Prologue

A bright flash of searing light stabbed through the eyelids of a sleeping figure, causing them to stir and awaken at the pain of such intense light piercing the retinas. As the figure awoke and grasped his throbbing head, he noticed that his hand wasn't how it was before he laid down for a nap after overworking himself yet again. His eyes rebelled as the light sought to blind him, but eventually he was able to get his eyes to focus on the hands he knew were his but had been changed into a form he didn't quite recognize. Short dense fur of mulch brown coated his arms, nails lengthened into claws befitting a hunter, and fingers a bit longer and slightly unwieldy due to little use. The first thought he had as he stared at the hands was that he must have become something like a werewolf like the ones he loved to read about or play as in games. Curiosity consumed him as he threw back the small, thin sheet of dirty cloth that covered his legs to see that his legs and especially his feet had also changed, not noticing that there were sounds of movement nearby that his more sensitive ears picked up nearing where he awoke. Out of mere impulse, the man twitched a few muscles in his legs and was both entranced and horrified at the amount of power just a slight twitch had produced. He lightly held his breath as he twitched a few other muscles to observe what all had changed with the shift in his physique. The results blew his mind as he realized that his strength had grown to at least three times what it was. Not only had his strength increased, but his senses had increased by a similar amount! As the man realized this, he heard the sound of large clawed feet softly scraping on stone outside the small hut that formed the shelter that protected him from what sounded like a windstorm that was going on around the shelter. The flap of cloth covering the entrance was flapping lightly due to being on the lee side, but then stopped as a clawed hand like his own pulled the fabric gently away despite its size suggesting it could tear it completely out of the frame that served as a door.

"Finally awake huh?" A familiar voice spoke as a similar figure to what the man had walked inside the hut. The fur on this new figure was a deep brown like fresh forest dirt that grayed in a ripple like pattern that seemed to start at the spine in the center of the back from the way the fur grayed. Dark blue eyes like sapphires in darkness that sparked memories were the next thing that the man noticed about the new arrival. "Took ya long enough to finally wake up from your sleep." A grin split the short muzzle on the wolf-man's face as he gazed at the figure sitting up on the flimsy bed. "Well, shall we get to exploring this world you made? After all, this is not like the VR experience where you can pause and come back at any time. I don't even wanna know how you did this since it made you sleep for several cycles of time on this interesting planet you designed."

"Why are you here? I thought I only brought in the people I cared about in our old world to enjoy this place I set up as a retreat from the chaos we were living in…" The figure spoke, which revealed that he was a middle aged man from his voice alone, and slowly tried to stand up from the bed that he now noticed only barely kept him supported off the ground. "I really hope the other shelters are better than this one, or I am gonna have some words with the so-called Makers who helped this place come to life!"

"Son, how would you even be able to do that? No one has been able to figure out a way back while you were asleep, and no one can make sense of anything here as we seem to be stuck in a permanent wall of wind!" The man recalled why he brought his father here and smiled softly as he recalled the dream he had as he had created this world from nothing but his developed mind and knowledge of how biosystems work and interact with other systems.

"Hey, let's just say for a moment that this is my secret world where I developed it as I grew up. A safe place from anything that threatened to overwhelm me as a child and became the driving force for my career choice and how I chose to share my creative mind with people. What would you think of it then, dad?" The man stood and approached his father with a comforting smile. "Welcome, dear father, to the land of Mystika, my pet project, dream world, and ultimate goal since I was a small child. I hope you and the others can enjoy this world with me as we discover how things might have changed from how I envisioned the reality of Mystika."

"Wait, reality? As in, we are not still in the reality we grew up in?" The older wolf-man seemed concerned, intrigued, and thoughtful as he asked the thought racing around his mind.

"Correct, this was done using a piece of tech developed and implanted in a select few of those the Makers group deemed worthy of such an honor is what they said. Honestly, I think we are just the test subjects in an experiment to see how they can perfect the tech and likely use it to control those who let themselves be snatched up in pretty words instead of questioning things like I did." A smile crept onto the man's face as he shifted into his old form. The fur receded to hair that was normal for a human, and the slightly painful shifting of bones sent a rumble of pleasure through the man as his vocal cords changed last in the transformation. "I think that's why you got dragged in here as well. You were on my mind as I was going into this world because I was thankful that you raised me in such a way that I question quite a lot of the spittle spouted by researchers, corporations, and con artists. Thankfully, the Makers group proved reliable this time, but I will still be on guard around them due to how strong and successful this tech is."

"You say that like we are either leaving, or we are about to head out on a journey in this Mystika you made with that implant of yours. Oh, what name do you go by now? It's been so long since you and I spoke that I thought I'd ask."

The smile slowly left the man's face as he turned to his father. "I decided to take my birth name as my name in our original reality, but here I will be called Lasiter Rio de Amira, the Prince of Shifters." With that, a soft amber light flowed from a metal implant that covered the back of the neck and the shoulder blades area of the back and wrapped around the two and the small gathering of figures around them. As the light melted away from the figures, nothing remained but the homes of condensed earth withstanding a breeze that felt strong but was not able to wear down the earthen huts that seemed to have been standing for an eternity. Not long after the light had diffused to nothing, a figure cloaked in robes of a similar color to the red soil of the earth seemed to rise from the ground itself and let out a rumbling laugh that slowly but surely turned maniacal as the arms wrapped tightly in filthy cloth rose above the hooded figure.

"Yes! Come back to the world you believe to be your beloved Mystika, and let me take from you the power that is not worthy of your simple mind!" The booming voice was filled with a rasping of a beast trying to speak with a voice that barely handled the words being forced through the improper organs for such speech.