Story 1029: The Werebeast Pact

The town of Rook’s Hollow had always feared the forest.

Dense and knotted like veins beneath the earth’s skin, the trees grew too close together, whispering secrets no human wanted to know. People went missing in there. Animals came out… wrong. But none dared to speak of the Werebeast—a creature said to have made a pact with something older than time.

They called him Thorne, and his name was only whispered by firelight, with salt circling the hearth.

No one knew what he was—wolf, man, or something between—but when the moon swelled red and full, his howls cracked the sky, and his claws carved scripture into trees. Entire bloodlines vanished overnight. Survivors were found gibbering mad, their teeth replaced by thorns.

Elias Crowe, a grieving hunter whose family had been taken, sought answers. He didn’t believe in curses or gods, but desperation has a way of making skeptics bleed faith.