Beast Empire

The Touch of Death

The days settled into a pattern of careful loneliness.

Ethan walked the village paths alone now, his footsteps echoing in squares that once rang with children's laughter. The other boys and girls watched him from doorways and windows, curious, fearful, forbidden to approach. Their parents' whispered warnings followed him like shadows: Stay away from the horn-boy. Don't let him touch you. Something dark grows in him.

But he was never truly alone. The beasts of Kyros loved him with a devotion that filled the hollow spaces left by human rejection. Glowmice danced around his ankles in spirals of soft green light. Cloud moths settled on his shoulders like living jewelry. The tiny crystal-backed drake whom he'd named Shimmer for the way sunlight fractured across her scales perched on his arm and hummed melodies that sounded almost like lullabies.

At home, Lila worked twice as hard to fill the silence where friends' voices should have been. She invented games from nothing, shadow puppets on the wall, riddles spoken in the old tongue of Kyros, elaborate stories where kitchen spoons became brave knights and clay bowls transformed into mighty fortresses. Her love wrapped around him like a warm cloak, constant and fierce.

"My little bird," she would whisper, brushing his hair back to avoid the growing horn. "You are worth a dozen of their narrow-hearted children."

Marlin showed his care differently, with quiet strength and patient teaching. He took Ethan hunting more often now, their expeditions stretching deeper into the Ashspire forest where the air hummed with ancient magic and no village whispers could reach. Under the cathedral of black trees, Ethan learned to track, to wait, to understand the language written in bent grass and broken twigs.

"The wild doesn't judge," Marlin said one afternoon as they watched a family of silver-furred tree-bounds leap between branches high above. "It simply is. Remember that."

But despite their efforts, despite the love that filled every corner of their small cottage, the questions inside Ethan grew stronger each day like weeds after rain.

The horn had nearly stopped growing, now a curved spike no longer than his thumb, pale as bone and warm to the touch. But his curiosity had taken its place, expanding until it pressed against his ribs with each breath. Why the glove? What are you hiding from me? Who am I really?

Neither Lila nor Marlin would answer. When he asked about his past, their eyes grew distant and careful. When he questioned the glove's purpose, they changed the subject with practiced smoothness. The not knowing ate at him, a constant ache that made him restless and sharp-tempered.

The decision came on an evening when autumn painted the sky in shades of copper and gold.

Marlin had gone to the Crystalclear Lake that bordered their property, checking the fish traps he'd set that morning. Lila was in her workshop, grinding moonpetal seeds for the healing salves that brought villagers to their door despite their fear of her son. The cottage felt empty and full of secrets.

"I'm going outside," Ethan called through the workshop door.

"Stay close," Lila replied, distracted by her work.

But Ethan had no intention of staying close. He slipped past the herb garden and into the forest beyond, following deer paths that wound deeper into the Ashspire groves. His animal companions trailed behind him, Shimmer riding down his shoulder, glowmice weaving between his feet, a pair of fawncats padding silently through the undergrowth.

He'd explored these woods countless times with Marlin, learning to avoid the territories of larger, more dangerous creatures. The thornback bears that could split boulders with their claws. The shadow-wolves whose howls could drive men mad. The great winged serpents that nested in the deepest groves. Most beasts were drawn to him with gentle curiosity, but Marlin had taught him that size and ancient power could make even friendly creatures deadly by accident.

Tonight, he sought solitude.

He found it in a clearing where starlight filtered through the canopy in silver streams. Glassleaf ferns chimed softly in the breeze, their translucent fronds catching moonlight like captured dreams. Here, surrounded by the wild things that loved him, Ethan finally stopped walking.

His left hand trembled as he raised it before his face. The black leather glove clung to his skin like a second layer of flesh, warm and familiar and hateful all at once.

What are you hiding? He thought. What's so terrible that I can never see it?

The glowmice sensed his distress and pressed closer to his legs, their bodies pulsing in worried rhythms. Shimmer chirped softly and nuzzled his neck with her small head. Even the fawncats emerged from the shadows to sit in a protective circle around him.

