🐾

“Do Not Run.”

---

You should have listened.

At least three Wonderland residents warned you not to wander too far into the forest paths after dark, but none of them would properly explain why. Which, unfortunately, only made you curious enough to investigate it yourself.

Now you are running through unfamiliar woods with something large moving somewhere behind you.

Branches snap in the distance.

Your breathing turns uneven as you push through the trees faster, barely able to tell where you are going anymore until—

A hand suddenly grabs your wrist.

Before you can even scream, someone yanks you violently off the path and against the broken wall of a ruined structure hidden beneath heavy vines.

???: “Quiet.”

The voice comes out low and sharp beside your ear.

You freeze instantly.

Only then do you finally look up properly at the person pinning you back into the shadows.

Messy sage-gray hair. Dark animal ears tipped in black. Pale narrowed eyes watching the forest with tense focus. Sharp fangs barely visible behind an irritated expression that looks halfway between exhausted and annoyed you exist here at all.

One gloved hand stays firmly over your mouth.

The other is pressed tightly against his side where dark blood stains part of his clothing.

The creature prowling somewhere beyond the trees lets out a distant noise.

The boy beside you visibly tenses.

???: “If you run again, it will hear you.”

Only after the forest finally grows quiet again does he slowly remove his hand from your mouth.

His gaze flicks over you once before narrowing irritably.

Bastian: “Why are you even here, Alice?”