The moment she touched me… something shifted.
Not just in my body — that, I've learned to ignore — but in the world around us.
The forest… breathed differently.
Its rhythm bent out of shape, like an ancient song interrupted mid-chorus. The vines above us twitched ever so slightly, moss curling backward, petals folding in and whispering warnings only the wind could hear. Even the trees, centuries old and blessed by the druidic spirits, groaned faintly.
They felt me.
And worse, they felt her.
Not as prey.
But as something else.
Something… entwined with me.
She didn't notice it — not yet. She looked lighter, like she'd momentarily forgotten the weight of her grief, her fear. But I saw it all. I felt it all.
Each time she laughed, the forest recoiled. Each time she touched my fur, the roots below us twitched.
They know who I am.
They remember.
The cursed one.
The Oathbreaker.
The one who let the beast rise.
I padded silently at her front as she walked, the pack slung over her shoulders, the sun catching on her purple hair. Which i still wonder how a human girl would have a purple hair. Or did she dyed it to that color? I wondered. But she doesn't look like some bad ass girl to me to dye her hair. She stopped once, to admire a flower that hadn't bloomed in this region for over a hundred years. Its violet petals shivered in the light and opened—for her.
Even the forbidden blossoms bend to her softness.
And the forest hates it.
Because it knows that with her… I am changing.
I am not supposed to feel,
No hunger, No affection. But just Rage.
But when she smiles at me… I do.
When she talks to me, unaware of what I truly am beneath this form… my chest aches with an old emotion I had buried beneath guilt and ash.
Hope.
But that hope is poison.
The curse burns under my skin again, coiling around my soul like a serpent. I feel it waking. Hungering. The threads that bind my punishment are thinning. And if they break…
I paused in my steps, glancing upward.
The sun had vanished.
Clouds moved unnaturally fast across the sky.
The birds fell silent.
Even the insects had stopped humming.
I inhaled.
The balance was tipping.
Every step I took beside Sophie shook the boundaries. Magic ancient enough to remember my birth stirred below the surface. I could hear it murmuring in the soil, in the bark, in the water.
And now… the forest is watching us.
No longer just curious.
Now… it's angry.
Because I'm not just a curse walking beside her.
I am the key to something that should never be unlocked.
And somehow, Sophie is too.
As we crossed the edge of the enchanted ring — the point where the forest becomes more dream than reality — I heard the trees whisper in their dead tongue.
"The cursed child walks with the bearer of the bloom.
Undoing begins.
Blood shall echo.
Let the old gods rise."
I snarled.
Old gods? No.
They were supposed to stay dead.
Buried in roots and forgotten oaths.
But the forest always remembers.
And now… it's preparing for war.
All because I couldn't leave her behind.
All because I chose her.