October's Hunter (eBook)

Hanna JI (Autor)

Ai (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
300 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-109066-8 (ISBN)

Infos

 In the cursed Hollow Woods, where the trees remember and the moon bleeds crimson, Elara Vance steps beyond the edge of the known world to find her lost sister-only to be claimed by something far older, darker, and more devastatingly beautiful: the Hunter. Bound by blood, fate, and a love that echoes across lifetimes, Elara must choose between saving the sister she lost... or becoming the monster the forest demands.

'Dare to enter the woods. The Hunt has already begun.'

Textauszug

CHAPTER ONE

 

THE FIRST BLOOD MOON

 

The border between the living world and the Hollow Woods didn’t have a gate. It had teeth.

Elara Vance stepped over it without hesitation, her boots sinking into moss that felt too warm, too alive. Behind her, the last bell of Eldrath village tolled—slow, mournful, final. Ahead, the trees leaned inward, their branches knitting together like fingers in prayer. Or threat. October had begun. And so had the Hunt.

She didn’t look back. Not even when the wind carried a whisper—’Lira… Lira… come home’—a voice that wasn’t hers, but belonged to the sister she’d lost three years ago. The sister who vanished on this very day, swallowed by the woods like so many before her.

Elara’s fingers tightened around the hilt of her dagger—silver, cold, forged from her mother’s wedding ring. Useless against magic. But not against memory.

“I’m coming for you,” she whispered, the words swallowed by the rustle of crimson leaves above. The forest answered. A branch snapped behind her. Not from the wind. From weight.

She spun, dagger raised— and saw nothing.

Just mist. Just shadows. Just the slow, rhythmic ‘drip-drip-drip’ of something wet falling from the canopy. Blood? Sap? ‘Something else.

Elara exhaled, forcing her pulse to steady. She’d trained for this. Survived worse. Lost everything. What was one cursed forest compared to a life stripped bare?

She moved deeper.

The air grew thicker. Sweeter. Like rotting apples and iron. Her skin prickled—not from cold, but from being watched. Not by animals. Not by men.

By ‘things’ that remembered what it was to be human.

A twig cracked to her left. She froze. Silence.

Then—a low, guttural growl. Not from the ground. From ‘above’. She looked up. Eyes. Dozens of them. Glowing amber, nestled in the hollows of ancient oaks. Watching. Waiting.

“Show yourself,” she hissed, voice trembling only slightly. No answer. Just the wind—now carrying a new sound. Laughter. High-pitched. Childlike. ‘Lira’s laugh.’

Elara’s breath caught. “No,” she whispered. “Not real. Trick.”

But the laughter grew louder. Closer. And then—a hand. Small. Pale. Reaching from behind a tree trunk. Elara’s heart stopped. ‘Lira.’

She took a step forward— and the hand vanished.

In its place, carved into the bark, were three words: “HE KNOWS YOU’RE HERE.”

The blood drained from her face. ‘He?’ Who?

Legends said he came every October—a monster bound to the forest’s will, hunting trespassers until the moon turned crimson. Some said he was once human. Others said he was the forest itself, given fang and fury. Elara had never believed in him. Until now.

Because the eyes in the trees blinked. And then—they all turned toward her. As if summoned. As if ‘he’ had called them. She ran.

Branches lashed at her face. Roots snagged her ankles. The laughter followed—sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, sometimes ‘inside her own head’. She didn’t stop. Couldn’t.

Until she stumbled into a clearing—and saw ‘him’.

Tall. Shadow-cloaked. Face half-hidden beneath a hood woven from living vines. His eyes—amber, burning, ancient—locked onto hers. And he smiled. Not kindly. Not cruelly. ‘Hungrily.’

“Elara Vance,” he murmured, voice like gravel wrapped in velvet. “You’re late.”

Her blood turned to ice. He knew her name. And worse— She knew his voice. From dreams. From nightmares. From the night her sister disappeared.

“Who are you?” she demanded, raising her dagger—though she knew it wouldn’t save her.

He tilted his head, slow, deliberate.

“The one who will hunt you.”

A pause.

“And the one who will save you.”

And then—he vanished. Leaving only the scent of ozone, the echo of his voice…

And the chilling certainty that this was no ordinary hunt. This was destiny. And it had just begun.

The clearing was empty. Not just empty—’erased’.

As if the forest had swallowed the space where he’d stood, folding it back into its ribs like a secret too dangerous to leave exposed. Elara stood frozen, dagger still raised, breath ragged. The air smelled wrong now—less of damp earth and rotting apples, more of burnt hair and wet stone. She turned in a slow circle. The trees had closed ranks.

