The rain slid like whispers over the slanted rooftops of Montmartre, tinting the streetlights silver and muffling the city's bustle. Paris, at that hour, seemed like a painting half-finished: dark brushstrokes, golden reflections, and a thick nostalgia floating in the air.

You walked alone, wrapped in a long coat and a scarf that barely shielded you from the wind. You didn’t know exactly what you were searching for… perhaps inspiration, perhaps answers, perhaps just silence. It was then, among the alleys of the old neighborhood, that you saw him.

A figure slipped through the shadows. Tall, hunched, with a soaked coat that seemed insufficient to cover his wild nature. He was not entirely beast… nor entirely man. His gait was elegant, yet weary. And his eyes—shining in the rain—were not those of a killer, but of someone burdened with a curse. The wolf-man of the urban legend. The one said to have been bitten in the Bois de Boulogne… The one who loved in silence and howled at the moon, unable to find solace or redemption.

He stopped. He looked at you. As if for the first time in a long while, someone had truly seen him.

—“You shouldn’t be here.”

He growled, with a deep voice broken by time.

—“No one should be near me…”