Page 9 of Monster’s Obsessive Hunger

LYSSA

T he village has started to watch me. The stares are no longer just the soft, pitying glances I’ve grown accustomed to over the years.

They have sharpened, honed by suspicion into something that feels like an accusation.

When I walk to the market to trade for flour, the conversations hush as I pass.

I can feel the weight of their eyes on my back, tracing the new, secretive lines of my posture.

They see the dark circles beneath my eyes, the faint scratches on my arms from branches I didn’t see in my haste to reach the clearing.

They notice the way I no longer flinch at the howl of a distant worg , the way my gaze is always fixed on the treeline, as if waiting for a summons.

The whispers follow me like my own shadow.

She’s meeting a lover , some of the older women murmur behind their hands, their eyes alight with scandalous gossip.

It’s the grief, the kinder ones say, shaking their heads with sorrowful clicks of their tongues.

It’s finally broken her mind. They see a girl unraveling, a tragedy entering its final, pitiful act.

They don’t see the truth: that I am not breaking, but being remade.

I don’t care about what they think. Their small world, once the entirety of my own, now seems distant and insignificant.

Their worries about mended nets and rising bread feel like the concerns of children compared to the vast, ancient secret I carry within me.

I have stood before legend, a being of bone and anger who feeds on emotion, and he has named himself to me.

He has listened to my stories. The judgment of the village feels like nothing more than the buzzing of flies against a windowpane, a minor annoyance on the other side of the glass that separates my two realities.

The truth is, the woods, once the source of all my fear, now feel like the only place I can truly breathe.

The village, with its narrow streets and even narrower minds, has become the cage.

Clara corners me as dusk bleeds across the sky, her expression a tight knot of worry and frustration.

I am in our shared room, pulling on my thickest cloak, the familiar anticipation of my nightly pilgrimage a low hum beneath my skin.

She stands in the doorway, blocking my exit, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Where do you go, Lyssa?” she asks, her voice devoid of its usual warmth. “Every night, you just disappear. You come back smelling of pine and cold stone, with your eyes looking a thousand miles away. The whole village is talking.”

“Let them talk,” I say. I try to push past her, but she holds her ground.

“No,” she says, her own eyes, so like our mother’s, filling with a frustration that borders on anger.

“I won’t. I’m your sister. I’ve watched you waste away for five years, chasing a ghost. But this…

this is different. This is self-destruction.

Are you trying to get yourself killed out there? Is that what this is?”

The accusation stings, but I can’t give her the truth. The truth is too monstrous, too unbelievable. I force myself to meet her gaze, to construct a lie that sounds just plausible enough. “I’m just walking, Clara. It helps me clear my head. It’s quiet out there. I can think.”

“Think about what?” she presses, her voice softening slightly, her frustration giving way to the deep, aching worry that has been her constant companion since I started my nightly excursions. “What is there to think about in the dark, in the cold, where a batlaz could tear you apart?”

I see the fear for me in her eyes, and a pang of guilt slices through me.

I am hurting her with my secret, driving a wedge between us that may soon become too wide to cross.

But the alternative—telling her I’m meeting a skeletal monster who finds my voice a delicacy—is impossible.

She would never understand. She would try to stop me. And I cannot be stopped.

“I’m just… working through things,” I finish lamely. “About Mother. It’s helping. Please, just trust me.”

The lie is thin and transparent. I can see in her eyes that she doesn’t believe a word of it.

But she is exhausted, worn down by my grief and my secrets.

With a heavy sigh, she steps aside, granting me passage.

Her parting words are a whisper of defeat.

“Just… be careful, Lyssa. The forest takes things. I can’t bear for it to take you, too. ”

The moment I step under the canopy of the trees, the tension from my fight with Clara dissolves, replaced by a profound sense of peace.

The air here is clean, honest. The ancient pines do not judge; the cold, silent stones do not whisper behind my back.

This is where I belong now. The thought is both terrifying and exhilarating.

I navigate the familiar path with an ease that would have been unthinkable just weeks ago.

The darkness is no longer a threat; it is a comforting blanket.

I see the faint crimson glow of his heart-light before I reach the clearing, a lonely beacon in the deep woods.

The sight of it doesn't spark fear anymore.

It sparks… a feeling of coming home. A towering silhouette, and a genuine smile touches my lips.

He is the only soul in this world who has ever truly listened to me.

As I step into the clearing, I finally admit the truth to myself, a truth I have been circling for days.

I am not coming here for closure about my mother.

I am not here out of some morbid curiosity.

I am here for him. I am here because the thought of not seeing him, of not sharing the quiet intimacy of our strange communion, is unbearable.

I am not scared of Thorrin anymore. I am drawn to him.

To the ancient loneliness in his gravelly voice, to the impossible gentleness in his monstrous form, to the way his chest flares with wonder when I laugh.

It’s a dangerous, reckless, and utterly insane feeling.

I might even be falling in love with him.

The realization settles not with a crash, but with a quiet, irrevocable certainty.

My life is now cleaved in two: the gray, suffocating world of the village, and the vibrant, dangerous world of the forest. And my heart, I now understand, has chosen the darkness.