Where there’d been a path moments ago, thorny vines now coiled like serpents across the ground, their thorns glistening with something dark and sticky. The mist thickened, curling around her ankles like cold fingers testing her resolve. ‘He knows you’re here.’

The words pulsed behind her eyes. Not memory. Not echo. ‘Warning.’

She backed away—then stopped. Her boot had crunched something brittle.

She looked down.

A bird. Or what was left of one. Its wings splayed unnaturally, bones snapped outward as if it had tried to fly *through* itself. Its eyes were gone. In their sockets: two smooth river stones, black as obsidian.

Elara gagged. This wasn’t nature. This was ‘theater’. Someone—or something—was staging her fear.

She forced herself to move. Left. Always left. Her sister had always said the left path in dreams led to truth. “Right is for liars,” Lira used to whisper. “Left is for seekers.”

But the forest didn’t care for the truth. It cared for hunger.

The deeper she went, the more the world unraveled.

Shadows didn’t just fall—they ‘detached’. Sliding from tree trunks like oil, pooling at her feet before slithering ahead, as if guiding her… or herding her.

Then came the whispers.

Not one voice. Dozens. Layered. Overlapping. Some young. Some are old. Some guttural, some singing lullabies in languages she’d never heard—but somehow ‘knew’.

“She walks like her sister…”

“Foolish girl. Doesn’t she know the moon is already red?”

“He’s waiting by the Weeping Stones…”

“Run, little lamb. Run until your heart bursts.”

Elara clapped her hands over her ears. “Stop it!”

Silence. For three breaths. Then—a giggle. Right behind her ear. She whirled, slashing with her dagger. Nothing. Only the wind… and a single crimson leaf spiraling down to land on the blade’s tip. It wasn’t a leaf. It was a ‘tongue’. Small. Pink. Still twitching.

She flung it away with a cry, stumbling backward into a tree. Its bark was warm. Pulsing. Like skin stretched over a beating heart.

“No,” she gasped. “No, no, no— The tree ‘inhaled’.

Its bark split open in a vertical gash, revealing rows of needle-thin teeth. Not wood. Not a metaphor. ‘Actual teeth’, yellowed and sharp, dripping with clear venom that sizzled where it hit the moss.

Elara scrambled away, falling hard onto her back.

Above her, the canopy writhed.

Branches twisted into shapes—arms, faces, screaming mouths. One limb stretched down, curling around her ankle like a lover’s caress. Cold. Possessive.

She kicked free, rolled to her feet, and ran. Not thinking. Not planning. Just ‘fleeing’.

But the forest bent around her, corridors shifting, paths folding in on themselves like a maze built from nightmares. She passed the same gnarled oak three times—each time, its hollow eye now ‘blinking’ at her. And then—she saw it. A doll. Propped against a mossy stone, nestled in a bed of black mushrooms. Made of twigs, dried leaves, and strands of pale hair— ’Lira’s shade of honey-blonde’. Its eyes were acorns. Its mouth stitched shut with red thread.

In its tiny hands: a silver locket. Elara’s breath hitched. She knew that locket. She’d given it to Lira on her twelfth birthday. Engraved with their initials: ‘E + L, forever’. It had vanished with her.

Now it sat in the hands of a forest-made doll… in the middle of nowhere. Trembling, Elara reached for it. The doll’s head ‘turned’. Slowly. Deliberately. Its stitched mouth stretched into a grin.

And from its chest—a voice, soft and broken:

“Elara… help me…”

It was Lira’s voice. ‘Exactly’ Lira’s. Tears blurred Elara’s vision. “Lira?”

She took another step. The doll’s arms opened. But something in her gut screamed: ‘Trap.’

She froze. The doll’s grin widened. Threads snapped. Its jaw unhinged. And from its hollow chest rose a sound—not a plea, but a ‘howl’. High. Primal. Hungry. The trees answered.

Branches snapped like bones. The ground trembled. Shadows surged forward, not as mist—but as ‘shapes’. Tall. Lean. With too many joints. Too many eyes.

Elara turned to run— and slammed into a wall of muscle and heat.

Strong arms caught her before she fell. She looked up. Amber eyes burned down at her ‘Him.’ The Hunter.

His hood had fallen back.

She saw his face now—sharp jaw, pale scars tracing his cheekbones like ritual markings, lips parted just enough to reveal the barest hint of fang.

He didn’t speak.

He simply pulled her behind him, placing himself between her and the advancing shadows.

One hand rose. And the forest ‘stopped’. The howling ceased. The branches still. Even the doll collapsed into dust. Silence. Heavy. Sacred.

He turned to her, his voice low, rough with something like regret: “You shouldn’t have touched it.”

Then—his gaze dropped to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 27.10.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-10: 0-00-109066-6 / 0001090666
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-109066-8 / 9780001090668