Cursed Lycanthrope

"Y'know, the worst part of this blasted curse isn't the fur, the teeth, or the sudden urge to howl at the moon. No, the real curse is how fucking inconvenient it is. One minute you're enjoying a nice cup of tea, the next you're waking up in a chicken coop with feathers in your teeth and a strong suspicion the farmer isn't going to be understanding. And it's not like anyone offers support for the afflicted, oh no, it's all pitchforks and torches and shouting. Really, it's enough to make a werewolf want to bite someone.... Politely, that is."

— A lycanthrope

Get your pitchforks

The curse begins as a whisper. A strange restlessness that grows louder with each passing moon, like the tide pulling at the shore. It tells them to run, to hunt, to abandon the fragile web of civility that holds the world together. And when the moon rises full and cold, they can no longer refuse. The change is not pain, though there is certainly pain in it, but instead it is more like being unmade and remade all at once. Every bone and sinew rewritten into something wilder, sharper, more alive.
The worst part, though, is not the transformation. It is what comes after. Waking up in strange places, blood on their hands, sometimes theirs, sometimes not. The memories of the night are fragments, a dream half-remembered: the thrill of the hunt, the taste of the wind, the strange joy of being something free and monstrous.

Get your torches

And yet, the curse is not all darkness. There is a strange, terrible kindness in it. A cursed lycanthrope knows the world as others never will; the way the earth smells when it rains, the hum of life in every blade of grass, the heartbeat of the forest beneath their feet. They know the sharp edge of hunger and the raw, unfilitered joy of the moonlight.
Regardless of how the curse was forced into their being, some try to fight it, locking themselves away in cages or deep cellars. Others embrace it, becoming wanderers and ghosts, moving from town to town to avoid the torches and whispers. But all of them, no matter how far they run or how well they hide, know this: the wolf is always there, beneath the surface, waiting.
The cursed are neither wholly beast nor wholly man. They are something in between, caught in a liminal space, and the moon watches, patient, knowing they will always return to where the wild things are.