CHAPTER 1

The night shouldn't have ended this way.

It should have been a beautiful walk in the beach with their gown and heels while drunk and singing their lungs out. It should have been a beautiful picnic with the stolen foods and alcohol from their best friends' wedding, a hangover in the morning and probably a scold from their newly wed friends for leaving the party so early only to be passed out somewhere in the beach. Or maybe just a night of star-gazing, with a wine in their hands as they try skinny dipping because they're young and free.

It shouldn't have been with a panic and shovels in their hands as they bury a body in the middle of the woods while a party is being held a few miles away from them.

They're suppose to be partying, not frantically looking around, securing the area and making sure that they're the only people in that place and there's no witnesses for a crime they just committed.

Zai doesn't know whether to be thankful or not for bringing extra clothes. Hwayatt doesn't know whether to be thankful or not for the alcohols they stole back at the party. This is what they're surely thankful for tho, their ability to move fast in time of panic.

They quickly washed themselves with the alcohol they brought (disgusting but they were desperate) and burned everything that could be used as evidence. They're walking barefoot and they'll surely get a lot of wounds and feel the pain after the rush calms down but they did not bother thinking about that at the moment because they needed to leave fast and the fact that they just killed someone is scary and neither of them is still processing the fact that they just became murderers in a night that they should be celebrating with their friends.

___________

Their first words was spoken in the middle of their living room. And it started with a trembling hands and the realization that everything that happened in the beach was real.

"We should turn ourselves to the police." Hwayatt suggested as she grabs her hair, trying to ground herself by the slight pain she's feeling because she can't believe what just happened. Zai looks at her with a scowl before resuming pacing in front of her friend, she tries to remember what exactly happened back their but her own mind betrays her because there's no way that shape-shifters are real. Shape-shifters are myths and there's no way that they just encountered one. She tries to remember everything that they've eaten during the day but she's sure that all the foods are safe and they might have been a little drunk when they met the man but they've been drunk enough times to know what they saw.

(They've been pretty much partying all their college days until the present to be confident about their high tolerance in alcohol and a few gulps directly from the bottle won't be enough for their brain to magically conjure the same shape-shifting creature that neither of them has ever imagined to see in real life because myths are just that. Myths. And they're not supposed to be shifting into a scary shadow with red eyes and sharp teeth with sharp claws that claims to be sent to kill one of them before the prophecy begins - now, that must be the greatest joke that Zai has ever heard.)

"Did you hear me? We need to turn ourselves in! My conscience won't be able to handle all of this." Hwayatt shouted as she stood up to stop Zai from her pacing.

"We can't! No one will ever believe us if we try to tell them everything that happened. They'll only think that we're crazy." Zai says as she

started pacing again while trying not to pull her hair because everything just doesn't make sense.

"But aren't we actually crazy? Zai! We killed that man because he tried to hurt us, maybe we've been too scared that our mind made us see a monster and only get to see that he's actually human right after we killed him, right after the adrenaline washes off." Hwayatt says as she again tries to stop Zai by holding on to her shoulders.

"What did you see? I saw a black creature, too dark to be considered a shadow but we were able to touch and hurt him." She says and her friend frowns at this. "What are you trying to say?" Hwayatt asks.

"We saw the same thing, didn't we? Red eyes, sharp teeth, sharp claws, no form but he's clearly something and he turned back into human when he died. I don't remember how we did it. All I know is that we're fighting for our life and my vision turned blurry and the next thing I knew, there's a dead body in front of us while we're covered in blood." She explains. Hwayatt hums at this and tried to remember what happened.

Zai was right, they saw the same creature but unlike her friend, she remembers how it happened. The shape-shifter chased them deep in the woods. She remembers tripping and Zai coming back to help her but that few seconds of stopping was enough for the creature to reach them and bite her ankle (she winces at the memory but frowns when she checks her ankles but found no wounds). She remembers kicking and its then that she realized that the dark-being is not actually a shadow because she was able to touch it, Zai flings a small trunk at the creature's head and it recoiled before shaking it's head and gets ready to pounce again. It's then that everything seems to happen so fast because Zai moved in front of her and punched it's head again before ducking and kicking the clawed hand that's about to attack her, she watches as the two fight with her heart beating so fast in her chest that she almost thought that it'll escape her ribcage. A tentacle reaches her and she panics when there are more tentacles going out of the monster's body and is gripping at Zai so tightly that she can hear her whimpering in pain.

Now the next scene is the highlight of her imagination, a product of the drug she swore that she never took, because a light appeared in front of her before the tentacle reaches her and something inside of her snaps and the next thing she knew, the monster is recoiling back in pain and Zai has claws and there are bloody tentacles around her.

There's a voice inside her head, a little voice that tells her to go and touch the monster. She was supposed to be scared shitless but the voice tells her to just go and so she did and touched the monster's head and for some reason, her action made the monster immobile and with a blink of an eye, Zai is beside her, ripping the monster's heart while it shrieks to the night sky before falling in front of them with a loud thud and going back to a human form with a gaping hole in his chest.

The two of them tried to find the missing heart with their phone's flashlight but they couldn't, so after an hour of trying to locate the missing organ, they gave up and hoped that a wild animal will eat it and never to be found.

Hwayatt tried her best to tell her friend what she can remember but the more she tells the details she can remember, the horrified Zai gets. They've never been a violent person so she understands how Zai feels when she tells her how she was the one to rip the guy's heart out of his chest.

