Erind Hartwell begins her week as a seemingly harmless law student, adjusting her fake glasses and riding her folding bicycle through the early morning transit of La Esperanza. This fragile illusion of normalcy is violently shattered when a sickly commuter transforms into a tentacled Adumbrae, initiating a horrific massacre inside her train car. While crawling through a torrent of blood and dismembered limbs, Erind is chased into an empty stairwell and skewered through the abdomen by a second spike-wielding abomination. She drags her failing body into a locker, slipping into a cosmic mindscape where she meets her own white-haired, predatory double who offers her survival in exchange for her soul. Accepting the pact, Erind regenerates instantly, but her newfound, uncontrolled physical power causes her to accidentally break the neck of the female police officer who came to save her. Showing zero remorse, Erind uses her tactical intellect to feed the dead officer to the rampaging monster, cleaning herself up and returning to her condo to prepare for law school as if nothing happened. However, the legal system and the city are already on high alert, and a relentless detective begins reviewing the transit security footage, narrowing down his sights on a mysterious, petite survivor who somehow walked away from the epicenter of the slaughter without a single scratch. Sensing the encroaching net of the law, Erind realizes she must master her new monstrous abilities in secret, but her internal pilot is no longer entirely her own, as the white-haired entity in her mind begins whispering of an insatiable hunger that cannot be satisfied by standard food, leaving her to wonder how long she can maintain her timid, scholarly disguise before the predator beneath her skin breaks free to claim its next unsuspecting victim. Her fears are realized when she discovers a tiny, pulsing white crystal growing from her palm, a physical manifestation of her mutation that threatens to expose her to her classmates and the authorities if she cannot find a way to halt the rapid spread of the alien infection consuming her flesh.

Seeking to test her newfound physical capabilities and find a way to vent her predatory urges, Erind ventures into the high-crime district of Marsh Row under the cover of night, disguised in a bright red hoodie as Red Hood. She encounters a local street gang led by Teflon, utilizing her timid-girl persona to disarm their suspicions and gather valuable rumors about mysterious disappearances and a doomsday cult called the Protectors of the City Movement. Her peaceful investigation is interrupted when a sleazy debt collector named Dillon corners her in a dark alley, prompting Erind to execute a devastating leg sweep that accidentally crushes his skull against the pavement due to her uncontrolled superstrength. When Teflon's thin companion, Fender, witnesses the horrific accidental murder and points a gun at her head, Erind is forced to reveal her monstrous nature, letting him shoot her hand before effortlessly crushing his bionic fingers and snapping his neck to eliminate the only witness. She drags the two heavy corpses to a nearby bridge and dumps them into the dark, flowing river, believing she has successfully covered her tracks and preserved her secret life. However, her amateurish cleanup backfires when the river current snaps the ropes holding the bodies down, sending the mangled corpses floating downstream to be discovered by the police, which immediately alerts the highly intuitive Sergeant Hall to the presence of a superpowered killer roaming the city. This discovery sets off a chain reaction of panic in the criminal underworld, as the local drug kingpin Overdrive assumes Teflon's gang murdered Dillon, leading to their capture and torture. Erind is forced to plan a daring rescue to pay her debt of honor to Fender, unaware that Sergeant Hall has already connected her to the missing law student Kelsey Fletcher and is shadowing her every move, waiting for the perfect moment to spring a trap and expose her as the city's most wanted abomination.

The consequences of Erind's actions catch up to her when she and her wealthy classmate, Amber Deen Leska, are ambushed in a parking lot by a black SUV and knocked out with tranquilizer darts. They awaken inside a metal cage within a desolate warehouse compound owned by the 2Ms, a criminal syndicate that artificially manufactures Adumbrae for wealthy clients. The sadistic gang leader, Purple Mohawk, forces them to watch a mutated human beast tear other prisoners apart before interrogating Erind about the missing law student Kelsey Fletcher. Utilizing her timid-nerdy-girl face to buy time, Erind coordinates with Deen, who bravely attempts to negotiate their release by offering her family's vast resources, but the plan collapses when Purple Mohawk flies into a rage and attempts to assault Deen. Erind triggers her first full monster transformation, morphing into a towering, red-hooded wolf beast with massive fangs and razor-sharp claws, catching Purple Mohawk by surprise and tearing his jaw clean off in a single strike. A brutal, chaotic battle ensues as Erind dodges gunfire, rips off Purple Mohawk's arm, and stabs her thumbs into his eye sockets, eventually crushing his skull and devouring his brain to satisfy her primal hunger. She reverts to her human form just as a mysterious, ski-masked vigilante named Blank breaches the warehouse, offering to rescue her and Deen from the approaching enemy reinforcements. As they flee the burning compound in a getaway van driven by a police insider, Erind realizes that these vigilantes are actually a rogue squad of artificial Corebrings who have been shadowing her to locate Kelsey Fletcher. She must now play the role of a traumatized victim while riding alongside a group of highly trained, superpowered individuals, knowing that any slip of her tongue or a sudden display of her monstrous regeneration could instantly turn her saviors into her executioners.

Blank and his team of artificial Corebrings, including Myra, Reo, and Everett, take Erind and Deen to their hidden base in the abandoned New Hope City ruins. Dario reveals that his team possesses artificial Cores grown from a Mother Fragment and pressures the girls to accept the implants to protect themselves from the 2Ms. Erind eagerly accepts, hoping the Core will suppress the Adumbrae infection in her mind, while Deen reluctantly agrees to stay by her best friend's side. The implantation is agonizing, but Deen quickly manifests a unique prescient companion named Garg-Owl, while Erind trains with Myra to unleash hysterical strength, purposely shattering her own arm against concrete columns to break her psychological barriers. Meanwhile, Erind sneaks out at night as Red Hood, infiltrating Overdrive's base to rescue Teflon's gang, effortlessly crushing a giant augmented henchman and forcing the terrified drug lord to serve as her personal informant. Returning to the alliance, she prepares to aid the Corebrings in a high-stakes heist at the docks, planning to steal the 2Ms' processed mutant brains to cure her mutation. This delicate web of lies is threatened when she discovers that her training has accelerated her physical mutation, causing golden veins and a second white crystal to sprout across her palm. She must now navigate a dangerous double-cross, using Deen's prescient abilities to outmaneuver both the 2Ms and the suspicious Corebrings, all while Sergeant Hall closes in on her location with a squad of federal agents. The stage is set for a chaotic three-way clash at the harbor, where Erind must unleash her full, terrifying wolf form once again, risking total mind-takeover to secure the only substance that can preserve her fading humanity.