Chapter 1

Warmth enveloped her.

The sun draped over her like a golden shroud, its heat bleeding into her skin, coaxing tension from her muscles. A slow, rhythmic hush filled the air—the whisper of waves rolling onto shore, their ebb and flow steady as breath. A breeze stirred, cool against the heat, teasing across her body like a fleeting caress. Beneath her, the sand cradled her form, soft and yielding, shaped by the earth itself.

Stillness. Peace. A world untouched.

Then—

A shadow fell across her.

The warmth vanished for just a moment, stolen by something unseen, and in that moment, her breath caught. The hush of waves remained, unchanged, but her body knew before her mind did. Something was wrong.

Her pulse stuttered, a thin, electric shiver crawling up her spine.

Beach?

The word formed, slow and distant, echoing inside her skull like a question that didn’t belong. It felt ... incorrect. A concept misplaced, a reality that should not be.

Her lashes fluttered, her vision assaulted by light—too bright, too raw. The sky stretched endless above her, impossibly blue, the sun a searing white-gold orb that burned into her retinas. She flinched, pupils constricting, her head swimming from the sudden glare.

Shadows loomed over her.

At first, they were vague—blurry shapes shifting at the edges of her vision, slipping between light and dark like half-formed thoughts. But as the world sharpened around her, so did they.

Her breath faltered, throat tightening around the air she had yet to release.

Massive, bloated figures loomed unnaturally close, their silhouettes familiar yet wrong—as if someone had taken something she should recognize and twisted it, stretched it, distorted it just enough to unsettle. They did not belong. Or perhaps ... she was the one out of place.

Her lungs seized, panic bottling in her throat, her body coiled and primed to scream—

But the creatures beat her to it.

A piercing squawk ripped through the silence. One of the shapes flailed, stubby wings thrashing as it launched skyward in a frantic burst of movement, as if gravity had forgotten to hold it down. Another followed, a round-bodied thing that quivered before unleashing a mutated shriek—somewhere between a dying goat and the tortured wail of metal being torn apart—before scrambling away on too-short legs, kicking up puffs of sand in its wake.

Only one remained.

The cat.

Horrifyingly humanoid.

It did not panic. Did not flail or flee. It simply watched. Its massive, luminous eyes latched onto hers, unblinking, unreadable. A single breath stretched between them—too long, too still—before it turned, its tail flicking in a single sharp motion, and vanished into the distance.

She exhaled, a tremor of air that shook as she took a breath in. Her pulse hammering beneath her ribs. Sand shifted beneath her palms, coarse grains rolling over her fingers, dry and weightless, scattering as she moved. Some clung stubbornly to the dampness of her skin, rough like tiny specks of grit embedded in her palms, but it was more than just her hands. As she straightened, the sensation spread—grating against her thighs, pressing into the curve of her hips, grinding against the small of her back. A thousand tiny grains mapped the shape of her body, spilling over her skin in uneven waves A mixture of fear tangled with the weight of realization. Not just on her hands. Not just on her arms. But lower—too low. The dry grit scratched against the backs of her thighs, settled in the dip of her spine, dusted the slope of her stomach. The sand traced over her skin in places it shouldn’t. Her breath faltered. The warmth of the sun kissed bare flesh. A breeze licked her bare breasts, a whisper of air slipped between her legs, intimate and unforgiving. Fear tangled with the weight of realization, knotting in her stomach She wasn’t wearing anything. Every muscle in her body locked at once, tension snapping through her limbs as if she could somehow pull herself tighter—smaller—against the sensation. Her lungs forgot how to work, a sharp, strangled inhale barely making it past her throat. The air burned too cold, like it had turned against her—suddenly weaponized, no longer a mere breeze but a reminder. It brushed over her stomach, ghosted down her arms, curled against her back, making her painfully aware of how much there was to feel. Heat crawled up her throat, a sharp, twisting flush of mortification, but beneath it—something heavier. A weight curling low in her stomach, unfamiliar and unnameable.