Chapter 1 Cursed Ones
Prologue
The sky was lit up with the last rays of light.
The yellow hue of her eyes gleamed in the dying dusk.
A sly smirk crept onto her face, baring her hidden canines.
With a nod of my head, she let out an ear-shattering howl and leapt down.
Free to run in the night we were.
We danced in and out of the trees, the soft dirt under our feet was warm still from the sun.
Longing to lay in our long lost paradise we sprint towards our destination.
Darting around rocks and brush in our path, sprinting past others as we fly by.
A single nod to them has a pack behind us in no time.
Tonight we take it all back.
The village was quiet tonight for once.
The hunters had all come back from the woods before sunset, and we all now sat preparing dinner.
Even with my father saying everything had gone accordingly to today I found the eerie silence from the woods foreboding.
I glanced once more at the woods before I climbed down into our home.
My people had to resort to living underground long ago after the first Blood Moon war.
The Gods did not favor us; we been told that story since I was a child.
We had stories of being cursed even.
Too many stories, not enough proof to hold any legitimate claim to them, though, at least to me.
We lived in an underground city now due to our loss in the war.
The others, the cursed ones roamed the land above.
We were only ever allowed to roam the land when the sun was out.
The cursed ones caught fire at the very sight at the sun we were told.
I loved the stories when I was a child and remembered fondly of sitting by the fire as the elder told us of the past.
The elders passed down stories and traditions; they knew everything nobody else did.
As a child, one story that kept me up at night thinking was how we came to be where we are now.
The elders said the Gods had grown angry with us for hurting the land and creatures.
My tribe had cut and burned down many large plots of forests for wood to build our home.
The other tribe over hunted the lands and left it barren.
We both had caused horrible damage, and the Gods punished us each for our crimes.
For us hurting the land, the Gods deemed our punishment to have the very ground we scarred but loved still, to turn against us.
Those of us there at the time the Gods threw down their wrath turned into nightmares.
The elders spoke of men, women, and children screaming in fear as the woods came alive and started grabbing them.
It was a slaughter; people got mercilessly killed in horrible graphic visions in the smoke of the elder’s fire.
The images danced in the fire as the elder revealed the past to us in vivid description.
A few of the children whimpered in fear while others sat staring in awe at the gruesome sight.
The stories didn’t phase me much; we all grew up overhearing these tales and knew one day we’d go above ground and face the wood’s wrath to become an adult.
We still had our rites of adulthood at least; just not many lived the trial.
The trials were for everyone. Nobody was left out.
Once the men had their first sign of adulthood coming on, they’d got sent above and into the woods with nothing but the clothes on them and their wit.
The men had to prove that they were worthy of the women in the tribe and able to protect us.
The rite was this. You’re sent alone at sunrise and must return the next day at dusk.
They have to find a way to survive the woods and the cursed.
Not many came back from these rites, but those who did never spoke of it and they were forever changed.
Some went mad from experiences and out of fear of them being tainted by the cursed, they were thrown back to the woods to get consumed.
The female’s rite was far worse than the males.
The eldest female would pick one young girl to be... “offered” to the woods.
When the offering got chosen the rest of us had to show our willingness to survive as well and do whatever to maintain peace and make sure only the strongest stayed alive.
The weak were picked off.
