No crown only shadows
614 Words
The forest did not release Leonardo when dawn came.
Mist clung to the ground like a second skin, crawling over roots and stones, swallowing the paths he thought he knew. The trees stood farther apart now, yet somehow closer—leaning inward, listening.
Leonardo walked carefully.
Every step felt measured, judged.
What happened the night before refused to fade. The echo of the corrupted wolf’s howl still rang in his skull, mingling with the memory of the earth moving for him—not against him.
Not protecting him.
Obeying him.
He stopped.
A scent lingered in the air—old iron and cold rain. Blood.
Not animal.
Human.
Leonardo followed it.
The deeper he went, the quieter the world became. Birds refused to sing. Insects hid beneath bark and soil. Even the wind avoided this place, slipping around it like a curse.
Then he saw them.
Three bodies lay scattered between the trees.
Hunters.
Their rifles were snapped in half, metal bent like soft wire. One man’s face was frozen in terror, mouth stretched open as if he had screamed until his lungs collapsed. Another had claw marks carved deep into his chest—too deep, too precise.
The third…
Leonardo swallowed.
The third hunter was still alive.
Barely.
The man’s eyes snapped open when Leonardo stepped closer. His lips trembled, teeth chattering though there was no cold.
“It watches,” the man whispered.
Leonardo crouched slowly. “What watches?”
The hunter laughed—a broken, wet sound. “You think you’re special?” His gaze dragged upward, past Leonardo’s face, into the trees. “It doesn’t care if you shift. It doesn’t care about bloodlines.”
The ground beneath the man darkened.
Not with blood.
With shadow.
It spread outward like spilled ink, crawling toward Leonardo’s boots.
He stepped back instantly.
The shadow recoiled.
The hunter screamed.
Something pulled him—downward, sideways, wrong. His body twisted as if the earth itself had grown teeth. In seconds, he was gone, swallowed without a trace.
The forest exhaled.
Leonardo stood frozen, heart pounding so hard it hurt. This was no wolf. No hunter trick. No curse he had ever heard whispered by the elders.
This was older.
Deeper.
Hungry.
A presence brushed against his mind—testing, circling.
You walk without a crown, it seemed to murmur.
Yet you command what should devour you.
Leonardo clenched his jaw. “I didn’t ask for this.”
The shadows shifted, amused.
Footsteps crunched behind him.
Leonardo spun—
Selene stood at the edge of the clearing, bow lowered, eyes wide with horror and something else.
Relief.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“You followed me,” he replied.
She didn’t deny it. Her gaze dropped to the broken rifles, the disturbed earth. “The pack felt it. Whatever you did last night—it rippled through the territory.”
Leonardo looked away. “I didn’t shift.”
“I know.” Selene stepped closer. “That’s the problem.”
She hesitated before speaking again. “The elders are afraid. Not because you’re weak.”
“Because I’m not,” Leonardo said quietly.
Selene nodded. “They say the forest listens to you.”
Leonardo met her eyes. “Does it?”
She held his gaze. “Yes.”
A howl rose in the distance—not one voice, but many.
The pack was near.
And beneath it all, deeper than sound, Leonardo felt the thing beneath the forest stir again—patient, ancient, watching him as one might watch a flame grow in the dark.
He straightened his spine.
Let them come.
He had no crown.
But he was done bowing.
- Writer
