CHAPTER NINETY SEVEN - A BREWING AFFAIR

The journey back to the manor was a slow, arduous affair. John leaned heavily on Karina for support, his movements sluggish and drained by the sheer toll of his first true transformation. Yet despite his evident exhaustion, there was a feverish light burning in his eyes—the spark of someone who had glimpsed something profound and life-altering. "It was like nothing I've ever experienced," he murmured, his voice thick with awe. "One moment I was simply a man, bound by mortal constraints and limitations. The next..." He trailed off, shaking his head slowly. "It was as if some primordial force had been unleashed from the depths of my very being, shattering every sense of who and what I am." Karina listened raptly, equal parts fascinated and apprehensive as he haltingly described the experience—the molten surge of bestial power overwhelming his senses, the jarring metamorphosis as his body was subsumed and remade into something ancient and inhuman. "I could feel it all," he went on