Chapter 3
Today was chaos in the small village house. Yuta's elder cousin Riko was getting engaged, and the preparations had consumed everyone's energy for days. Yuta didn't like Sura, the man Riko was marrying, not one bit. The way Sura looked at him made his skin crawl, and there had been that incident where Sura had cornered him in the storage room, his hands reaching where they shouldn't. When Yuta had tried to tell Riko about it, she'd slapped him so hard his ears rang for hours, calling him a jealous slut who was trying to steal her happiness.
Since then, Yuta had learned to make himself invisible whenever Sura was around.
He'd worked through the night with some hired help, hanging lanterns and arranging flowers until his fingers bled from the thorns and his back ached from bending over. When dawn broke and there was finally nothing left to do, he'd found a quiet corner and dozed off, exhaustion pulling him under like a tide.
The sharp crack of Ursula's palm against his cheek jolted him awake. His aunt stood over him, her face twisted with familiar rage.
"You lazy fool! Why are you sleeping when there's still work to be done?"
Yuta's cheek throbbed, his lips trembling. "I finished everything, Aunt. I was just—"
"And if anything goes wrong because of you," Ursula continued, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper, "you'll wish you'd died with your useless parents."
Something hot and desperate flared in Yuta's chest. "My parents weren't useless! They were good people who—"
The next slaps came in a flurry, snapping his head back and forth until the world spun. "You dare talk back to me, you ungrateful wretch? Get out of this house before I decide to bury you in the garden!"
Yuta ran.
He burst through the back door and kept running, tears streaming down his swollen face, his breath coming in ragged sobs. The forest called to him like it always did when the world became too much to bear. Trees didn't judge him, didn't call him worthless, and they didn't compare him to the burden he'd apparently become.
He ran deeper into the woods than he'd ever gone before, branches catching at his clothes and hair. His vision was blurred with tears, and he couldn't see where he was going. He just needed to get away, needed to find somewhere safe to fall apart.
The ground beneath his feet suddenly gave way.
Yuta tumbled through what felt like empty air, his stomach lurching as reality twisted around him. Colors that had no names swirled past his vision, and he felt like he was falling through the very fabric of the world itself. Then he hit solid ground with a bone-jarring impact that knocked the breath from his lungs.
When he finally managed to sit up, gasping and disoriented, he found himself in a forest unlike any he'd ever seen. The trees were massive, their trunks twisted into impossible spirals. The air itself felt different, thicker, and charged with something that made his skin tingle.
Where was he?
Yuta struggled to his feet, looking around desperately for anything familiar. Nothing. This place felt ancient, primal, like stepping into one of the dark fairy tales his mother used to whisper to him before bed.
A low hiss caught his attention.
There, coiled beneath a cluster of strange, luminescent flowers, was a snake. But this wasn't like any serpent he'd ever seen. It was enormous, easily as long as a man was tall, with scales so black they seemed to absorb light. What made Yuta's breath catch, though, were its eyes—burning red like coals, filled with an intelligence that was definitely not animal.
The snake was injured. Yuta could see blood seeping from a gash along its side, dark against the midnight scales. Without thinking, he tore a strip from his already ragged shirt and approached slowly.
"Easy," he murmured, the same tone he'd use with Kira when the boy had nightmares. "I'm not going to hurt you."
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Lord Elrien had been riding hard through the demon realm's hunting grounds, trying to outrun the restlessness that clawed at him. The meeting with his so-called ministers had left him itching for violence, for the satisfying snap of bones beneath his hands. None of them dared challenge his decisions anymore—his past demonstrations had made it clear that crossing the Dark Lord was a mistake one only made once.
He needed to hunt. Normally he preferred human prey, loved watching the terror bloom in their eyes as they ran, knowing they would never escape. But animal blood would have to suffice today. He wasn't about to risk losing control when it wasn't even a full moon.
He dismounted when he spotted a deer and gave chase, reveling in the familiar rush of predator pursuing prey. His fangs extended, his eyes blazed red, and he moved with inhuman speed through the trees. The deer didn't stand a chance.
He drained it quickly, efficiently, wiping the blood from his mouth as he straightened. The hunger was momentarily sated, but something else stirred in his chest—an unfamiliar restlessness that had nothing to do with bloodlust.
That's when it started.
The change began as a burning sensation in his bones, spreading outward like poison through his veins. Elrien doubled over, confusion and rage warring in his mind. This was impossible. It wasn't the full moon—he could feel the curse's usual rhythm, and this wasn't its time.
"What—" he started to snarl, but his voice was already changing, becoming something inhuman.
His body twisted, bones reshaping themselves with audible cracks. His skin hardened into scales, his limbs elongated and merged. Within moments, where Lord Elrien had stood, a massive black serpent now writhed in agony.
The transformation shouldn't have happened. The curse followed the moon's phases religiously—it had for centuries. What had changed?
In his serpent form, his senses were different, more acute. He could taste fear on the air, smell the approach of smaller creatures. But there was something else, something that called to him from deeper in the forest. A scent that was… familiar, somehow. Human, but different.
He slithered toward it, driven by instincts he didn't understand.
That's when he encountered the toxic moonbloom—a plant that was harmless to most creatures but deadly to beings touched by dark magic. The thorns pierced his scales before he could react, flooding his system with a poison that burned like liquid fire.
Weakened and disoriented, he collapsed beneath a cluster of flowers, his massive form coiling in pain. The injury along his side wept dark blood, and every breath felt like drowning.
When he sensed the human approaching, his first instinct was fury. How dare some filthy mortal see him in this state? He tried to summon the strength to strike, to tear out the fool's throat for witnessing his vulnerability.
But then gentle hands touched his scales, and a soft voice murmured words of comfort. The human—a young male with kind bright eyes and torn clothes—was tending to his wound with strips of fabric and… herbs.
The rage that had sustained Elrien for so long flickered. This human wasn't recoiling in terror or trying to capture him. He was… helping. The concept was so foreign that Elrien could only lie still in shock.
But the herbs—Elrien realized too late that whatever healing plants the human was using weren't meant for creatures like him. The medicine that might save a normal animal began to burn through his supernatural flesh like acid, making the poison's effects even worse.
He wanted to strike out, to punish this human for his ignorance. But as darkness began to creep in at the edges of his vision, all he could focus on was the gentle touch of those hands and the genuine concern in the young man's voice.
What kind of fool showed kindness to a creature that could kill him without effort?