Cursed Under a Moonlight

(Adrian POV)

I was nine years old when I damned myself.

One bite. That's all it took to end my childhood and curse the rest of my life.

The forest always whispered to me. Before everything changed, I wasn't afraid of the shadows. I could name every bird by its call, trace deer tracks, and knew how sunlight dripped through the canopy like honey.

I should have known better than to trust it.

That day started like any other. My mother handed me flatbread at breakfast, warned me not to wander too far, and kissed my forehead the way mothers do when they don't know it's the last normal day they'll ever have with their son.

"Stay close to the river," she said. "Be home before sunset."

I nodded, already thinking about the game Toma and Milo wanted to play at the riverbank. We were building a fort out of sticks and river stones, defending it from imaginary invaders. I was always the captain. Always the one who led.

I was about to become something too monstrous for anyone to follow.

By midday, the others left. The sun dropped, coloring the world amber and rust. I stayed. Earlier, I'd seen a movement in the forest - maybe a fox or a strange bird. Curiosity tugged me forward like a hook.

"Adrian!" Toma called from the riverbank. "You coming?"

"In a minute!" I shouted back. "I want to check something."

I stepped off the path.

And that was my first mistake.

The trees grew denser as I walked, their branches weaving together overhead until the sunlight barely touched the ground. The air changed - colder, heavier, like the forest was holding its breath. Birds stopped singing; even the wind went silent.

I should have turned back.

But I was nine, and nine-year-olds don't listen to the warnings their bodies try to give them.

That's when I saw it.

A tree stood ahead of me, twisted and wrong. Its bark was black as charred wood, and its roots clawed out of the ground like skeletal fingers grasping at the earth. At the base of the trunk, nestled in shadow, was an apple that pulsed with faint, unnatural light - almost as if the tree and its fruit were alive with magic.

Perfect. The red was so deep it looked purple, like a drop of frozen blood.

My stomach growled. I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and hunger gnawed at me with sharp teeth. The apple seemed to glow in the dim light, too beautiful, too flawless to be real.

I stepped closer.

The air around the tree was ice-cold despite the summer heat. A thin, ghostly voice whispered at the edge of my mind - don't, turn around, leave, but my hunger was louder.

I reached down and picked up the apple.

It was warm in my palm. Not sun-warm but something else... something alive.

I hesitated. The whisper grew louder. Don't.

But I was hungry, and it was just an apple, and I was still stupid enough to believe the forest couldn't hurt me.

I bit down. Sweetness burst over my tongue, so rich my head spun. I chewed, swallowed. The taste lingered: honey and rot, strange and cloying and strange.

Then the forest screamed.

Not with sound, with sensation. Wind tore through the trees like a living thing, snapping branches and shaking the ground beneath my feet. Shadows twisted and writhed as clouds devoured the sun. The apple fell from my hands and rolled into the darkness.

I couldn't breathe.

The air thickened, pressing down on my chest like a hand crushing my ribs. I looked up-

And there she was.

The woman stood beside the twisted tree, impossibly tall. Her cloak streamed behind her like smoke given unnatural shape, shifting and coiling without wind. Her skin glowed with a cold, unnatural light, casting the ground in a pale halo. And her eyes... gods, her eyes. White. Empty. No pupils, no iris. Just a void, deep and endless, staring back at me - a gaze that felt as if it could swallow my soul.

Her silver hair floated around her face as if she were underwater, and in her hands, she held a gnarled staff carved with symbols I didn't recognize but somehow understood meant death.

I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. My legs had turned to stone.

She smiled, slow and cold, and my blood turned to ice.

"Poor, greedy child," she said, her voice like wind through dead leaves. "Did no one teach you not to take what doesn't belong to you?"

My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

She drifted closer, her feet never touching the ground. "That fruit was not yours. It belonged to the cursed grove. Once tended by men, now guarded by blood."

"I... I didn't know," I stammered, my voice barely a whisper. "I was hungry."

"Hunger has a price." Her voice cut through me like a blade made of winter. "And now, you will pay it."

I tried to run, but roots erupted from the earth and wrapped around my ankles, yanking me to my knees. I screamed, clawing at the dirt, but the roots only tightened.

"Please," I begged, tears streaming down my face. "I want to go home."

She leaned down until her face was inches from mine. Her breath smelled sweet and rotten, like flowers growing on a corpse. "You ate the fruit of the forgotten. Its magic has marked you. And so, Adrian Vukan, by the power of the old spirits, I curse you."

"No-"

Under the full moon's light, the ancient curse will take hold: your bones will break and reform, your flesh will tear and reshape into the form of a wolf. You will walk on four legs and howl at a sky that will never answer. You will be feared, hunted, and hated.

Pain exploded through my chest as she pressed her hand against my heart. Ice and fire raced through my veins. My spine arched, cracking like dry wood. My fingers spasmed, bones snapping and reshaping into something wrong. My jaw locked, teeth grinding as something deep inside me twisted and grew.

I screamed until my throat was raw.

"You will not die, little wolf," she hissed, her voice dripping venom. "You will live with this. Suffer with this. Forever cursed, forever hunted, and never whole."

My vision blurred, and the world tilted to the side. Through the haze of agony, I saw her step back, her body dissolving into shadow.

Her final words echoed in my skull:

"You will never know peace again."

Then she was gone.

And I was alone in the dark, broken and remade into something monstrous.

***

They found me hours later.

I don't remember much of it. Only fragments - voices calling my name, hands lifting me, my mother's sobs cutting through the fog in my mind.

I was curled at the base of a tree, naked, shivering. Blood streaked my hands and lips. My clothes were shredded as if something had exploded out of them.

When they called my name, I didn't respond. Couldn't. My eyes glowed faintly gold in the moonlight, and my jaw was locked shut, teeth bared in a silent snarl.

My mother fell to her knees beside me, weeping. My father stood frozen, staring at me with wide, terrified eyes.

They carried me home wrapped in a blanket, whispering about fever and madness.

The village healer said I'd been touched by spirits. A forest sickness, maybe.

Some called it fever. Others called it madness.

But I knew the truth.

I was cursed.

And the moon had only just begun its work.

Later that night, in my room, I lay on the straw bed and stared at the ceiling. My body ached; bones still tender from whatever had happened in the forest. My skin felt too tight, like something was trying to claw its way out from the inside.

I whispered to the shadows, my voice hoarse and broken:

"I can still feel her."

Outside my window, the moon rose full and silver.

And deep inside me, something stirred.

Something hungry.

Something that would never let me go.