Shattered Beasts
A dead, chilling silence suffocated the room. Khalid's neck snapping still played incessantly in my ears, ringing painfully. My hand clamped over my mouth, muffling the ragged breaths spilling out my lips.
I gawked at his body, my eyes heavy with horror. He lay there limp, lifeless, and scattered in a way that screamed of his finality.
I did that.
The thoughts hammered in my skull, relentless and shooting. My fingers twitched involuntarily, the painful itching in my palms now unbearable. I wanted to tear my skin apart, to scrape away whatever it was that had pushed me to that moment.
I could hear words mumbling from behind me, yet all that registered was the sound of snapping and my thundering heartbeat fastening in my chest.
“Oh God,” I croaked into my palm, shaking as my body seemed to burn under the weight of my action.
My knees gave out beneath me, and I collapsed, hard on my knees. A sickening crack split the air, followed by a torrent of pain shooting through my leg. My knees. I’d broken them both on impact. I rested my weight on my hands.
A scream tore from my throat, raw and animalistic. It felt like my body was tearing itself up as it sought to reject the agony and guilt all at once.
“Khalid…” I choked on his name, my voice was strangled, hoarse, and loud compared to the screaming behind me. “I killed him.“
Saying it aloud made it worse, as though the truth had grown claws and was tearing into me from the inside instead. The world tilted dangerously, my breath hitched, ragged gasps ringing in my ears as my heart tightened.
Something else was happening, I could feel it pushing my skin, pulling my flesh, forcing itself into my bones. Pain boiled everywhere. In my arm, my knee, my chest, my head. It was intolerable. My body was breaking apart, fragment by fragment.
“Let me out,” a growl rang in my head.
My hands clawed at the ground, nails scraping against the cold floor as something primal scraped at me, twisting and writhing.
“Stop it… Stop it!” I begged no one in particular, my voice rising in desperation.
The itching in my hands had spread, burning up my arms like acid pouring down, eating away everything on its path. Heat consumed me, sweat coating my body like a second skin.
Ethan’s roar of authority cut through the haze, slurred yet commanding. “Harlyn, calm down!“
I snapped my head toward him, and my vision fractured. His face blurred in and out of focus “Don’t tell me to calm down!” I snarled, the sound foreign, guttural.
The world tilted again, and I felt myself slipping. My nails dug into my palms, and I felt something wet and tepid. Blood. My blood. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. My body wouldn’t stop shaking.
I was unraveling.
“Make it stop,” I whimpered, my voice breaking. “Please… someone… make it stop.”
A sharp pain exploded in my back, and I could feel my back arching violently. I screamed again like a tortured animal being torn apart. I couldn't endure any more of it.
The last thing I saw before the pain swallowed me whole was Ethan’s face. His mouth moved but the words were lost to the roaring in my room. Darkness engulfed me.
Opening my eyes, I was met with a quiet scene. The floor beneath me wasn’t cold or hard anymore. I groaned, my brows knitting in confusion. The floor was odd on my skin, rough, damp, and peculiarly alive. My fingers curled into the dirt, and I blinked against the moonlight filtering through a canopy of impossibly tall trees on the grass I was lying on.
The forest. I tried to shift but my body ached in response. Scanning through the woods, I immediately caught on to where I was.
I was back in the dreamscape, but this time, I wasn’t standing. I was sprawled on the ground. I stirred my body to sit up, but my limbs felt stiff. Something was anchoring me in place.
“You know,” a passing wind hummed as the grass swayed. “When I put the curse of your shift on your body, I hadn't really anticipated you would ever get into a moment where you will carry it out so early,” a figure mused.
My doppelgänger.
I recognized the sultry way she seemed to utter things in my voice. Yet I had no idea what she meant. I couldn't bring myself to care about the reality of my current situation.
“I killed someone,” I croaked as I confessed out loud.
“I know,” she purred, albeit too wickedly.
Another sway of the grass and I felt a sudden presence next to me. I shifted in its direction to catch my pale eary look alike looking at me with content.
“Didn't think you had it in you too,” she said yet there was something in the way she spoke that suggested she was just as displeased as she was pleased.
Still in utter confusion, I asked. “What do you know?“
I stared at her, summoning the strength to slowly lift my upper body.
“I know that right now, that little beast is most likely making a show of itself to whoever was in the room with you,” she pursed her lips.
“What beast?“ I rubbed my arm. Almost immediately, my body jolted, electricity buzzing between my fingers.
“You're so disconnected it's quite embarrassing now,” she rolled her crystal eyes, her hair pooling behind her shoulders.
She faded into smoke before fading a few feet away from me, with her back turned. “You're shifting,” she suddenly announced in a monotone.
I should be happy yet I could feel the bitterness of something wrong clogging my throat.
“You're shifting because you killed someone, the only condition in the curse I put on you,” she turned to face me as she revealed.