He awakens on a painless cloud, no injuries, only a pair of amber gems floating over him and calling his name, an echo in the nocturnal sky of his dream.

"Joaquim."

The voice pulls his soul back into his body. With little tremors, the ability to move seeps back into his fingers, hands, arms, and legs. The pair of eyes are joined by thick eyebrows frowning in concern. A triangular nose and a pair of lips materialize, thus forming the desert face of one who was once his best friend: Zarif. He places his hand over his boiling forehead.

"Zarif," Joaquim whispers, and tries to lift himself up. Even if his friend didn't guide him back on the bed, he would have fallen; nausea still stirs in his stomach.

"Stay still," says the moor, placing a hand on his chest. "You have a deathly fever and a bad blow to the head."

Of all the people who could've found him, Joaquim ponders in between feverish thoughts, ending up in Zarif's care was the best possible outcome. Not only does he speak the language of wounds and maladies fluently, but also, of all who are left in Abadosos, he is likely the last one who still cares about him.

"Everybody knows," says the physician. "Everybody heard. Some tried to prevent me from helping you, but I couldn't just leave you there."

"Thanks for trying," Joaquim moans, holding his head. "What if they were right?"

"They weren't," Zarif adopts a character much sterner than he remembers, for a moment invoking a somber shadow on his face. "You have no bite wound."

"Not a scratch?"

"Scratches, claws, yes, but no tooth." Zarif is so worried that, for a moment, it seems to him that they are years before any silent spell fell over Abadosos. "How did it happen?"

"I have no idea." He remembers the wolf's monstrous head walking away from his field of vision. "I think I'm immune."

"No, how did it find you?"

"Ah." The answer to that question is much simpler. Even when he had spent the entire day trading, none of the villagers let him know that the full moon was that night. "I thought the full moon was the next day." He tries hard to laugh at his own foolishness, at least to lighten the mood, but nausea takes hold of his throat; Zarif hands him a bucket in which he can be sick. Perhaps, if the situation wasn't life or death, the moor would have mocked him.

"Your head isn't in the best state," he says, rubbing his back, but Joaquim considers that he's in a much better state than being a victim of the werewolf implies. "Don't worry, you can stay here."

When he finishes retching stomach acid, he wipes his mouth with his sleeve. "No, I can go back home."

Zarif doesn't answer except with a pained look that makes fear seep into his wounds. The physician takes a rag from the bedside table and cleans his chin with more precision than fever would allow him. "You really don't remember anything?"

"Not much. It happened too fast." An invisible hand seizes his insides upon seeing Zarif's expression. "What happened to my house?"

Zarif avoids eye contact. "It's in a worse state than you are." His gentle nature has never been the best handling bad news. "It's not my place to say."

"Then," Joaquim says, "show me. Surely it can't be anything a lumberjack can't fix in a couple of weeks."

He doesn't want to see the kind of expression his friend makes. Instead, he focuses on getting up. He wants to block out any thought until he can see his house; the most dangerous thing he can do now is let his mind wander.

To his surprise, Zarif helps him up instead of putting him back to bed. The room stil spins around him, but with his friend's support, he manages to walk. Slowly, they exit the house without exchanging a word.

If he had expected any room, door, or piece of furniture to still stand, those expectations crumpled to the ground with him, falling to his knees. Only two walls are left, and the rest has collapsed upon itself. Nothing left but piles of wood and fabric.

Only one thing stands out from the scene of the disaster; an old brown shoe the size of his hand, having fallen from the upper floor upon collapse. He holds it in his hands and dusts off the old and the new. He had ensured that it remained lock in her room, and now, it's the only thing he has left from his family.

"Was it Alba's?" Zarif asks from behind him.

He nods. The shoe fits perfectly between his cradling arms. He hadn't realized how much he misses his family until the werewolf took everything he had from them, even if most of them abandoned him. But not Alba. At least, he always knew he misses Alba. That stake of nostalgia stabs his chest.

"Zarif," he says upon finding his voice. "Can I... I can stay with you, right?" You're the only one in Abadosos who cares, he doesn't say out loud.

Zarif bends down and helps him up. "Of course, Joaquim. Stay as long as you need."

He lets himself be dragged to the physician's house, focusing on his little sister's shoe. The werewolf, alone and throughout a mere few years, has stolen everything he has.

And now he has the tools to defeat it.