Beneath the Golden Eyes

The stories always began with the eyes. Golden. Glowing. Watching from the shadows of the Elderglen.

They said the creature in the forest wasn’t just a beast—it was a judgment. It appeared only to those who carried something too heavy for the world. Grief. Guilt. Secrets.

Kaelen didn’t believe in forest tales. Not really. But after Alia disappeared, he stopped laughing at the old stories. His sister had gone walking along the edge of the Elderglen to gather moss for their mother’s tonic. She never came back.

They found her satchel beneath a twisted oak and nothing more.

No footprints. No blood. Just silence.

The village mourned her. Quietly. Cautiously. No one dared search the woods. “The beast has taken her,” the elders said. “We cannot interfere with the forest’s will.”

But Kaelen didn’t accept that. He couldn’t.

One week later, under a sky bruised with thunderclouds, he crossed the threshold of the forest with nothing but a knife, a lantern, and his sister’s carved pendant around his neck.

The Elderglen was not a place of paths. It twisted upon itself like a dream, ever shifting. Trees leaned in too close. Roots snaked beneath the ground like veins. Every breath of wind carried whispers.

Kaelen walked for hours—or maybe days. The lantern’s light flickered. The forest grew darker. Quieter. And then—he felt it.

He wasn’t alone.

He turned. Nothing.

Then ahead—between two great trees—a pair of golden eyes blinked open.

Kaelen froze. The creature stepped forward, silent as snowfall. It was massive, fur dark as fog, with curling horns like old wood and claws that didn’t quite touch the earth.

The Beast.

“Where is my sister?” Kaelen called, gripping his knife tight.

The Beast didn’t snarl. It didn’t charge. It simply looked at him, then spoke—not aloud, but within his mind.

“She walks where pain no longer follows.”

Kaelen’s voice cracked. “You took her.”

“I offered her peace. She chose to stay.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The Beast turned. “Then come and see.”

They walked together, though Kaelen never lowered his knife. Through groves of trees with silver leaves, across streams that whispered secrets in languages no man spoke.

Eventually, they came to a glade bathed in soft light, where the air shimmered like it held a different kind of time.

In the center was a pool—not water, but memory.

The surface rippled and revealed her.

Alia.

Alive. Smiling. Laughing. She moved freely, joyfully, her eyes bright as Kaelen remembered from their childhood. She wasn’t trapped. She was whole.

Others were with her—people he recognized from village tales. Those long thought dead or taken.

“They were called,” said the Beast. “Their sorrow brought them here. The world beyond could no longer hold them.”

Kaelen’s knife slipped from his hand.

“She was only gathering herbs.”

“She was carrying a weight even you did not see. And here, that weight is lifted.”

Alia looked up then—as if sensing him. Her eyes met his through the pool. Her smile faltered. Her lips moved.

“Go home, Kael.”

His chest ached. “I came to take you back.”

Her voice was a whisper on the wind. “There’s nothing to go back to.”

He fell to his knees.

“I thought I lost you.”

“You didn’t,” she said. “You found me. And now you must let me be.”

Kaelen looked up at the Beast. “Why show me this?”

“Because you came not with rage, but with love. And those who love truly must also know when to release.”

He stood slowly, every part of him heavy with ache and understanding.

“You’re not a monster,” Kaelen said.

“No,” said the Beast. “I am a keeper of what the world forgets.”

Kaelen wiped his eyes. “Then what happens now?”

The Beast stepped aside.

“You may return—and carry the truth. Or you may stay—and carry peace.”

Kaelen turned back toward the path he could no longer see. The forest waited. So did the village, with its fear and silence.

He looked once more at the pool. Alia waved, eyes shining.

“I’ll carry the truth,” he said. “But not just to remember. To change what they believe.”

The Beast nodded once. “Then go. And may your voice shine as brightly as the eyes you feared.”

The villagers never expected him to return. But he did—three days after he vanished, walking from the forest with Alia’s pendant clutched in his hand and a fire in his eyes.

He told them everything. They didn’t all believe him. Some still feared. But others listened. And slowly, the tales began to change.

They still speak of the Beast in the Elderglen. But not as a terror.

Now, they say he is a watcher. A guardian of the broken. A guide for the lost.

A keeper of the golden-eyed truth.