Zai looks at the space in front of her, deep in thoughts as she process every information that she just heard. She clenches her hands as as tries to remember a memory she can't recall, trying to feel a heart that she can't remember holding.

"The police will surely send us straight to the asylum when they hear our story." She says after a while of silence. "I believe you because I was with you the whole night and has seen the man turning into a monster but fuck, they'd think that we're insane. This is insane. We're suppose to be dead-drunk right now, not murderers." Zai says as the first sob in that night happens.

A tear escapes her eye and then another, followed by another until she's aggressively wiping her eyes and Hwayatt follows after, tearing up silently as she sits in the couch, energy suddenly leaving her.

"What happened tonight should stay between us. I trust Ayana and Rage but we shouldn't involve them. This is our own mess." Hwayatt whispers as she thinks of their newly married friends, the friends that should be with them tonight, drinking the night away.

"No. They're not to be involved with this. We just have to tell them that we went home if they will ask. Tell everyone that we went home right after we left the party just incase someone finds the body." Zai says as she joins her friend in the couch.

"We're in this together. Let's make sure no one finds out what happened and we'll go in our merry way." Hwayatt added and offers her pinkie finger. Zai links their finger and with their thumbs meeting to seal their promise, she says, "Let's live our criminal lives secretly."

___________

The panic happens early in the morning when a knock woke them up and a worried shout from Ayana when none of them opens the door.

Their friends have a spare key in their apartment so when Rage manages to open the door, Ayana comes inside of their apartment with a look of worry only to shout with anger at the girls who are passed out in their couch smelling so disgusting and the apartment reeking of alcohol.

"Go shower! Fast and we all need to talk." she says with a seriousness that neither of the two has ever seen her so they quickly got up and went to their respective rooms to shower.

When they went back to the living room, the glass door leading to their veranda is widely open and the stench of the alcohol is replaced with the aroma of brewed coffee that is currently steaming in their coffee table while the couple is concentrating at the morning news.

Hwayatt sat beside the couple while massaging her head while Zai opted sitting at the floor and started drinking the coffee that Rage obviously made because Ayana is shit at the kitchen.

"What brought you guys here early in the morning? Aren't you supposed to be starting your three months honeymoon while traveling the world?" Hwayatt asks before looking at the news and suddenly freezing.

Zai didn't notice everyone's strange silence so she continued sipping her coffee in peace but the news caught her attention as well when the news reporter mentions about someone finding a dead body in the woods. Her heart skipped a beat before finally turning her gaze at the TV as well. Panic starting to rise as the news reporter continues reporting the scene.

"It was near the venue last night." Ayana starts to say. "They said that locals saw an unnatural huge wolf entering the woods so they tried following it, probably thinking of catching it and bringing it back as a trophy or something but they saw it digging the ground and that's when they saw the body. It might have smelled the body and was hungry but the locals has shooed it away before it almost ate the man."

"We can't contact you guys so we decided to cancel our flight and moved it for a few days to come and check you. You left the party early last night and the dead body was said to be still new so we were worried that the killer's still around and you're not answering our calls." she started crying so Rage strokes her back and Hwayatt went to hug her and assured her that they're fine and nothing bad happened to them.

"What made everyone think that this is a work of a serial killer?" Zai asks after hearing the word being mentioned by the reporter.

"No weapon was found. He's missing a heart and the police tried their best looking for the missing part but even the dogs can't find it. There's no prints or anything that could lead them to the killer and they said that only an experienced criminal can hide their tracks." Rage answer.

Zai tried to keep it in but the bile in her throat is hard to ignore and so she run to the bathroom and empty her stomach in the toilet. She felt a hand stroke her back and collects her hair to tie but she ignored the person and continues to vomit the food she ate the night before. After what feels like forever, she breathes heavily before standing up to flash the toilet and stands with wobbly legs. Rage helps her to the sink to brush her teeth before going back to where the other two are.

"Are you okay?" Hwayatt asks her and gives her a look that only they know. "I will be." she says before going back to sit in the floor and reaches for her coffee.

The couple stayed for a few more hours before leaving and letting Zai go back to sleep after another round of kneeling in front of the toilet, emptying her stomach. They managed to convince their friends that they drunk way too much last night and a very bad hangover in Zai's part to keep them from worrying.

Zai was thankful for being able to hold the shaking until the couple left and Hwayatt went to her own room to sleep.

She curls in the middle of her bed as she hugs herself and trembles at the memory of the still beating heart in her hand last night. She wasn't able to remember it when Hwayatt told her what happened but right after Rage's explanation about the murder, it's then that she remembers her own hand going through the monster's chest and ripping it's heart out. She can still feel it, the beating of the heart in her hand as it slowly dies and as she closes her eyes, its then that she remembers feeling the heart turning into dust and with an unknown force, she slips into a deep slumber.

In her own room, Hwayatt sits in her bed trying to process what she just saw in her head right after the couple left. It's not exactly a bad one but there's this place that appeared in her head and there's a slow tug in her heart that makes her want to go in that place and the little voice in her head from last night is back and is convincing her to go find that place in her head and that they need her back and they need her to save them, from who? She doesn't know. She's becoming restless, but she's scared to go out, scared to leave the comfort of their apartment.