Roen remained where he was, staring at the space Elias had occupied seconds earlier. A familiar voice suddenly rang out behind him.
"Made a new friend?" she asked.
Roen snapped his head toward the sound, only to meet the gaze of an unexpected face. He frowned, studying her. She was the last person he had expected to see right now.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
"Can't I even come visit an old friend?" she replied.
"'Friend,' huh? Sure." He glanced at his watch, his impatience obvious.
"Come on. Anyway, who was it?" she pressed. "Did you make a new friend? Tell me!"
Roen opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, another girl's voice cut in from a distance, calling out to the one beside him.
"Luna!" she shouted.
Luna sighed softly. "Her again."
"I'm coming!" she called back.
Luna glanced over her shoulder at him. "Guess I'll find you later, Roen Harth."
"Scram already," Roen muttered.
—
A few minutes later, Elias reached home. He stood outside for a moment, lost in thought, before finally ringing the bell.
A girl's voice called out from down the hall. "Is that you, 'Lias?"
When no answer came, she walked up to the door and peered through the peephole. It was him.
She opened the door to see Elias looking completely worn out.
"What's wrong? It's not like you to stay quiet." Concern crept into her expression.
"Sorry… I'm just a bit tired today," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Was it the club again?" she asked, tilting her head slightly.
"Nah… I just didn't sleep well last night," he muttered, eyes half-closed.
She noticed the dark circles under his eyes and remembered seeing his lights on past midnight.
Elias walked toward his room, occasionally bumping into things.
"I hope everything's alright at school," she thought, frowning lightly.
—
Elias, hair still damp with a towel draped around his neck, sat at his desk typing. He looked like he'd just stepped out of the shower, now fully focused on the screen.
"The web should have something… at least," he thought.
He hit Enter. Dozens of search results appeared, but none mentioned anything about skinwalkers "in real life"—only fiction.
With a sigh, he deleted the text and typed 'shape-shifting' instead.
This time, buried among unrelated results, was one from… a news channel?
"'The Rise of a Rare Neuropsychiatric Phenomenon'? What!" Elias exclaimed. The title sounded… weird. He couldn't make sense of the title in relation to the event.
An event like that should've made headlines, yet he'd never heard of it.
Regardless, he clicked the link. The article was nearly twenty years old. That explained it.
His eyes wandered over the screen.
The article described a man who claimed to have melted into something unnatural. He had been screaming that the world was dissolving. Doctors reported he was exhibiting hallucination-like symptoms and extreme distress, so they transferred him for psychiatric observation.
"Am I… going insane?" he thought, fear written all over his face.
To Elias, the claims sounded strange. But what he could say about it himself wasn't much better.
He scrolled. No follow-ups.
While he remained absorbed in the screen, Elaine's voice came from behind.
"Shouldn't you be asleep?" she asked.
"Oh—uh—it's just—" Elias stammered, his words trailing off.
She peeked in. And, froze.
"Where did you… find this?" Elaine whispered, her eyes wide.