"Kelsey?" a woman in her mid-thirties called out as soon as she entered the old mansion with two men in uniform behind her.
"Kelsey!" she called out to her daughter for the second time. She sighed and checked the bedroom, but there was no response.
"Kelsey?" she called again, this time nervously, as she walked toward the gallery room, where her daughter drew and stored her artwork.
Kelsey never made friends with other children—she formed bonds with animals and whispered to trees. It was an odd behaviour for a girl her age, and most people found it unsettling. Her teacher, Miss Anna, once pulled Cynthia aside with a troubled look and quietly urged her to take Kelsey to a psychiatric clinic. "This is the modern world," she said firmly. "Magic and superpowers don't exist. Whatever she believes she's seeing… It's not real."
Kelsey chose a dark crow as her best friend and named him Állos. His favourite perch was her left shoulder, like a shadow with wings. That was how she went to the market… and even to school. Since pets were allowed, no one could stop her. One afternoon, her teacher, Miss Anna, frowned and said, "Kelsey, your pet is scaring the other children."
Kelsey gave her a cold, sideways glance and replied with a calm, almost mocking tone, "That's a shame… for the timid souls."
"Then I'll have to change my pet," Kelsey added casually.
Miss Anna clapped her hands with relief, a smile breaking across her face. She couldn't take the students' screams or the daily complaints from their parents anymore.
"That would be much better," she agreed, pointing approvingly.
"I'll bring Yo-Yo from now on," Kelsey said with a smirk.
Állos let out a sharp, almost human-like cackle that echoed through the classroom, startling the teacher.
"Yo-Yo?" Anna asked, her voice suddenly uncertain. "What… what kind of pet is that?"
She shifted on her feet, her smile fading. There was always something unsettling about this girl an eerie silence that seemed to follow her, a cold energy that made the hairs on her arms rise.
Her grandmother's old tales whispered through her mind: Dark human beings who walked like shadows, who wore the night like clothing and had eyes that looked straight through you.
Kelsey looked at her with a chilling calm. Her silence said more than words ever could.
Kelsey paused for a moment before turning to look at her. "He's one of the rarest snakes I've ever seen," she said calmly. Anna's smile vanished instantly. Állos's creepy laughter echoed again, loud and unsettling.
"Yo-Yo is a black, big, and oddly cute anaconda," Kelsey continued. "Two hundred inches long. He lives in the Forbidden Shrine of Mera the evil queen of the Dark Kingdom."
A sudden chill crawled down Anna's spine.
"Holy Ghost!" she gasped, quickly making the sign of the cross across her face.
"You know what?" she stammered. "I think Állos is… is more beautiful and cute than, um, Mr. Yo-Yo. Please, keep bringing Állos!" she blurted, then turned and hurried off.
Kelsey adjusted the collar of her black chiffon dress and sighed. "That's an obvious line from a stripper," she muttered, watching Anna's retreating figure. Állos laughed like a full-blown psycho.
"Mrs. Cynthia, where is your daughter?"
The voice snapped Kelsey's mother back to reality.
"Kelsey..." Cynthia sighed, her shoulders slumping. It was time to stop pretending.
"Okay," her eyes fixed on the ground. "Say whatever you want to say."
The men stood silently in front of her, dressed in sharp navy-blue uniforms. On their badges were three haunting letters MHS.
"Excuse me?" Henry asked, clearly confused.
"She'll hear you," Cynthia rolled her eyes.
"Believe me, my daughter is not a mutant," she added hastily, not wanting them to get the wrong idea.
The two men exchanged a glance and then sat comfortably on the couch, smirking.
"Interesting..." one of them muttered.
Cynthia's heart pounded.
MHS Mutant Hunters, for Christ's sake! Why wouldn't she be nervous? These men didn't just hunt mutants... they took them, dissected them, used their bodies for terrifying experiments and advanced technologies. What if they decided Kelsey was one of them?
She had heard the terrifying truths about that organisation. They weren't just a company they were hunters.
Mutant Hunters. They hunted Immortals and any supernatural beings that dared to exist. Once captured, these creatures were killed, and their powers harvested to create extraordinary technological tools and weapons that would benefit humanity.
Their most feared creation was a machine known as Mera Fusa, a terrifying device capable of stripping powers from any magical being. It was named after the infamous Queen Mera of the Black Kingdom.
Cynthia knew the dark legend. Queen Mera was once a powerful ruler... until she fell into the trap of a cursed soul...a time traveller whose arrival changed everything. That time traveller was the reason humans now possessed Mera.
Queen Mera and Mera Fusa...it wasn't a coincidence. Cynthia was convinced of that fact.
She had once searched the meaning of the word "Fusa" out of curiosity, and what she found made her blood run cold. "Fusa" meant "power." Mera Fusa... Mera's Power.
"Rest assured," Henry said calmly, breaking the silence. "We never said your daughter is a mutant."
"We're just... concerned about what we found in her drawing book," Jerry added.
Cynthia's expression hardened. Her disappointment was instant and sharp."So, you've been stalking my daughter," she said coldly. That was usually the first step—observe, report, capture. Every supernatural case started that way.
Jerry raised both hands slightly, shaking his head. "Not exactly," he said. "Seeing her drawings was just a... coincidence." But Cynthia wasn't convinced. Coincidences didn't exist when it came to the MHS.
"To be honest, Mrs. Cynthia, you'll need to cooperate with us," Henry said, his tone suddenly firmer. "We found your daughter alone… at Rock Star Royal University."Cynthia froze.
What?
What was Kelsey doing in that creepy, abandoned university? That place had been shut down for decades, ruled by ghost stories and shadows.
Why is everything about this girl so dark… so strange? No wonder. No wonder she attracted the attention of the Mutant Hunters.
Jerry leaned forward, a knowing smile tugging at his lips. "Shocked?"
"That's not even the most interesting part." He exchanged a glance with Henry before continuing. "She sat right in front of the tall golden statue of Alpha Lease… and started to draw."He paused. "But what she drew… looked nothing like the statue."
That was why they were here. They had no idea how the girl had vanished, right in front of them after they'd shouted for her to stop. She had simply disappeared.
Cynthia sighed deeply. That sounded exactly like her daughter. But the statue… that was what stuck in her mind. She had seen it before, among the sketches pinned up in Kelsey's gallery room.
"Can you tell me what she drew?" she asked carefully. Henry and Jerry exchanged a look. "A book," Henry said flatly.
Cynthia blinked, then rolled her eyes. "A book? That's what this is all about? Seriously?" She folded her arms. "Why was that such a big deal to you, huh, Mr. Henry?" she asked, clearly annoyed.
Henry let out a dry laugh. "I wouldn't be here if it were just an ordinary book," he smirked, voice dropping lower.
"She drew the Book of Legends," Jerry whispered dramatically.
"What legend?" Cynthia snapped, her patience running dangerously thin. She was tired of their games and more tired of how they watched her daughter like a suspect. If they were here, it only meant one thing: Kelsey had been labelled. And once the MHS confirmed she wasn't fully human… they would kill her with no mercy or exceptions.
Henry leaned forward, his voice dropping low.
"The Book of Aethers." Cynthia's breath caught. She stared at them in disbelief. "Book of what?" she whispered.
No. No, no, no…
If Kelsey had any connection to that book, if she had seen it, touched it, drawn it, there would be no escape from the Mutant Hunters.
And they both knew it. If the MHS confirmed her connection to that book…Kelsey would be hunted like the rest.