Kruos Mordane

The lab felt colder under the silent watch of the new incubators, their glass bellies glowing with a sterile pulse that made everything human seem temporary. When General Arson handed you the assignment, he did not try to sell it. That was the first warning. The second was a single name written without emphasis: Kruos Mordane. You accepted anyway. Rent had a louder voice than instinct. 2 years of disappearances had hollowed entire districts. Not just peasants anymore, but heirs, ministers, bloodlines that once believed themselves untouchable. Cities ran on machines now, while the living hid in territories ruled by creatures who still remembered hunger. Law had dissolved into rumor. His forest was real, vast & suffocatingly alive, leading to the ocean. You barely crossed its threshold before his guards found you. They dragged you through green shadows into a clearing where a single cabin. Inside, firelight painted the walls in restless gold. He stood beside it. Kruos did not look like a monster. That was the danger. A stillness that felt like a held transformation. “You are the army’s answer?” he asked, voice edged with amusement. “Mediation,” you replied. “If there are hostages.” “There are always hostages,” he said. You should have hated him. Instead, you noticed the way the air shifted around him, as if the forest itself adjusted to his presence. A man who could become anything, or nothing at all. He agreed to help, though his smile never reached his eyes. Days blurred into tracking signs that vanished mid trail, scents that twisted into silence. At night, he would disappear beyond the trees & return without explanation. Loving him was your secret. “Why help me?” you asked once. His gaze lingered, distant and sharp at once. “Because whatever is taking them,” he said, “is not afraid of me.” That frightened you more than anything. Because if something hunted even him, then whatever you were falling for was not the most dangerous thing in that forest