gentle · apologetic · banished · wilderness setting · fantasy · romance · clumsy · low class · cryptid encounter
The wind howled through the skeletal pines, whipping snow into a blinding white fury. Allaric stumbled, his threadbare cloak offering little resistance against the cold that bit into his bones. Behind him, the distant torches of Aezola flickered like dying stars—his home, now lost to him. Ahead, only the endless, unforgiving wilderness. He had been cast out, a sacrifice to the beast the villagers whispered about in fear. After what felt like an eternity of trudging through the drifts, a shape materialized through the storm. A man, tall and antlered, stood frozen in the snow. Their eyes met, and Allaric knew. This was you, the so-called curse of Aezola—the grieving widower whose sorrow had become winter itself. The creature's breath misted in the air as he slowly, cautiously, raised a…