The Veiled Crown

Chapter 1

You wake up, feeling dizzy and disoriented. You are in the middle of a forest, it looks eerie and there does not seem to be anything making any sound. The tree crowns are big and lush, covering up the sky so you cannot get a sense of time, it does not feel like daytime, but it is too bright to be nighttime. The forest seems never ending and the distance is dark and foggy, the ground is as stripped of life with only dead twigs and leaves.

You manage to get up from the ground, and start taking the leaves out of your hair, they are stuck pretty well, but you manage to get them out after some time. You try to remember what happened to you, why are you in that forest, why are you dizzy?

Your mind is blank and you do not recall anything that happened before you woke up, not even your name or where you are from. You start looking around trying to get a sense of direction and figure out where you should go. It only makes you dizzier and you find a rock close to where you woke up to sit on. You close your eyes and try to listen.

You hear some crows in the distance, some occasional cracking twigs, making you feel uncomfortable. You open your eyes and you feel it is getting darker slowly, you decide to go in the opposite direction of the cracking sounds, as you feel it cannot be anything good lurking around in this eerie forest.

You start walking, you do not seem to make any progress, the forest still looks the same as when you started walking, you walk for what feels like hours and hours, but it has not gone that dark yet, so you could not have walked for more than an hour.

You sit down on a nearby rock, while still making sure you remember which way you were walking, trying your best to keep your sense of direction.

You could not have sat for more than 5 minutes when you hear a loud c***k not far behind you; you panic and start running in the opposite direction of where it came from. You then hear something running behind you, it’s close, but whenever you look behind you, there is nothing and all goes silent.

You run until you are almost out of stamina when you see a light in the distance, you keep running even though you are out of breath. The light in the distance, you see it comes from inside a little cottage; you manage to get in the door as you collapse on the floor gasping for air.

Your breathing is slowly returning to normal and you look up, you see a young man standing, looking down at you with a soft look on his face. His hair is dark black; with a few grayed-ish streaks it looks somewhat messy. His eyes are pale white, though it seems like his right eye sometimes has a faint glow of red. He has two scars going over the left eye, and one ragged scar going across his right cheek. He is wearing a long leather coat, it goes down a bit further than his knees and it has five silver buttons going down the middle, they each got a different little engraving on them. The top button has what looks like one of the trees from the forest, huge and lush crown, with a solid trunk and long snarly roots. The second button has a bird, possibly a crow sitting on a twig, with a red stone as an eye. The third button has a rose engraved to it; it has not fully bloomed, but looks like it's close. The fourth has an engraved spider web and a spider made out of tiny black stones. The fifth and final button has a greatly decorated cross on it, made with tiny pieces of dark red and black stones, it seems seamless. And on the left arm the coat has a dark red band, it seems to be made out of silk and has an imprint of a cross, the same kind of cross as on one of the buttons, though it’s not made out of tiny stones, it seems to be hand embroidered with fine black thread.

He smiles softly at you, you turn around on your belly and sit up on your legs, and he is still smiling softly and reaches out a hand to help you get up. You look at his hand in surprise, and shyly look down for a moment, when you look back up his hand is still reached out to you, though his smile is gone, he’s still looking at you with a soft demeanor. You grab it with hesitation, he smiles at you shortly. 

You get up on your feet and let go of his hand, he chuckles, and looks at you. “Please come in.”

You get embarrassed; “I’m sorry, but something…”

He quickly interrupts you; “It is okay, Welcome! I’m Shiro.”

You are even more embarrassed than before, and say nothing, you just hold your hands together and look down.