a calm, regal curiosity.
Drawn by an invisible thread, Zephyr moved closer. He didn't feel the need to hide. The cat tilted its head, letting out a soft, vibrating trill. It was the personification of gentleness.
Slowly, his heart drumming a steady beat of wonder, Zephyr knelt in the dirt. He reached out a hand, his fingers trembling.
The cat stepped forward, closing the gap, and rubbed its velvet head against his palm. Its fur was warm, vibrating with a deep, rhythmic purr.
In that instant, the world tilted.
A jolt of electricity, sharp and cold as a lightning strike, surged from the cat's skin into Zephyr's fingertips.
He gasped, trying to pull away, but his hand was locked in place by an invisible force. His vision fractured. The trees, the sky, the cat, everything dissolved into a sea of static and light.
Then, a voice, or perhaps a thought that wasn't his,
reverberated through his skull. It wasn't human; it was the sound of a machine grinding against ancient stone.
[CHIMERA LINK ESTABLISHED: FELINE]
A translucent blue screen, glowing with an eerie, humming energy, flickered into existence right before his eyes. It pulsed with the rhythm of his heart.
[STATUS: INITIALIZING ADAPTATION...]
[TRAIT ACQUIRED: PREDATORY REFLEXES (RANK F)]
[TRAIT ACQUIRED: NIGHT VISION (RANK F)]
Zephyr fell back, his breath hitching. The cat was gone, vanished into the undergrowth, but the energy remained.
It was a violent, rushing heat that flooded his veins. His hearing sharpened until he could hear the heartbeat of a bird in the trees above.
His vision adjusted, the shadows of the forest floor turning as bright and clear as high noon.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking, but not from fear. They felt... powerful. Heavy with a mystery he couldn't name.
He wasn't just a boy who had survived the snow anymore. He was something else. Something dangerous.
"What... what am I?" he whispered to the empty woods.
The wind was the only thing that answered, howling through the trees like a predator that had finally found its master.