The elders described them as angelic, with feathered wings and pearlescent hair.

No one mentioned anything about fangs.

The Ancestor tilted its head, studying me with an unsettling stillness—like a cat might study prey. I stumbled back, heart battering against my ribs, every instinct screaming to flee.

And yet… something older than fear held me in place, something deep and ancestral. It whispered:

Do not turn your back on it.

“Who are you?” it asked. Its voice was high and melodic—heartbreakingly beautiful.

“I’m Angelica,” I breathed, panic catching at the edges of my words.

“Angelica.”

It rolled my name across its tongue like a delicacy. Then it smiled, stepping closer until we shared breath. The sweetness of its voice could not mask the coppery tang of blood curling in the air between us.

“What an… angelic name.”

Amusement danced in its eyes, in the slight curl of its lip, as if it had just discovered the punchline of a cosmic joke.

“What are you doing here?”

I wasn’t entirely sure where here was.

I had no answer to give.

I had drunk the bitter brew the elder ladled down my throat. I had endured the fire as it clawed through me. I had opened myself, body and soul, ready to cross the threshold between girl and woman, mortal and more. I was supposed to meet the spirits.

But this—this was something else.

I had watched my sister’s rite: the wild arch of her spine, the guttural screams, the way her limbs moved like wind through flame until she became something other.

But never this.

Was this real?

The danger certainly was.

The Ancestor began to circle. I turned with it, refusing to let it slip from my sight. Something told me that losing sight of it would mean never seeing anything again.

The fire still roared within me—no longer sacred, but feral—pulsing through my veins, flooding my limbs. Screaming something, demanding something. But what?

I couldn’t think. I could only feel the danger moving closer.

It reached out—unhurried, almost tender—and brushed one impossibly long finger along my cheekbone. Then, with delicate precision, it pinched my chin between thumb and forefinger, tilting my face up to meet its gaze.

Its eyes were gold, but not warm—there was no sun in them. Only the hunger of something that remembered what it meant to be worshipped.

“Do you have something for me, my dear?” it whispered.

And something answered.

Not with words—but with heat.

A second fire ignited inside me, older than the rite, deeper than the brew. It rose, coiling upward like smoke through bone, and I felt my body stretch to hold it—my breath catching, my skin prickling with the sudden, electric rightness of it.

Light bled from my fingertips.

The Ancestor stilled.

Its expression shifted—amusement draining into something quieter, darker.

Recognition.

It took a single step back, hands lowering to its sides. Its smile returned, but this time there was no mockery in it.

“Ah,” it breathed. “So that’s where you’ve been.”

It bowed—just slightly, and not without caution.

“We will meet again, Angelica.”

Its voice lingered in the air like incense as the world around me began to unravel—threads of color and sound tugging loose, pulled into some vast and silent elsewhere.

And then—

I was back.

The woven blanket beneath my bare feet was cool. The ritual circle still glowed faintly with dying embers. Smoke drifted in the air. An elder knelt nearby, her eyes heavy with sleep.

I was shaking, breathless, heart still echoing with fire.

And my palm burned.

I looked down.

Etched into the flesh was a pearlescent symbol I didn’t recognize. A spiral surrounded by jagged lines, like a sun being devoured. It pulsed faintly, alive beneath my skin.

I was whole.

But I would never be the same.