The woods had a way of making loneliness feel like a living thing.
It crept between the trees. It settled in the hollows of the wind. It curled into the cracks of silence and waited—patient, hungry, old.
Habeel sat on a fallen trunk at the edge of that silence, staring into a stream that didn’t reflect his face the way it should have.
The moon hung above him like a watchful eye.
He looked young—too young for the heaviness in his gaze. A beautiful boy cursed with a body that refused to age the way other bodies did. People looked at him and saw a secret: immortality, power, an answer they could steal.
His own family had looked at him the same way.
He pressed his fingers into the scar under his left eye as if he could rub the memory away. It didn’t work.
Nothing ever really left him.
Not the scent of iron in palace halls.
Not the echo of shackles being tested, “just to be sure.”
Not the betrayal that came dressed as duty and called itself love.
He exhaled slowly—controlled, practiced—like if he breathed wrong, the past would wake up.
In his palm lay a small scrap of cloth. Ivory-colored, stitched with a delicate pattern he had seen only once in his life… and never forgotten.
A little girl had wrapped that cloth around his wounded paw.
A little girl who had looked at a “stray cat” bleeding in the snow and chosen mercy over fear.
Aurelia.
Her name wasn’t supposed to matter to him. He had told himself that a thousand times. He wasn’t meant to have attachments. Attachments were handles people used to drag you into cages.
And yet…
He had watched her grow from a distance. From rooftops, from branches, from shadows pressed against her window at night when her breath softened and her lashes rested like she belonged to a gentle world.
He had never touched her.
Never spoken to her.
Never let himself want.
Until tonight.
Because tonight, the wind carried something else.
Not loneliness.
A warning.
Habeel’s head lifted. His pupils narrowed. The forest shifted. Somewhere beyond the trees—a boot scuffed soil. Another followed. A low laugh. Men.
Hunters.
Not simple bandits. These moved wrong—too quiet, too intentional—like they’d been trained to take what they wanted and leave no story behind.
Habeel rose without sound.
The stream beside him rippled, disturbed by no wind, as if the world itself sensed his decision.
Far away, a village lantern flickered.
Aurelia’s home.
And the ancient ache in his chest—longing, fear, hope—tightened like a fist.
He moved.
⸻
Aurelia always knew when the woods were watching.
It was a strange thing to admit, even to herself. She’d never told anyone, not even Eren. Her brother would only tease her and then hover like a guard dog for days.
But Aurelia felt it.
Sometimes the forest felt soft—like a sanctuary that hugged the village from the outside. Sometimes it felt like a mouth.
Tonight, it felt like a mouth.
She stood at her window, fingers curled around the wooden frame, staring into the dark.
The moonlight painted the ground silver, and the trees beyond looked like tall, quiet strangers.
Her wrist itched beneath her sleeve.
A familiar itch.
The kind that always appeared before her life changed in some small way.
Aurelia rubbed it absentmindedly, trying to ignore the uneasy flutter in her stomach.
“Lia!”
Her grandmother’s voice echoed faintly from downstairs. “Come help me with the herbs before they spoil.”
“I’m coming!” Aurelia called back, pulling herself away from the window.
She was halfway down the steps when she heard it.
A low, distant scream.
Not from inside the house.
From outside.
Aurelia froze.
Her heart stuttered once—then started pounding like it wanted to escape her ribs.
Another sound followed: rough voices.
Men.
Her grandmother’s footsteps stopped below. “Aurelia,” she said, her voice sharpened like a blade. “Lock the door. Now.”
Aurelia’s blood ran cold. She moved automatically, rushing to the front door and sliding the lock into place—then another, and another. Her hands shook.
Outside, the voices grew louder.
“You sure it’s this one?”
“The old hag lives here. The girl too.”
“A healer bloodline doesn’t just disappear.”
Aurelia’s breath caught.
Healer bloodline?
Her grandmother grabbed her arm, nails digging into skin. “Don’t look out the window.”
Aurelia swallowed. “Nana… what are they talking about?”
Her grandmother didn’t answer. Her eyes weren’t on Aurelia. They were on the wall—on the shadows crawling there as if something unseen pressed close.
Then the glass shattered.
A rock crashed through the kitchen window, scattering shards across the floor.
Eren burst into the room from the back hall, sword already in hand. He looked half-awake, shirt untucked, hair wild—then he saw Aurelia’s face and instantly became something else.
A protector.
“Stay behind me,” he ordered, voice tight.
Aurelia’s hands lifted on instinct, palms open like she could stop the world.
More glass broke.
A boot hit the back door once—twice—hard enough to rattle the frame.
“Open up!” a man shouted, laughter in his voice. “We just want to talk!”
Eren’s jaw clenched. “Sure. With my blade.”
