The Challenge  

The shower water turned pink around her ankles.

Sera watched it swirl down the drain without blinking, her palms braced against the cool tile wall. The cabin's tiny bathroom didn't have much—just a curtain, a small window, and a rusted mirror—but for the first time in years, she felt like she belonged somewhere.

She wasn't shaking. She wasn't starving. She wasn't forcing herself to stay still.

The creature inside her was full, finally silent after years of howling.

When she stepped out, the cold air didn't make her flinch. Her skin, still wet, steamed against the room's chill, but she felt… good. Not just calm—powerful. Like her muscles had been reforged in fire and hunger, like every sense had been sharpened into something new.

She dressed quickly: dark jeans, a black shirt, a worn jacket. But before she left the cabin, she padded barefoot to the small mirror above the sink and opened the worn makeup bag she kept in her duffel.

Foundation first—two layers to dull the lavender hue that clung to her skin like frost. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough under artificial light. Then the powder. Neutral tones, always. Enough to make her look sickly rather than inhuman.

She popped in the brown contact lenses one by one, blinking hard until the black void of her natural eyes was hidden. She hated the feeling of them—like plastic film across her soul—but it was better than the alternative. She wasn't ready to be stared at like a freak. Or worse, recognized by someone who knew what black eyes really meant.

She didn't bother with perfume or lip gloss. She didn't need to look pretty; she just needed to be forgettable.

She tied her white hair back and laced up her boots. It was just past 7:30 a.m. Her first class was supposed to start in thirty minutes. It would take at least forty-five minutes to drive back to campus, assuming that the roads were clear and there was no traffic.

But after last night, she decided to try something… after all, it wasn't like she had a car at the cabin. There really was only one mode of transportation that she had access to.

She locked the cabin door behind her and, choosing the road less travelled, started to run.

The world blurred beneath her feet. The snow didn't slow her down at all; the light dusting simply gave her shoes a better grip that had never happened before. Her breath was steady, her pulse smooth, and the trees flew past in streaks of white and green. She leapt over fallen logs without slowing. Climbed under a bridge like it was a staircase, and sprinted along the edge of the lake with wind in her teeth.

It took her ten minutes to get to campus, and that was including slowing down when she got to the heavier populated areas of City H.

Ten.

And she hadn't even broken a sweat. Chuckling under her breath, she shook her head. Apparently, if it happened in movies, it could also happen in real life, too.

Adrenaline buzzed beneath her skin, but it wasn't coming from the creature this time. It was her. Her own mind, riding the high of control and speed, and freedom.

She pulled open the side door, slipped into the psychology building, and walked calmly down the hall like she hadn't just outrun every human limitation she'd ever known.

By the time she entered the lecture hall, only a few students had arrived. She took her usual seat—third row from the back, near the door—and settled in, resting her chin on her hand as she stared forward.

But something felt… different.

And this time, it had nothing to do with her dreaming of eating everyone to control the blood lust.

The room slowly filled with students, tired, yawning, half-distracted by their phones or paper deadlines. But every so often, one of them would step past her, and something in her neck would prickle. A shiver crawled down her spine, unrelated to the temperature.

Her eyes locked on two students sitting near the back. A guy and a girl. Laughing. Whispering to each other over a shared phone screen.

They looked completely normal.

But the creature inside of her was sitting up and taking notice of them. Not as a potential food source, but as something else entirely. The creature buzzed in anticipation of a fight, and Sera could feel her muscles locking where she was sitting at the table.

One word flashed in her mind over and over again…. 'Challenge'.

But that was impossible. These students weren't doing anything to her, they weren't even looking her way, so how could the creature think that they were some type of hidden challenge?

She turned her head slowly, scanning the rest of the lecture hall. No one else made her feel like this. Just the two of them.

They didn't look sick.

They didn't look dangerous.

But they felt dangerous. And every nerve in her body agreed.

It was a breath of relief when class was over and done with. With one last warning from the teacher about a pop quiz tomorrow, Sera gathered her books as quickly as she could while still appearing normal, and she took off from the classroom, trying to get as much distance between herself and the couple.

The only problem was that it wasn't just the pair in her class. As she walked the halls between classes, it happened again and again.

A woman exiting the bookstore. A boy near the campus café. A man talking too loudly on his phone outside the student union building.

Each one set off that same cold warning under her skin.

It wasn't like everyone on campus was a threat… just pockets of them, here and there. Just a few.

But it was more than enough for her fraying sanity.

It was like her body was scanning every person she passed, tagging some invisible thread in the air and sounding the alarm before her mind could catch up.

She didn't know what it meant; she didn't know what she was sensing. But whatever it was… it was quickly taking over her very being.