Chapter 13 : The Door Beneath the Pines
247 Words
Liam’s skin was too tight.
Even in human form, something pulled at the seams—like his bones remembered a shape they hadn’t taken yet. He stood at the treeline behind Clara’s clinic, the damp earth soft beneath bare feet. The rain had stopped, but the forest still wept.
The pendant she left him hung around his neck now. It pulsed faintly. Not with magic—Clara had no spellcraft—but memory. The warmth of her body, the weight of her absence.
She hadn’t left a note.
She’d left intent.
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He followed her scent into the woods.
Past the old logging trail. Past the creek swollen with storm runoff. Past the stone boundary where deer refused to step and the air turned colder without explanation.
Then he saw it.
The door from his dream.
It was real.
Half-buried beneath roots and time, a slab of stone cut with deep spirals. No hinges. No handle. Only a faint groove shaped like a crescent, worn smooth by fingers long gone.
Liam reached for it. The pendant around his neck burned cold.
“Don’t.”
The voice came from the trees.
He turned slowly.
Old Nan stepped into view, her silver crucifix gleaming against the gloom.
“You open that,” she said, “and you don’t come back as just a man.”
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Liam’s heart thundered. “What’s behind it?”
She stared at him. Not cruelly. Not kindly. Just… old.
“The first wolf.”
- Writer
