The eyes in the dark
713 Words
The forest no longer felt empty.
Leonardo sensed it long before he saw anything—before the wind shifted, before the leaves trembled, before the night insects fell silent. Something was watching him.
He stood still, boots half-sunk into damp soil, breath shallow. The moon was thin tonight, a pale scar across the sky, barely enough to pierce the canopy above. Shadows layered upon shadows, trees pressed close like silent witnesses, their branches crooked like fingers frozen mid-reach.
Leonardo closed his eyes.
The world sharpened.
Heartbeats emerged from the dark—not his own. Too many. Too slow. Too patient.
His curse had never left him. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how deep the moon pulled, his bones never cracked, his skin never burned with the promise of fur. No claws. No fangs. No shift.
Yet the forest spoke to him anyway.
A low pressure pressed against his skull, not pain, but awareness. The way prey knows it has been chosen.
Leonardo opened his eyes.
They were there.
Eyes.
Dozens of them.
Green. Yellow. White. Some too large. Some too close to the ground. Others unnaturally high, hovering where no animal should stand. They blinked slowly, deliberately, as if tasting his fear.
Leonardo’s fingers curled.
“Not tonight,” he whispered.
A branch snapped.
The sound came from behind him.
He spun just as something moved—fast, wrong, its body bending at impossible angles. It didn’t leap. It slid, like a shadow tearing itself free from the trees.
Leonardo dodged on instinct.
Claws slashed the air where his throat had been a second earlier. The stench hit him then—rot, blood, something ancient and spoiled.
A corrupted wolf.
It emerged fully now, moonlight catching its twisted form. Its fur was patchy, soaked dark with old gore. Bones jutted beneath its skin as if trying to escape. Its jaw hung crooked, teeth too many, eyes glowing with a sick, intelligent hunger.
This was no rogue.
This was something that had broken the forest’s laws.
Leonardo backed away slowly, heart hammering—but not with panic. With focus.
The creature snarled, saliva dripping like tar onto the forest floor. Around them, the watching eyes shifted, circling. Waiting.
“You can smell it, can’t you?” Leonardo murmured, grounding himself. “I don’t shift. I don’t belong.”
The wolf lunged.
Leonardo moved—not faster, but smarter.
He rolled beneath the snapping jaws, came up with a rock clenched in his fist, and smashed it into the creature’s eye. It howled, a sound that made the trees shudder.
The forest screamed back.
Roots burst from the ground.
Not toward the wolf.
Toward Leonardo.
They coiled around his legs, not restraining him, but bracing him—anchoring him to the earth like a living pillar. Power surged through his veins, cold and heavy, like the forest had wrapped its hands around his heart.
The corrupted wolf froze.
For the first time, fear flickered across its face.
Leonardo felt it then—clearer than ever before.
He wasn’t borrowing strength.
He was commanding it.
“Leave,” he said.
The word was not loud.
But the forest heard it.
The eyes vanished—snuffed out like dying stars. The corrupted wolf staggered backward, snarling, claws scraping uselessly against the soil. It resisted, shaking violently, as if something inside it was tearing itself apart.
Leonardo took a step forward.
The ground trembled.
“Go,” he repeated.
With a final, broken howl, the creature turned and fled—melting into the darkness, dragging its corruption with it.
Silence fell.
Not peace.
Silence like a held breath.
The roots released him gently, retreating back into the earth as if they had never been. Leonardo staggered, dropping to one knee, gasping. His body shook—not from weakness, but from the terrifying realization settling into his bones.
The forest had chosen him.
He pressed his palm to the soil.
It pulsed beneath his touch.
Far away, beyond the trees, Leonardo felt it—the Crescent Pack. Their territory. Their Alpha.
And for the first time, he knew this truth with absolute certainty:
They were watching now too.
Leonardo rose slowly, eyes dark, resolve hardening.
He might never wear a crown.
But the forest already bow
- Writer
