She walked for a while after departing from the place of her rebirth, placing one foot in front of the other with determined enthusiasm. At first it felt symbolic and dramatic, like the beginning of an important journey that would later be recounted in ominous whispers.
After approximately ten minutes, however, she discovered that walking was, in fact, quite slow.
She paused mid-stride and considered this revelation very seriously.
“This will not do,” she informed the empty air, which did not argue because it knew better than that.
With a thoughtful hum, she reached back, both metaphorically and physically, and began adjusting herself. Flesh shifted beneath her skin with a soft, wet ripple. Bones extended, lengthened, and restructured with careful precision. From her shoulder blades burst a pair of wings, unfolding outward in an impressive display.
They were absolutely not white.
White wings were stupid.
Her past self had made that extremely clear in the book, and she trusted her past self implicitly because her past self was amazing. Also, she had seen a pigeon earlier while walking, and that had fully cemented her opinion. The pigeon had possessed small, unimpressive white-gray wings and had looked generally unimposing.
Why would anyone deliberately choose pigeon wings when dragon wings were clearly available as an option?
She flexed her new appendages proudly. They were vast and dark, the membranes stretched between elongated fingers like polished obsidian shot through with faint crimson veins. When they caught the light, they shimmered faintly, more batlike than avian, and far more dramatic.
“Much better,” she decided.
She crouched slightly, gave a powerful downward sweep of her wings, and launched herself into the sky.
Flying, she quickly discovered, was significantly more efficient.
The ground blurred beneath her as she gained altitude, the wind tearing eagerly at her hair and clothes IF SHE HAD ANY, which she would address later. She soared forward with impressive speed, cutting through the air like something born to dominate it.
After some time, she reached a coastline.
The ocean stretched out endlessly before her, dark and rolling, reflecting the dim light of the sky in restless shimmers. She did not slow. Instead, she angled upward slightly and continued flying in the opposite direction, wings beating in steady, powerful rhythms.
Eventually, she encountered another coastline on the far side.
She hovered there for a moment, frowning thoughtfully.
She had gone from land to water to land to water again rather quickly, all things considered. Given her speed (and she was very fast) this suggested something mildly inconvenient.
“I am on an island,” she concluded.
That was not inherently terrible, but it did raise logistical concerns. Islands, while picturesque, were often separated from larger landmasses by inconvenient amounts of water. If she intended to conquer and improve the entire world, being stranded somewhere obscure might slow her ambitions.
Hopefully, she was not too far from the mainland. That would cause problems later, and she preferred her problems to be dramatic and intentional rather than geographic accidents.
Rather than immediately crossing more ocean, she decided it would be prudent to investigate the island more thoroughly. So instead of flying straight outward again, she adjusted her course and began traveling along the length of the coastline.
She flew for quite some time, observing forests, smaller clusters of buildings, winding roads, and patches of farmland. Eventually, however, the terrain shifted. Structures grew denser, roads multiplied countlessly, and lights gathered into constellations of artificial brightness.
And she saw it, a city.
It rose ahead of her in sprawling magnificence, stretching outward in all directions. From her vantage point near the edge, she could see buildings layered one behind another, some tall and reflective, others squat and functional. Streets were packed with movement, with tiny figures flowing along sidewalks and clustered at intersections.
She descended slowly, landing on a rooftop near the outskirts so she could observe more discreetly.
She did not have much of a reference for how large a large city was supposed to be. Her memories were somewhat hazy in places, like a book left out in the rain. However, this place seemed enormous. From where she stood, the city extended as far as she could see, a continuous spread of civilization and noise.
There were countless people.
At least hundreds.
Possibly even thousands.
A nearby sign was mounted at street level, covered in what appeared to be apespeak—some strange dialect composed of angular symbols and structured lines. She squinted at it thoughtfully.
Naturally, she was amazing and perfect, so she deciphered it with impressive ease.
Either that, or she had subconsciously gleaned the language from one of the lovely creatures she had previously gifted, absorbing their knowledge of both written and spoken forms into herself as part of her intrinsic brilliance.
She considered this.
“Nah,” she decided. “It was probably the first thing.”
The sign identified the city as Hamilton.
Hamilton.
She nodded with solemn approval.
Surely this had to be the largest city in the nation. There had to be tens of thousands of people here. That was a tremendous amount. She was fairly certain most mortal gatherings were far smaller, perhaps a few dozen huts clustered nervously together.
