Page 18 of Legacy Found

And then he shifts.

There's no warning, no dramatic pose. One second he's a man standing in the light, and the next his spine bows, wrong, too far, and a sound comes out of him that isn't pain and isn't quite anything human either. His hands hit the floor and they aren't hands by the time they land. There's a rush, and I hear someone screaming and distantly understand it isn't me because I can't make a single sound at all.

It takes seconds. It feels like it takes the rest of my life.

And then there's a wolf standing in the east meeting room of Lufgard Castle.

An enormous one. Bigger than any dog, than any wolf I've seen in any documentary, chest deep, shoulders high, dark fur — and its eyes are Jon's eyes, that same warm patient brown, watching us out of an animal's face, and that is the part that breaks me because I know those eyes.

It doesn't move. It doesn't growl. It just stands there, and waits.

My brain, my poor rational brain, gets to work immediately, because it has to, because the alternative is unthinkable.

Animatronics. That's the first one. It's a machine, a puppet, an incredibly good one, there's a man in a — no. No, I watched the man become it. There was no seam, no swap, I never looked away.

A hallucination. Something in the coffee, in the mountain air, mass suggestion, I'm not well, I hit my head on that trail two weeks ago and I've been in a coma this whole time dreaming a castle — but Sophia is sobbing beside me and I can feel her shaking against my arm.

A projection. A trick of light, a screen, a — it just turned its head. It just turned its massive head and its ears moved and I felt the air stir and the floorboards took its weight with a creak I heard in my teeth.

Every explanation I reach for crumbles the second I hold it up to the thing standing just a few feet away from me, breathing, real, watching.

I run out of explanations.

The room comes apart.

Sophia has backed all the way into her chair and then some, knees up, crying openly now, the loud helpless kind. Declan is on his feet — I didn't see him stand — and he's put himself squarely between the wolf and the rest of us, huge and pale and absolutely unarmed, doing it anyway, on pure instinct. Renzo has scrambled backward, tripped over his own chair, and gone down hard, and he's still going, crab-crawling toward the wall, saying "Nope," over and over, "nope, nope, nope," like the word is a door he can close. Freya hasn't moved a muscle. She's frozen, rigid, eyes locked on the wolf, unable to look away or look toward, caught.

And I'm just staring. Rooted. My lungs have forgotten the job. My pulse is slamming so hard I can feel it in my throat, my hands, the backs of my knees. Every part of me is screaming the thing Jon told me it would — run, run, run — and I can't make my body do anything at all.

Only one person in the room isn't looking at the wolf.

Torres.

He's still in his seat, half-turned, and he's watching us. Sweeping the room, face to face, checking each of us the way he checked the trail corners all week — Sophia, Renzo on the floor, Freya frozen, Declan standing guard, me. He's not afraid of the wolf. Not even a little. He's afraid for us, and I don't understand how I can see that so clearly when I can barely see straight, but I can.

The wolf lowers its head, slow and deliberate, a gesture so unmistakably gentle it makes no sense on something that size — and its shape blurs again, and Jon is crouched on the floor, human, breathing hard, with hands that are just hands again.

He stands, pulls on his jackets and looks at us. Nobody says a word. Nobody can.

Then everyone says every word at once.

It erupts — Sophia and Renzo and me and even Declan all talking, over each other, none of it landing, a wall of what and how and that's not possible and do it again and don't you dare do it again. I'm trying to get a sentence out and I can't, my mouth keeps starting and stalling, my whole vocabulary reduced to fragments.

Under all of it, low and even, Torres says: "Take a breath."

Nobody listens. The noise doesn't even dip.

He doesn't look surprised. He nods once, to himself, like that was exactly what he expected, and lets us burn through it.

It's Renzo, still half on the floor, who finally gets a full sentence out, high and cracking: "You're — you're telling us we're all going to turn into that?"

Jon opens his mouth to answer.

And Torres, quiet, beats him to it. "Not today."

Everyone stops. Every head turns to him.

He’s leaned forward now, elbows on his knees, and he looks around at all of us, his expression steady. "I know it feels like your whole life just exploded," he says.