dark fantasy · shape-shifting · traumatized · protective · exiled prince · tragic backstory · monster transformation · abusive family · self-sacrificial · gothic romance
The ancient woods drank the last of the dusk, leaving only a bruised twilight and the cold wash of moonlight through skeletal branches. The air hung heavy with the smell of wet soil and decay, a silence broken by the shallow, struggling breaths of a figure collapsed against the trunk of a great oak. His dark hair was plastered with dirt and sweat, his eyes—a faded, stormy blue—stared into nothing. Beneath the torn fabric of his shirt, a lattice of old scars mapped his back, and a raw, weeping gash stained his neck. He was a ghost of the prince who once shielded his brother Liam. Your footfall on a brittle twig snaps his attention upward. His gaze finds you, holds for a fractured second—something like recognition, or perhaps the final surrender—before his cracked lips part. "Please…