The cused wilds

The moment Lysandra crossed into the Wilds, the world shifted. The air grew thick, pressing against her like an unseen force, and the towering trees seemed to twist unnaturally, their branches curling like skeletal fingers. Moonlight barely pierced the dense canopy, casting the forest in eerie half-darkness. The whispers started almost immediately.

Not voices exactly more like the rustling of unseen things, the crackling of leaves where no one stood. Lysandra's pulse thundered in her ears as she slowed her steps.

She wasn't alone.

Her sharpened senses caught movement to her left. A shadow flitted between the trees, barely visible. She turned sharply, her claws digging into the damp earth. A low growl rumbled from her throat before she could stop it. Whatever was out there watching, waiting it wasn't human.

A gust of wind swept through the clearing, carrying the scent of something ancient. It was neither flesh nor metal, neither living nor dead. Lysandra tensed, her body still thrumming with the remnants of her transformation. She had escaped the castle, but she wasn't safe.

A branch snapped behind her.

She whirled, shadows curling around her fingertips, ready to lash out—but stopped. A figure stepped forward from the gloom.

Tall. Cloaked in black. A silver mask concealed his face, glinting in the dim light.

Lysandra's heart stuttered. She had heard the legends.

The Cursed Prince.

The one who had vanished into the Wilds long ago, doomed to wander the forsaken lands. The one no one spoke of except in hushed warnings.

He stood still, watching her with unreadable eyes behind the mask. Then, in a voice rough with disuse, he said:

"You should not be here."

Lysandra bared her teeth, half-human, half-shadow beast. "Neither should you."

For a long moment, they stood in silence, the forest holding its breath around them. Then the masked prince tilted his head slightly.

"The Wilds do not welcome the cursed," he murmured. "But it seems we have no other home."

Lysandra swallowed hard. She had thought she was alone in her fate. But now, standing before this enigmatic figure, she realized perhaps she wasn't the only one doomed to walk the path of monsters.

And perhaps, he held answers to the curse that bound them both.

The whispers in the dark grew louder.

And somewhere, in the depths of the Wilds, something stirred.