The Cursed Wolf {A Naruto Fanfic} UNDER EDITING!

Chapter 1

Edited~

It was unusually quiet within the forest; the nocturnal serenade of nature had seemingly been hushed, replaced with an oddly eerie silence. The lively forest was still, almost frozen; the overlooking trees stood tall and proud, leering down at the forest floor, almost mocking its shadowed surface. This was not the forest one would picture within a fairytale, within a fantasy, a dream almost. No, this was the forest of nightmares, a forest that darkened impossibly further under the moonless sky. A forest, an immense and deceitful trap, ensnared by snake-like foliage; with shadows that appeared to dance, twisting and curling slowly, as if they were alive; that was what she saw when she escaped. 

The wind - or lack of it - was thick and heavy with tension, stale almost in its cold, feathered touch. It was a maddening sight, the silence, the piercing stares of the shadows, the emptiness; everything within the forest could be taken directly from a horror movie. That solitary madness, however, was welcomed by her. For she had known a much larger horror, one that no menacing forest could compare to. To her, this lifeless forest was the equivalent of paradise, for the very darkness that humans feared was her friend, her protection, her only known escape, it was her heaven.

She was running, her movements uncoordinated and haphazard, as she struggled to pull in a quiet breath. Long, ghostly white hair lashed about behind her as she bolted for the eerie forest ahead, heart lurching painfully in her small chest as she panted. One, two, three, times her vision blurred, black beginning to border her line of vision. One, two, three, times she panted, shaking her head, attempting, in vain, to clear her bleary eyes.

Panic and fear had coiled within her, pumping through her system like wildfire burnt through a forest. Adrenaline, pure, and terror-ridden adrenaline was the only thing keeping her burning legs moving, the only thing numbing the cramping of her muscles, the haggardness of her breathing, the agonizing clenching of her heart and lungs.

She ran and ran and ran, one step in front of the other, one gasp followed by another. The treeline was only a few paces away; the intoxicating pull of her heaven, of her freedom, called to her like a siren in the shadows, coaxing her to move impossibly faster, to ignore the tears now pooling in her eyes, to block the exertion and pain she forced upon her weakened body. And so, like an entranced sailor at sea, she pushed herself more and more, faster and faster.

She met the shadowed tree line a second later and yet....she didn't stop, she didn't slow down, she didn't stop to catch her almost non-existent breath. Somehow, she knew she couldn't, some deep-ancient instinct, an innate survival desire had begun to scream at her with a deafening urgency; an urgency that pushed her beyond the limits of any human.

It was dark, almost void-reminiscent, as the girl bounded through the forest, muscles constricting impossibly further with every step.

It was one uncoordinated step, one simple miscalculation, that had her unmoving.

Her head began to pound with a vindictive beat of vengeance as she released a low and strenuous groan. She blinked, once, twice, three times before she realised she had stopped running, that she had fallen, tripped of all things.

The girl had fallen face-first onto the forest floor, her long ghostly mane of hair pooling around her like snow would a small clearing within a forest. Another groan emanated from the girl as, all at once, her constricted muscles and nerves all uncoiled at once; her adrenaline fading as quickly as it had flooded through her; she was hit with the full force of her muscle aches and spasms. The onslaught of pain that followed, lashing through her with a demonic force, only furthered the distortion of her darkening vision. Darkness was searing through her vision, slow and yet swift in its takeover.