Yes.
This was ideal.
This was where she would make her mark. Where she would hunt for delicious, vulnerable prey. Where she would reshape the world one improvement at a time.
However, as she glanced down at herself and then at the clothed mortals bustling along the sidewalks below, she realized there was an immediate practical issue.
She did not blend in.
At all.
Before any grand plans could unfold, she would need clothing so that she could walk among them unnoticed, indistinguishable from the locals until she chose otherwise.
She also needed a name. Mortals had names, it seemed important to them.
What would be a good name?
She tilted her head, allowing vague impressions to drift up through her mind like bubbles rising from deep water. Fragments of memory flickered… sounds, tones, half-remembered feelings, then something clicked.
“Umbra!” she giggled, clasping her hands together in delight.
That would be an excellent name. It sounded dramatic, mysterious, importantly important.
Very unique, too.
“Yes,” she declared softly to the glowing city below. “The world will come to worship and revere the name Umbra.”
The wind tugged at her dark wings as though in agreement.
The week had been, in what Luna considered to be a truly unfair understatement, completely and utterly insane.
It had begun with her losing her job, which on its own would have been stressful enough, except that the reason she lost it was because the entire company turned out to be a front for something deeply illegal. There had been men in suits, government badges, confiscated computers, and hushed conversations that made everyone in the office pretend they had always suspected something was off. By the end of the day, the doors were locked, the website was gone, and Luna was technically unemployed due to criminal conspiracy she had not even known she was adjacent to.
The day before that delightful revelation, her girlfriend had dumped her over coffee with the sort of strained gentleness that made it worse. There had been talk of “needing space” and “different life directions,” which felt especially ironic now that Luna’s life direction appeared to be spiraling into apocalyptic absurdity.
And the day before that, as if the universe had been carefully stacking chaos in ascending order, a monster had fallen out of a literal glowing portal in the middle of the street and then immediately been hit by a bus.
Luna had seen the footage replayed so many times that it had started to feel mundane, which was deeply concerning.
The creature had been armoured in gleaming armour that could only be described as holy, with wicked claws that looked capable of opening a car like a fizzy can. Her hair had appeared perpetually wet, hanging in heavy strands around a face that was both beautiful and very distinctly not human. Some of the more religious commentators had wasted no time in declaring her a demon, and the label had stuck with alarming speed.
Soon after that incident, there had been reports of an angel sighting. An actual angel, with white wings and a radiant presence, y’know, the whole deal. She was also a black woman, rather than a wheel covered in eyes. Or a man. Some people didn’t like that.
Also, a nearby nature reserve had been evacuated for what officials vaguely described as “environmental hazards,” which only made people more suspicious.
Then came the videos. That included multiple angles, dozens of witnesses, and so much footage.
That included, as of yesterday, videos and pictures of the so-called demon and the angel together, talking, standing far too close to one another, and then, most scandalously of all, kissing.
The internet had collectively combusted.
Religious communities were baffled and arguing in every direction. A demon kissing an angel was already theologically inconvenient, but the fact that both appeared to be women had added a fresh layer of confusion to the discourse. There were think pieces, conspiracy threads, livestream debates, and at least one man on television who looked like he was reconsidering every sermon he had ever delivered.
Naturally, some skeptics insisted it was a hoax. Except hoaxes did not usually withstand scrutiny from dozens, if not hundreds, of independent recordings. Industry experts had combed through the footage frame by frame and failed to identify convincing CGI artifacts or practical effects. The lighting was consistent, the shadows aligned, and the physics, disturbingly, made sense.
Which meant that the impossible had apparently happened. Monsters and Angels were real.
Which raised further questions Luna was not emotionally equipped to process before noon.
Were gods real too?
Should she start praying?
Should she hedge her bets and cover multiple pantheons just in case?
Or perhaps she should simply continue walking to her appointment, because even if the world was unraveling at the seams, she was not about to greet the apocalypse without the boobs she had worked very hard to budget for, small as they currently were.
Priorities were important.
She adjusted the strap of her bag and continued down the sidewalk, trying very hard not to spiral into existential dread.
“Psst, hey! Human-thing! Want some cool powers?”
Luna stopped mid-step.
Very slowly, she turned her head to the right.
