THE KING WITH THE TRUNK

    Chapter One

After long, hollow years of silence had choked every corner of their home, and as their hopes withered away one by one, the couple finally decided to seek out the Mountain Sage—a man whose name was woven from myths and whispered legends.

Inside his dimly lit chamber, where the faint glow of an oil lamp mingled with the thick scent of ancient incense, the old man did not look at their faces. He did not ask to read their palms as common fortune-tellers did; instead, his eyes remained fixed on their shadows stretched across the stone wall.

Then, he spoke in a deep, echoing voice that shattered the stillness of the room.

"You seek a voice to dispel the silence of your home?" the Sage said, his tone heavy with warning. "Know this: the price is neither gold nor silver. It is the borrowing of a wild spirit to dwell within a human womb."

The husband stepped forward, his eagerness tightly coiled with fear. "What must we do?"

The mystic answered without once shifting his gaze from the flickering silhouettes.

"Bring the heart of a newborn elephant. Boil it with sacred herbs, and feed this draught to your wife on the night of the full moon. She will conceive a child, but he will not be entirely human. In his veins, he will carry the mark of the wild forever."

The couple hesitated, but their desperate longing for a child to fill their lives with warmth was stronger than their dread. They did as they were commanded, and waited for their fate.

Months bled into months, and the child was finally born.

The moment the midwife looked upon the newborn, she froze in sheer terror. His ears were broad, fanning out like those of an elephant, and beneath his chin hung a small trunk, twitching softly with every breath he took, as if it were a natural part of his body.

It was then that the parents realized the Sage had not lied.

They had finally received the child they had craved for so long. But the true price... the true price had not yet been paid.