Her grandmother whispered something under her breath in a language Aurelia didn’t recognize.
The air in the room changed—thicker, heavier—like the world held its breath.
Then the back door splintered.
Two men forced their way inside. Dark leather. Covered faces. Weapons that glinted with oil and arrogance.
The first one looked at Aurelia and smiled.
Not kindly.
Like he’d found treasure.
“There she is,” he said.
Aurelia stepped backward so fast her heel caught on a chair leg. She stumbled.
Eren lunged forward.
Steel clashed.
The second man moved around Eren with unsettling speed, reaching for Aurelia.
Aurelia’s scream caught in her throat.
She lifted her hands again—
And something inside her answered.
Not words.
Power.
Heat rushed up her arms, gathering in her palms like light trying to be born.
But before it could explode—
A shadow blurred past the broken doorway.
A growl shook the room.
Deep. Animal. Wrong in a way that made the hunters hesitate for the first time.
A massive wolf launched into the house.
Moonlight poured over its fur like silver fire. Its eyes—bright, intelligent, ancient—locked onto the man reaching for Aurelia.
The wolf hit him like a storm.
The man crashed into the wall. His weapon clattered across the floor.
The other hunter swung his blade instinctively.
The wolf twisted with impossible grace, teeth flashing, knocking the blade aside.
Eren stared, stunned for half a heartbeat—then snapped back into motion.
He drove his sword forward, forcing the hunter back.
Aurelia couldn’t move.
Her mind refused to accept what her eyes were seeing.
A wolf in her kitchen.
A wolf defending her.
The wolf turned—briefly—toward Aurelia.
And in that instant, Aurelia felt it.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Like a memory pressing through time to touch her skin.
The wolf’s gaze held hers… then flicked to her wrist.
Aurelia followed the look—confused—and her sleeve slid back.
On her wrist, beneath the lantern light, a faint symbol glimmered.
A mark.
It hadn’t been there yesterday.
Her grandmother sucked in a breath like she’d been stabbed.
“No…” she whispered.
Aurelia’s mouth went dry. “Nana… what is that?”
The wolf stepped closer—slow, careful, not threatening.
Aurelia’s heart hammered.
And then, the wolf’s body shimmered.
The air rippled like heat over stone.
Bones shifted—not breaking, but changing.
Fur dissolved like smoke.
In seconds, a young man stood where the wolf had been—tall, lean, beautiful in a way that made Aurelia’s brain stutter.
Dark hair, slightly wavy, falling past his shoulders. A faint scar beneath his left eye. Eyes like emerald glass lit from within.
Not human.
Not monster.
Something in-between.
He looked at Aurelia as if she was the only thing in the room.
“The one you saved,” he said, voice low and steady, “when you were just a little girl.”
Aurelia’s breath left her body in a rush.
That… wasn’t possible.
The cat.
The injured white cat with blue eyes she’d hidden from the village children, the one she’d bandaged with her favorite cloth. The one she’d whispered stories to at night.
The one she still sometimes saw in the woods.
Her knees nearly buckled.
“You…” she whispered. “You’re—”
“Later,” he cut in softly, not unkind. His gaze flicked to Eren, to the fallen men, to the broken doors. “More are coming.”
As if his words summoned it, a whistle sounded outside—sharp, coded.
Retreat. Regroup. Report.
The hunters backed away, rattled now, eyes full of new fear.
“This isn’t over!” one shouted, stumbling out into the night.
The young man turned back to Aurelia.
His expression softened—just slightly.
Like he’d forgotten how to look gentle, but tried anyway.
Aurelia swallowed hard. “Who are you?”
He stepped closer, just close enough that Aurelia could feel the warmth of him, the danger of him, the impossible pull of him.
Then—he vanished.
Not running.
Not leaving through the door.
He dissolved into shadow like the dark itself swallowed him whole.
Aurelia lurched forward. “Wait—!”
Nothing.
Only the night.
Only the broken glass.
Only her pounding heart.
And the mark on her wrist… glowing faintly, as if it had recognized him too.
Eren grabbed her shoulders. “Aurelia—are you hurt?”
Aurelia barely heard him.
Because her mind replayed one thing over and over:
The wolf saved her.
The wolf became a boy.
And that boy knew her.
Above them, the window creaked.
Aurelia turned her head slowly toward it.
There—just for a heartbeat—she saw a pale shape on the roofline.
A white cat with blue eyes.
Watching.
Aurelia’s whisper shook.
“…Was it you?”
The cat blinked once.
Then disappeared into the woods.
—
Aurelia looked down at the strange symbol on her wrist as it pulsed brighter—
and for the first time, she understood with terrifying clarity:
the thing haunting her family had finally found her.
⸻
