Nightstrider

Seventeen-year-old Seraphine Ferguson has always felt more at home beneath the shadowed canopy of Virginia's appalachian forests than among people. Patient, observant, and relentless on a trail; she possesses an uncanny ability to disappear into the wilderness and follow signs that others overlook. Those same qualities made her the perfect target for PredaSynth; a secretive organization dedicated to creating the ultimate apex land predators.

After she is abducted and subjected to an experimental synthesis procedure, she awakens in the body of a silver-grey eurasian lynx. Stripped of her former life and renamed Umbra, she is released into Nocturne Range- a vast mountain wilderness hidden deep within PredaSynth's underground facility. The landscape feels real enough to fool every instinct; but beyond the false sky, bird-drones watch every movement while researchers quietly debate about what she is becoming.

Unlike most lynx predaforms, she retains 63% of her human mind; making her both a breakthrough and a threat.

As Umbra forms an unlikely cohort of other transformed predators, she discovers one of the four wolves is Eli; a friend who disappeared two years prior who she thought she'd never see again. Together, the two of them- and the others- search for the truth behind Eidra; the mysterious lynx who lived in Nocturne Range before Umbra. Hidden tunnels, forgotten dens, and subtle signs of human intelligence suggest Eidra was far more aware than PredaSynth ever realized. As the mystery deepens, another question becomes impossible to ignore:

Why does Dr. Selene Veytris- PredaSynth's enigmatic leader- seem so determined not to erase Umbra's humanity, but to preserve it instead?

Caught between a faction that wants her collared and controlled, another who wants to keep continuity with minimal interference, and a constructed wilderness designed to test every instinct she possesses, Umbra must decide whether she is still Seraphine or the lynx that she was turned into.