Page 13 of Monster’s Obsessive Hunger

THORRIN

S he is gone, and the silence she leaves behind is a physical weight.

The clearing, which was alive with the color and warmth of her voice only moments ago, is now just a pocket of cold, empty moonlight.

I stand motionless, listening to the last echoes of her footsteps fade into the vast, indifferent quiet of the forest. The air still holds her scent, a faint trace of woodsmoke and clean wool, and I breathe it in like a dying man’s last gasp.

It does not soothe me. It only sharpens me.

The ache inside me is a terrible thing. It is not the familiar, gnawing emptiness of the curse’s hunger.

This is a sharper pain, a more focused craving.

Her stories, her laughter, her presence—they do not simply fill the void within me; they have reshaped it.

Now, the hollowness has her exact dimensions, and without her here to occupy it, the feeling is unbearable.

My clawed hands clench, the talons digging into my own palms. I need to move, to hunt, to do something other than stand here in this haunted silence.

I rake my claws through a drift of snow, the frozen crystals spraying into the air.

The physical act provides no release. There is a restless, agitated energy coiling in my limbs that has no outlet.

She has seen the ugliest part of me, the cruel predator I was, and she did not run.

Her courage should be a comfort, but instead, it is a torment.

It makes her more precious, more vital, and the thought of losing her is a new kind of terror that makes the physical hunger seem like a minor inconvenience.

Her presence is a strange sort of poison.

It soothes the old pain while creating a new, more potent addiction.

A single drop of water to a man dying of thirst. It does not quench; it only reminds him how much he needs to drink.

I retreat to the cold, dark silence of my lair.

The cave, once a simple refuge from the elements, now feels like a tomb.

A monument to a lonely, brutal existence that I was content with until she showed me it was possible to feel something else.

I stalk past the main chamber, ignoring the furs where she sometimes sits, and retreat to the deepest, darkest part of my domain, a small alcove where the stone is always damp and the air never stirs.

Here, in the absolute blackness, I try to find the cold, simple stillness that has been my companion for centuries. But it is gone. The silence is no longer empty; it is filled with the memory of her. The ache intensifies until it is a physical pain, a burning pressure behind my ribs.

My own mimicry is my last resort. I open my mouth and let her voice fill the darkness.

I repeat the words from her stories, the soft cadence of her speech, the gentle lilt of her questions.

“What is it like? The hunger?” Her voice, coming from my throat, is a perfect, hollow echo.

For a moment, it almost works. The sound fills the space, tricking my senses into believing she is here with me.

I can almost feel the warmth returning to my chest, the hollowness receding.

But it is a ghost. An echo without a source.

It lacks the life, the feeling , that makes her presence a balm.

It is like looking at a painted fire instead of feeling its heat.

The comfort is fleeting, an illusion that shatters the moment the sound fades, leaving the silence deeper and more profound than before.

The mimicry, my oldest tool for understanding and for soothing the curse, is failing me.

It has become a cruel reminder of what I do not have.

Her voice is no longer enough. I am beginning to crave the girl herself.

The failure of the mimicry forces me to confront a truth I have been avoiding.

I am weakening. I can feel it in the subtle tremor of my limbs, in the way my movements feel heavier, less certain.

I have not had a true blood meal in weeks, not since her visits became a nightly ritual.

I have been subsisting on the emotional sustenance she provides, a diet that fills my soul but starves my body.

I hold up a hand in the darkness, studying the faint light that emanates from my own bones.

The glow seems… frantic. The warm gold her presence ignites is still there, but it is now constantly at war with a deeper, more insistent color.

A feverish, hungry red pulses of light, a sign that the physical curse is reasserting itself with a vengeance.

The two hungers, one for her presence and one for her blood, are beginning to merge.

They are twisting together into a single, terrifying obsession.

This is not sustainable. She is a temporary reprieve, not a cure.

Her presence soothes the spiritual ache but sharpens the physical need.

How long can I maintain this fragile balance?

How long until the red consumes the gold entirely?

How long until I look at her and see not a source of comfort, but the only meal that can truly satisfy me?

The realization settles deep in my bones, a cold, heavy certainty.

This path leads to only one destination.

I am becoming dependent on a fragile human, my entire cursed existence now revolving around her.

She has not tamed the monster inside me.

She has simply focused its gaze. I am becoming more dangerous to her with every story she tells, with every laugh she shares.

My control, honed over centuries of solitude, is eroding.

She is chipping away at the stone walls of my restraint, not with force, but with a gentle, persistent warmth that is far more effective.

I lower my hand and let the darkness of the lair swallow me whole.

“She’s undoing me,” I murmur, and the words, spoken in my own true voice, are the most honest prayer I have uttered in a thousand years.