Chapter 1: The Wrong Shift

Chapter 1: The Wrong Shift

The bite of cold concrete seeped through Lyra’s jeans, a familiar discomfort on the last night of the lunar cycle. Down here, in the basement cage their father had reinforced with silver-laced steel, the air tasted of old iron and damp earth. A single, bare bulb cast long, dancing shadows that made the familiar space feel predatory. Above them, the low hum of the lunar dampeners was a weak prayer against the tidal pull of the full moon.

“Stop pacing, Kael. You’re going to wear a trench in the floor.” Lyra’s voice was a low murmur, barely disturbing the tense silence. She sat with her back against the wall, knees drawn to her chest, watching her twin.

Kael didn’t stop. He moved like a caged animal, which, Lyra supposed, was precisely what he was. Nineteen years they had spent locked in this basement on every full moon, waiting for a change that never came. For her, it was a relief. For him, it was a nightly failure. He was all coiled muscle and frustrated energy, his dark, ambitious eyes fixed on the grimy transom window high on the wall, where a sliver of impossible white light sliced through the gloom.

“I can feel it tonight, Lyra,” he rasped, his hands clenching and unclenching. “It’s different. Stronger. I’m not going to spend another year as a latent, cowering in a cage while the real Weres are out there.”

“The ‘real Weres’ are registered, tagged, and locked in government facilities,” she countered, her tone dry. “Be grateful we’re just latents. Be grateful we’re invisible.”

His glare was sharp. “Elara wasn’t invisible.”

The name landed between them like a stone, sinking into the silence. Elara. Their older sister, whose First Shift had been perfect, powerful. And whose subsequent death was a black hole in their family, a constant, unspoken warning. Lyra’s throat tightened. Elara would have called Kael an idiot for what he was about to do. She, however, could only watch, her anxiety a cold knot in her stomach.

From outside, a faint, high-pitched whine drifted down—a BSR patrol drone making its sweep. The sound made Lyra’s skin crawl. The Bureau of Shifter Regulation saw them not as people, but as a plague to be managed. Anomalies like them, undocumented latents from a middling urban clan, were just errors to be corrected. Dissected.

Kael ignored the drone. He knelt in the center of the room, where he’d spent the afternoon meticulously drawing a complex circle in silver-laced chalk. Inside it lay a bundle of dark, pungent herbs—wolfsbane, moonpetal, and other, rarer things he’d bought on the shadier corners of the digital underground. It was a ritual. Ancient, illegal, and incredibly dangerous. An attempt to rip open the door to his transformation instead of waiting for the lock to turn.

“This is insane, Kael,” Lyra pleaded, her voice losing its edge of cynicism. “Dad said this stuff can burn out your genes. You could end up with nothing. Or worse.”

“Worse than this?” He gestured around the concrete box. “This is a prison, Lyra. I want what’s ours by right. The strength. The power. The freedom.” He lit a match, the sudden flare making his face a mask of shadow and fierce determination. The herbs began to smolder, releasing a thick, acrid smoke that clawed at the back of Lyra’s throat.

The moonlight through the small window seemed to intensify, shifting from a soft glow to a physical weight. It poured into the room, ignoring the dampeners, drawn by the ritual’s call. The silver chalk lines of the circle began to shimmer with an ethereal light.

Kael gritted his teeth, his knuckles white as he gripped the floor. A low groan escaped his lips, a sound of pure agony. His muscles bunched and writhed under his skin, his whole body trembling violently.

“Kael!” Lyra scrambled forward, stopping just short of the glowing circle. This was it. It was actually happening. Terror warred with a sliver of awe in her chest.

He threw his head back and screamed, a raw, guttural sound that was already more beast than man. Lyra could hear the sickening pop and grind of his bones beginning to shift, to elongate. The genetic lottery, the one she’d always been terrified of winning, was finally paying out for her brother. The air crackled with raw energy, a silver tide of lunar power flooding the basement, converging entirely on Kael. It was blinding, overwhelming.

Then, something went wrong.

The energy, which had been focused on Kael like a spear, suddenly wavered. For a heart-stopping second, it hung in the air, a roiling, silver tempest. Kael’s screams choked off into a gasp, his body going limp within the circle.

And the storm turned.

It slammed into Lyra.

It was not a force, but an invasion. A billion volts of pure, biological information surged through her veins. It felt like being ripped apart and rewritten at the cellular level. She screamed, but the sound was stolen from her lungs. Her vision dissolved into a blinding matrix of light, a cascade of genetic code flashing behind her eyes.

Her own body, the one she knew with its lean, athletic familiarity, became alien. The pain was excruciating, a thousand times worse than the worst full moon fever she’d ever endured. Her bones felt like they were melting, reforming. Her muscles twisted into new configurations. It wasn't the lengthening of limbs or the sprouting of fur she’d always read about in fear. It was something else. A rearrangement. A horrifying, impossible reshaping.

It felt like her very code—the flawed, latent Were DNA she had cursed her whole life—was being violently debugged.

The surge lasted only a few seconds, but it stretched into an eternity of agony. When it receded, it left a deafening silence in its wake. Lyra collapsed onto the floor, gasping, her body slick with sweat. The acrid smoke of the herbs still hung in the air, but the silver light was gone.

Across the room, Kael lay unconscious in the center of his broken circle, the chalk lines scuffed and dead. He was unchanged. Pale, drained, but still himself.

A shudder wracked Lyra’s frame. She pushed herself up, her limbs feeling strangely heavy, powerful in a way they hadn’t before. Her hands… they looked bigger. Broader. She touched her face, her fingers tracing unfamiliar lines. The stubble of a jaw that wasn’t hers. The sharp angle of a nose she had only ever seen from the outside.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, desperate drumbeat. No. It wasn’t possible. This wasn’t a Shift. This was… a mistake. A monstrous glitch in reality.

Stumbling on legs that felt both foreign and intimately familiar, she lurched towards a small, cracked mirror hanging by the basement stairs. Her reflection stared back, but it wasn't her own watchful hazel eyes, her own wavy dark hair.

It was Kael.

The same restless brown eyes, now wide with her own horror. The same strong jaw, the same muscular build. She was wearing her own worn hoodie and cargo pants, but they stretched taut over a frame that was undeniably, impossibly her brother’s.

She had become him.

The ritual hadn't given Kael his wolf. It had bypassed him entirely, taking the raw, chaotic power of the moon and forcing a transformation on the only other compatible vessel in the room. Her.

Lyra stared at her brother’s face in the mirror, her own terrified thoughts echoing inside a skull that was not hers. Outside, the BSR drone whined again, its sound closer this time, a mechanical predator circling its prey. And down in the concrete cage, a monster stared back at her from the mirror, while her twin, the real Kael, lay silent and still on the cold stone floor.