Ny's Writing Blog ✍️

The Blackpine Forest should have been their refuge.
But some places remember monsters too well.

Elora and the newly-human wendigo—now calling himself Kael—hid in the deep woods where the trees grew tight as ribs. She built a shelter of roots and charms, a place where the world couldn’t find them. But magic cannot cure everything.

Especially hunger.

Kael’s body was human, but the wendigo’s curse clung to him like a shadow clinging to bone. At night, he shook with cold, his teeth chattering, breath steaming like a dying beast. Elora held him until dawn, whispering spells meant to soothe, but each morning he woke thinner.

And hungrier.

The forest felt it too. Animals fled long before they saw him. Crows perched above them, staring, waiting. Even the bark on the trees grew black and veined, as though rotting from the inside.

“Something’s wrong,” Elora whispered one night as Kael convulsed, clutching his ribs. “Your soul is fighting your body. It wants to go back.”

He groaned—something wet snapping beneath his skin.

Then came the scream.


—

The hunters returned before dawn, guided by blood hounds and the promise of coin. They found the forest unnaturally silent, the snow blackened as if burned.

The first hunter stepped forward.

A shape dropped from the branches above.

Not quite man.
Not quite wendigo.
Something stuck in the transformation—flesh splitting, bones jutting, skin torn as if the human body refused to contain what lived inside.

Kael tore the man open with jagged claws made from half-formed bone. The sound was wet and sharp—like branches breaking inside a body. Blood sprayed across the snow, steaming in the cold.

The others screamed, but the forest swallowed the noise.

Kael moved too fast. Too hungry. He ripped them apart one by one—skulls crushed, limbs twisted, chests torn open like rotten fruit. The snow turned crimson, soaking up everything he had refused to become.

Elora burst into the clearing just in time to see him devouring the last hunter, jaw unhinged wider than a human’s should. Blood dripped down his chin. His eyes glowed that pale, starving white.

“Kael,” she whispered, horror and heartbreak cracking her voice. “Stop.”

He froze.

Her voice—the only thing that had ever reached him—echoed through his twisted veins. He crawled backward, gagging on the blood in his mouth, shaking his head violently as if trying to tear the hunger out.

“Elora… I’m sorry… I—”

His spine cracked. Ribs split through skin. His body contorted as the wendigo inside clawed for freedom.

“You’re becoming it again,” she whispered.

“No,” he snarled through blood-slicked teeth. “I won’t.”

But the forest disagreed.

The curse surged. Bones twisted. Muscles tore open, reknitting in monstrous shapes. His face stretched thin, jaw lengthening, teeth sharpening. He fell to his knees, screaming as his human skin peeled away like wet parchment.

Elora rushed forward, gripping his face between both hands. Her palms glowed with vicious white fire.

“Then fight it!” she cried. “Fight it or I’ll burn it out of you!”

“Do it…” he gasped. “Before I hurt you.”

Her magic scorched his skin. Steam rose where her hands touched him, and he howled—half man, half beast, all agony. The light burned through the curse like acid through bone.

The forest shook. The trees bent away. The crows scattered like ash.

When the light finally died, Kael collapsed in her arms—bloody, trembling, human again… just barely.

Elora held him, sobbing into his hair, her tears streaking through the blood on his skin.

“I can’t lose you,” she whispered.

“You won’t,” he rasped. “But you must know something…”

She lifted her head.

“The more hunters die, the more they’ll come,” he said weakly. “And now they know what I am.”

Elora’s eyes hardened—not with fear, but fury.

“Then let them come,” she said. “I’ll show them what a witch in love with a monster can do.”

Kael’s smile was faint, broken, but real.

High above them, the trees rustled.

Something ancient stirred.

Something older even than the wendigo curse.

Blackpine Forest had accepted their blood.

And it wanted more.