In the parking lot adjacent to the sidewalk stood a woman who looked like she had stepped out of a fever dream painted by someone with questionable boundaries. She was otherworldly beautiful in a way that did not feel comforting. Her hair was dark with an inky sheen, as though dipped in shadow, and her skin was porcelain pale. Her eyes, however, were entirely pitch black, devoid of sclera or pupil, like two polished stones that swallowed light rather than reflected it.
Her lips were curled into an excitable grin that revealed razor-sharp teeth.
This one did not look exactly like the armored creature from the videos. She was shorter, for one thing. Even shorter than Luna, which was saying something. She also lacked the visible armor and the dramatic, perpetually drenched aesthetic.
Still.
There were similarities.
“Uhh… yeah?” Luna replied before her survival instincts could properly intervene. “Who wouldn’t?”
The woman’s grin widened further, which did not feel reassuring.
“Yesss!” she exclaimed with delight. “I give much power. Then you help me take care of nasty business. My first lieutenant!”
Luna blinked.
“Riiigghhht,” she said slowly, drawing the word out as she took a cautious half-step backward. “Well. I actually need to go to my appointment.”
“Why?” the strange woman demanded, tilting her head with childlike curiosity.
“So I can maintain the body I have?” Luna replied, gesturing vaguely at herself.
“No, no, it is fine!” the woman insisted, waving her hand dismissively. “Because I will give you better body. I improve you! Stronger. Prettier. More everything.”
Every instinct Luna possessed began flashing warning signals.
This could not possibly be shadier.
The only reason she had not immediately run was because of the thought she had been entertaining mere moments ago. The timing was unnerving to the point of absurdity. She had just wondered whether gods were real, whether supernatural forces were at play, and now one was apparently offering her a career opportunity in a parking lot.
It felt cosmically targeted.
“Are you the monster woman from the videos?” Luna asked carefully.
The woman’s expression shifted into confusion.
“What is vee-dee-oh?” she asked, pronouncing it slowly as though tasting the unfamiliar syllables.
Luna shifted her weight awkwardly from one foot to the other, her brain still attempting to process the fact that she was having this conversation in a mostly empty parking lot on a Tuesday afternoon.
“Umm,” she began hesitantly, lifting a hand as though she were about to ask for clarification in a classroom instead of interrogating a possibly demonic entity, “are you one of the ones from a different world or something?”
The woman tilted her head at an angle that seemed slightly too far to be entirely comfortable for a human neck. Her pitch-black eyes did not blink as she considered the question with surprising seriousness, as though it deserved a thoughtful and nuanced answer.
“Yes but no,” she replied after a moment, nodding once as if that had settled everything. “Past self was, but new self born of soil on this place, reborn. Am now local!.” She gestured vaguely downward toward the asphalt as if the parking lot itself had personally assisted in her creation. “So technically from here now.”
Luna stared at her. That explanation had somehow raised more questions than it answered, which felt like an achievement. The strange woman clasped her hands together in front of her chest, rocking slightly on her heels with visible excitement.
“So,” she continued brightly, as though they were discussing a limited-time promotional offer, “want cool powers? Want to be better than smartape?”
“Smartape?” Luna echoed.
“Yes, yes, all of you,” the woman said, waving a dismissive hand in the direction of the city skyline. “Smart apes with phones and taxes.”
That was… not entirely inaccurate. Still, Luna hesitated.
She should absolutely say no. Every warning sign was present. Otherworldly being, black eyes, razor teeth, and of course vague promises of power. On top of that, there was a casual mention of rebirth from soil. If this were a horror movie, she would be the side character that audiences screamed at for making a terrible decision.
And yet...
As much as she did not want to admit that there was a part of her that felt a flicker of excitement at the idea. Cool powers offered by a shady inhuman woman with unsettling charisma? That was the sort of scenario that belonged in late-night fantasies and over-the-top web serials, not in her actual life.
She did not hate the idea.
In fact, she found that she liked it more the longer she stood there thinking about it.
Her week had already imploded in spectacular fashion. Her job was gone. Her girlfriend was gone. The world had revealed itself to contain portals, angels, and monsters. The normal rules no longer seemed particularly reliable.
And the woman had said she would be better for it.
Better. Harder. Faster. Stronger.
“Yeah,” she heard herself say, before her more cautious instincts could wrest control back from her mouth. “Okay.”
The woman’s grin widened slowly, stretching just a bit too far across her porcelain face, and for a brief moment Luna wondered whether she had just made the most important decision of her life.
Or the worst one.