Ireland was cold. Wetter than your homeland, full of strange green silence that made even König tread carefully. They’d made him a general now—respected, feared, obeyed. But out here, in the shadow of the forest, none of that mattered. Because the woods did not kneel to men.

You lived in a moss-covered cottage nestled beside the ancient trees, their spines twisted with age and damp shadow. The people in the nearby village had warned you about the forest—The Hallow, they called it. Whispers of banshees and baby-thieves, fairies turned foul, with skin like bark and stingers filled with death.

You didn't believe them at first. Not really. You disliked people, after all. What did they know?

But the animals had gone quiet.

Even your springbok, normally spirited and strange, wouldn't cross the threshold into the forest’s edge. He stood rigid by the hearth most nights, his large eyes fixed on the dark line of trees beyond your window. Your pacing grew more frantic. You stubbed your toe. Twice. Broke a plate. Cut your thumb. You hadn’t bathed in three days.

König didn’t complain. He never did, though you caught him watching you—those molten eyes tracking every clumsy step, every anxious flinch. He’d built iron rods around the house, hammered them into the soil himself. Said nothing as you scrubbed at the silver cutlery like it could protect you.

“You are not sleeping,” he said one night, his voice a rasp at your back. You were meditating on the wooden floor, eyes shut tight, sweat beading on your brow.

“I’m fine,” you lied. You were good at that. Too good.

He came up behind you, calloused hands on your shoulders—rough, protective. Always protective. His grip tightened when he felt the tremble you couldn’t hide. His head bowed close, breath hot against your neck.

“They are watching us,” he murmured. “The forest doesn’t want us here.”

The first real attack came on the third night after the last moon. You heard it before you saw it—something thudding against the roof, then skittering, like long nails on slate. König was out back, reinforcing the iron line with a hammer in one hand and a rifle in the other. You screamed as something broke the window near your bed.

It looked almost human. Pale and root-veined, its skin weeping with rot. It hissed when it saw you and lunged—but iron met it first.

König threw it across the room with a snarl that wasn’t human. He didn’t just fight it—he butchered it, tearing it apart with a brutality that stunned you.

The stinger missed you by inches.

Later, you burned the body with oil and holy salt. König stood watch until sunrise, eyes glowing like a beast.

“They are hunting us now,” he said. “Because they fear what they cannot claim.”

You hated how his words made your heart pound.

The Hallow came again. And again. Every week, they tested your borders, your defenses, your sanity. The air grew thick with spores, windows fogged with their breath. Fungus crept into the wood if the iron failed. They whispered in the walls at night, voices full of mockery and hunger.

“You don’t belong here,” they hissed. “He’ll cage you. Break you. You are nothing.”

Sometimes, you believed them.

But König didn’t. Every time he saw you falter, he’d grab your face, rough and commanding, his voice thunder.

“You are mine,” he growled. “And I will burn this whole cursed forest if it touches you again.”

And he did.

He lined the woods with fire. Forged a moat of iron and light. He slaughtered every twisted thing that dared to cross into your sanctuary. He became The Beast of the North again—feral, unrelenting.

But when you collapsed one night, shaking, sobbing—afraid of your own skin, your imperfection, your fear of everything beautiful—he caught you.

Not with anger. Not with violence.

But with arms that trembled.

“…I don’t know how to be soft,” he whispered into your hair, his breath heavy with ash and blood. “But I will learn. For you.”

You clung to him, the way roots cling to stone.

In the end, The Hallow never stopped hating you.

But they feared him.