"It's all right," he whispered to them. "I just... I need to know."

His right hand moved to the glove's edge, where it was sealed against his wrist. For eight years, this leather had been part of him, as constant as breathing. He'd never once seen the skin beneath it.

What if there's nothing wrong? What if it's just a normal hand, and they've been protecting me from nothing?

The thought gave him courage. He worked his fingers under the glove's lip and began to peel it back.

The leather resisted at first, clinging like it had grown roots into his flesh. Then it came free with a soft sound like a sigh, and Ethan's left hand was bare for the first time in his memory.

He held it up to the moonlight, turning it this way and that.

Five fingers. White skin. Normal lines across the palm. It looked exactly like his right hand perfectly, completely ordinary.

Joy exploded in his chest like a sunrise. He laughed out loud, a sound of pure relief that sent night birds fluttering from their perches. The glowmice chittered in response to his happiness, their bodies brightening until the clearing filled with gentle green radiance.

"There's nothing wrong with me!" he shouted to the stars. "Nothing at all!"

He stuffed the glove into his pocket and danced among the ferns, spinning with arms outstretched while his animal friends watched with bright-eyed curiosity. He would run home right now and show his parents. He would prove that their fears were groundless, that he was just a normal boy who happened to have a horn and an unusual way with beasts.

In his spinning joy, he reached out to steady himself against an Ashspire trunk.

His bare left palm pressed flat against the black bark.

The sound that followed was like the world taking a sharp breath. The massive tree, a giant that had stood for centuries, its trunk wider than Ethan could wrap his arms around, began to crack. Not breaking, but drying. Withering. The bark turned grey, then white, then crumbled away like ash. The mighty branches drooped and blackened. Leaves fell like poisoned rain.

Within moments, the ancient Ashspire stood dead and hollow, a skeleton of its former majesty.

Ethan stared at his hand, then at the tree, then at his hand again. His mouth opened and closed without sound.

"No," he whispered. "No, that's not... that can't be..."

He stumbled backward and tripped over his own feet. As he fell, his left hand shot out to break his fall and landed on the soft fur of a horned rabbit that had been drawn by his aura of life.

The rabbit's bright eyes dulled instantly. Its small body went rigid, then limp. Death took it so quickly that its final breath was barely a whisper.

Ethan scrambled away from the tiny corpse, his heart hammering so hard he could taste metal in his mouth. The other animals scattered not in fear of him, but in sudden, instinctive terror of something they couldn't understand.

"What did I do?" His voice cracked like breaking glass. "What did I DO?"

He looked at his left hand as if it belonged to someone else. The skin was still pale, still unmarked, still perfectly normal in appearance. But now he understood why the glove had never come off, why his parents' faces went tight whenever he asked about it.

This hand wasn't just different.

It was death itself.

The dead tree loomed above him like an accusation. The rabbit's body lay motionless in the grass, a small monument to his terrible mistake.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed into the empty air. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I didn't mean to..."

But apologies couldn't restore life to what he'd killed. Nothing could undo what he'd learned about himself in this clearing where starlight fell like silver tears.

Panic seized him completely. He was only eight years old, and the horror of what had happened overwhelmed every rational thought. The glove lay forgotten in his pocket as pure terror took control. He had to get home. He had to find his parents. They would know what to do. They always knew what to do.

He ran then, crashing through the undergrowth with no care for stealth or safety. His bare left hand swung at his side as he fled, and he was too frightened to remember the danger it posed. Branches caught his clothes and scratched his face, but he didn't stop until he burst from the forest toward the cottage, where warm light spilled from the windows.

In his terror and confusion, he ran toward home with his deadly hand exposed, not thinking about the desperate need to reach the safety of his parents' arms. He was just a frightened child who had stumbled upon a power too terrible to understand, and in his panic, he forgot the very lesson he had just learned.

The cottage lights beckoned like a promise of safety, but with each step, the horror of what he had become burned deeper into his young mind.