Feral Bonds

Chapter 27: A Monster in the Woods

The town of Hollow Creek had always been quiet, a peaceful place nestled at the edge of the ancient woods. The forest, with its towering trees and impenetrable shadows, held an air of mystery, and the townsfolk had long accepted its presence with a mix of reverence and fear. The woods were a place of whispered stories—passed down from one generation to the next—about the strange things that lurked beyond the familiar borders of their small, safe town. Most of the residents knew better than to venture too deep. They had learned to coexist with the unknown.

But then, the unknown began to creep into their lives.

It started slowly, with small signs that something was wrong. A hiker would go missing, followed by a camper, and though it caused some worry, the disappearances were written off as accidents. People got lost in the woods from time to time—nature was unpredictable, after all. The authorities searched the forest but found nothing. Days passed, then weeks, with no trace of the missing. Families grieved, but the town moved on. It always did.

Until the disappearances became too frequent to ignore.

Over the next few months, more people vanished—locals, visitors, even experienced woodsmen who knew the forest well. Search parties combed the woods in greater numbers, but with every expedition, the forest seemed to grow more hostile. The deeper they ventured, the more unsettling it became. Strange sounds echoed through the trees at night—low growls, rustling in the underbrush, and the occasional flash of movement, too fast and too large to be an animal. Shadows danced at the edge of their vision, and the ever-present feeling of being watched clung to them like mist.

The townspeople grew anxious, whispers spreading through Hollow Creek like wildfire. The old-timers in town, the ones who had spent their whole lives near the woods, began to speak in hushed tones. They recounted stories from their youth, tales their grandparents had told them around the fire. Stories of creatures in the forest that should never be disturbed.

Then came the sightings.

People began to report seeing something in the woods—something larger than a wolf, but not a bear. It was always just out of sight, lurking between the trees, its hulking form blending with the shadows. At night, glowing eyes would watch from the tree line, just beyond the reach of the town's streetlights. Hunters claimed they had seen the creature stalking through the woods, a beast that seemed too unnatural, too powerful, to be anything of this world.

The rumors grew darker. One word spread through the town like a curse.

"Wendigo."

The legend of the wendigo, an ancient spirit cursed to wander the wilderness, maddened by hunger, feeding on human flesh, was an old story—one most dismissed as superstition. But as more and more people disappeared, and as sightings of the creature increased, the town couldn't shake the eerie sense that there was something very real behind the myth. They began to fear the forest in a way they never had before, locking their doors at night and warning their children to stay far from the woods.

No one in Hollow Creek knew that the monster they feared was not a spirit of legend. It was Akecheta.

He had become the thing that haunted the town's nightmares, a shadow moving through the trees, driven by an insatiable hunger. The man he had once been—the one who had tried so desperately to hold onto his humanity—was fading, slipping further away with each passing day. The dark magic that coursed through his veins, etched into his skin by the runes that pulsed with malevolent energy, was consuming him. Slowly, it was rotting him from the inside out.

Akecheta had long since lost track of time. The days and nights bled together in a haze of hunger and pain. His once-strong body, built from years of surviving as a Lycan, had begun to waste away. The powerful muscles that had once carried him through the forest with ease now ached with every movement. His leg, especially, was deteriorating—black veins spread beneath the skin, the muscles cramping and seizing as the magic gnawed at him. What had once been graceful and swift had become a painful, limping shuffle, his steps uneven, his body failing him.

His senses, once sharp enough to track prey from miles away, were dull now. His sense of smell had faded, the familiar scents of the forest lost to him. Even his hearing was slipping. He felt trapped in his own body, disconnected from the world around him. The only thing that remained was the hunger—the constant, gnawing hunger that never left, that clawed at him from the inside, demanding to be fed.

He had stopped keeping track of the faces. The people he killed, the lives he took to satisfy the hunger, had become little more than fleeting memories—blurred images of flesh and blood, of brief satisfaction followed by deeper, more consuming need. His mind was a fog of instinct and desperation, and the kills no longer mattered. Each time, he would tell himself it would be the last, that he would find a way to control the beast. But each time, the hunger returned, stronger than before.

Somewhere deep inside him, buried beneath layers of torment and dark magic, a small part of Akecheta still screamed for release, for salvation. That part of him—the part that remembered being human—was fading, slipping further into the recesses of his mind, drowned out by the beast that now controlled him. The more he hunted, the more he killed, the less he remembered of his old life. The man he had once been was little more than a ghost, a shadow clinging to the edges of his consciousness.

The dark magic that had fused with his soul was destroying him. The runes, once bright and burning with power, now flickered weakly on his skin, their glow dimming as the magic twisted and decayed. He could feel it eating away at him, poisoning his blood, gnawing at his bones. The pain was constant now, a dull ache that never left him. And yet, he kept moving, driven by the same force that had sustained him for so long—the will to survive, no matter the cost.

He limped through the forest, his leg dragging behind him, the smell of rot clinging to his skin. Fever burned through him, and his vision blurred as he stumbled through the trees, barely able to keep his balance. He hadn't eaten in days, his body too weak to hunt, too weak to satisfy the hunger that gnawed at him from within. Each step was agony, and yet he kept moving, driven by the primal need to survive.

He didn't know how much longer he could keep going.

There were nights when he would collapse in his burrow, feverish and trembling, and wonder if he would ever wake up again. Sometimes, he would come to, covered in blood, his memory of the hunt lost to the haze of hunger and pain. The people he had killed were nameless, faceless—they no longer mattered. All that mattered was the hunger. The runes burned into his skin pulsed with dark energy, demanding more, driving him further into madness.

The rumors of the wendigo reached him, carried on the wind. He heard the stories the townsfolk told, felt their fear. They were talking about him. He had become the monster they feared, the thing that haunted their dreams. Once, he might have laughed at the absurdity of it all—he, a man cursed by dark magic, mistaken for an ancient spirit of legend. But there was no laughter left in him now. Only hunger, only pain.

And the realization that he had become exactly what they believed him to be.

Akecheta dragged himself through the forest, his body failing, his mind slipping further into the void. The magic was rotting him from the inside, and he knew he didn't have much time left. His leg, twisted and blackened by the dark veins that spread beneath his skin, could barely support him. His breath came in ragged gasps, and his vision swam with fever and exhaustion.

Finally, he collapsed, the cold earth pressing against his skin. His body trembled, the edges of his vision darkening as the fever raged through him. He could feel the runes flickering, the magic inside them fading. His time was running out.

But even as the darkness closed in, Akecheta clung to the last, fragile thread of humanity that remained within him. The part of him that still wanted to live. The part of him that didn't want to be a monster anymore.

But the beast inside him had other plans.

The hunger would not be denied