Page 119 of Lost to the Woods

They see the broken bits you try to hide, and they love you for them. Until they use them to gut you.

And he was that monster long before the forest took him.

He didn’t lose himself out here—the woods just gave him permission. He was already empty, even before something else crawled inside him and wore his skin.

Maybe I was never in love with him at all.

Maybe I was just in love with the ghost of who I thought he could be.

I’m so cold.

I can’t breathe anymore.

My heartbeat slows, my consciousness fuzzing at the edges.

But no one’s coming.

And I don’t think I’m scared anymore.

Just… sorry. For myself.

All I ever wanted was love that didn’t come with a price.

But the forest doesn’t give.

It only takes.

And it’s taken everything from me.

27. Bunny

Iwake slowly, as though surfacing from the bottom of an ice lake.

The first thing I notice is the light. Dim, pale, filtered through the dense canopy of the forest above. It could be morning or late afternoon—I can’t tell. Time feels fractured, unreal. I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here. Hours? Days? Maybe more.

The air is still. Too still.

There are no birds, no rustling of leaves, no movement from the forest around me. Even the insects are gone. The entire woods feel hollow, emptied out, like every living thing fled before I woke.

I try to move. My limbs respond, stiff and slow, like they belong to someone else. My muscles ache. My skin is raw. The only sharp pain left is in my head—a deep, rhythmic pounding, as if something inside my skull is trying to break its way out.

I touch my forehead, and my fingertips graze two small, hard points rising beneath the skin.

Not bone bruises. Not scabs.

They’re velvet antlers. Tiny, but growing.

The realization settles over me like cooling lava, heavy and final.

I feel it now—the curse the creature passed to me. It slithers through my veins like cold fire, eating away what’s left, until whatever I was before… I’m not anymore.

I don’t panic. I don’t scream. I welcome it.

For a moment, I hear it again. Cackling.

Then I realize it’s coming from me.

I look beside me. Where its body once lay, there is only a ruin—scattered bones, picked clean and sun-bleached. It’s been a long time. The skull lies where it rolled, stained with dried blood and dirt.

---