The high school hallway was a deafening roar of laughter, slamming lockers, and shouting. It was the sound of normal life.
But for one boy, the world was always silent.
He walked with his head down, clutching a worn-out backpack strap. He wasn't tall, but he wasn't small either. He was just… there. Like a shadow that everyone stepped on but no one noticed.
Thud.
A shoulder slammed into him hard. It was Mark, the linebacker for the school team, laughing as he plowed through the hallway.
"Watch it, mute," Mark sneered, not even looking back.
The impact should have knocked the boy to the floor. At the very least, he should have stumbled. But he didn't.
The boy simply shifted his weight. His feet didn't slide. His posture didn't break. He absorbed the force of a 200-pound athlete like a stone absorbing a ripple in a pond. He didn't look angry. He didn't look scared.
He just kept walking.
From the back of the classroom, a girl watched him.
She had pale skin and eyes that seemed to catch the light a little too perfectly. She twirled a pen between her fingers, her gaze locked on the boy's back.
He didn't stumble, she thought, her eyes narrowing. Physics says he should have fallen. But he didn't even flinch. Why does he hide it?
She had been watching him for weeks. He never spoke in class. He never ate lunch with anyone. And on every test paper, the name section was always blank.
The teachers had stopped asking. The students had stopped caring. He was a ghost in the system.
But ghosts made her curious.
Later that afternoon, the sun was setting, casting long orange shadows across the empty school grounds. The boy was standing by the back gate, staring at the sky.
"Hey."
He didn't turn around.
The girl walked up to him, stopping a few feet away. Up close, he looked even more hollow. His eyes were dark, but not the darkness of evil—the darkness of an empty room.
"I saw what happened in the hallway," she said, crossing her arms. "Why didn't you shove him back? You could have."
The boy finally looked at her. He seemed confused that someone was acknowledging his existence.
"There is no point," he said. His voice was rough, unused.
"No point?" She scoffed. "He humiliated you. Don't you have any pride? Don't you care about your reputation? Your name?"
The boy shifted his bag again. He looked at his hands, staring at the veins beneath his skin as if they belonged to someone else.
"I don't have a name," he whispered.
The girl blinked. "What? Everyone has a name. Your parents gave you one."
"I don't have parents," he replied simply. "And I don't know who I am."
The girl fell silent. She had expected him to be shy, or maybe just a coward. She didn't expect… nothingness. It wasn't a sad story he was telling to get pity. He was stating a fact. He felt like a vessel waiting to be filled.
"You're weird," she muttered, turning to leave. "Really weird."
"I know," he said.
CRACK.
The sound wasn't thunder. It sounded like the sky itself had snapped in half.
The girl froze. The boy looked up, his empty expression finally changing. His pupils contracted.
The orange sunset was gone. In an instant, the sky turned a bruised, ugly purple. The clouds began to swirl, forming a massive spiral directly above the school.
"What… what is that?" the girl stammered, stepping back.
The ground shook. Not a vibration, but a violent lurch, throwing her to her knees. Car alarms in the parking lot started screaming.
From the center of the purple spiral, something fell.
It looked like a meteor at first, black and burning. It crashed into the football field with a force that blew out the windows of the school building. Glass rained down on them.
The boy didn't move. He didn't cover his head. He stared directly at the crater in the field.
A hand rose from the smoke. A massive, clawed hand, covered in black fur.
Then came the roar. It was a sound that vibrated in their chests, a primal scream that triggered every instinct to run, to hide, to survive.
A wolf. A monster the size of a bus, with eyes glowing red, pulled itself out of the crater.
The girl was trembling, her legs refusing to move. "Monsters… why are there monsters…?"
The boy took a step forward.
For the first time in his life, the emptiness in his eyes was gone. Something else had taken its place. Something ancient.
"They found me," the boy whispered.
[End of Chapter 1]