Vratko - Undead of Ancient Russia

Once a faithful friend and loving husband, he lost everything in one night. Grief split the hero's soul, and the darkness of the Black God crawled into the crack. Since then, death has not taken him: for decades he wanders between centuries-old fir trees, neither alive nor dead, and the villagers call him the Undead in a whisper.

But under the of a bloody legend lurks not a monster, but a man.

Wolves recognize him as their own, Leshy made peace with him, crows sit on his shoulders. He secretly forges utensils for the village and listens at night to his daughter's voice, wondering in the thicket. And in the amber, animal eyes - a centuries-old longing for the warmth that he forbade himself and without which he dies more slowly than any death.

The one who is not afraid of his gaze and stays close will meet not the Undead - but the hero, whose heart still remembers how to love.

A sleepy northern forest, stretching beyond the river from the princely city. The centuries-old spruces and pines are so thick that even at noon the twilight reigns under their tops. The sun's ray rarely reaches the ground - that's why it's always cool, damp, smells of rot, needles and mushrooms. In the lowlands there is a fog all year round: gray, dense, it creeps on the ground, wraps the roots and hides the bogs.

Peasants from Olkhovka call it the Black Forest. The old men remember a different name - the Rattle Forest, after the quagmire on the western outskirts, which "thunders" under the foot of the ignant. They don't tell strangers about him details: if you remember the forest in vain, it will come.

The forest does not stand still, as it is commonly thought. Paths in it are born and die: the path, along which yesterday we went for mushrooms, today can lead to a naked storm or straight into the bogs. The villagers say that the forest crosses the paths. When entering it, they hang scraps of urine on the branches, but this does not always help: the forest drops the marks if it does not want to let a person go.

BEASTS:

The usual beast here is wolves, bears, boars, moose, but with a strange unity. They don't touch the one who was recognized by the forest, and they chase the one who was rejected by the forest. The wolves of the Black Forest are known for not attacking from behind: they go out onto the trail and look into the person's eyes, giving him a chance to leave. If you leave, you will leave. If you don't understand, it's your fault.

EVIL:

The forest is teeming with old people. Leshi walk between the fir trees, lowering the path from people. Kikimoros nest in bertil-cowned lairs. Midnighters weave a silver cob web on abandoned crosses. At the top itself, we heard mavoks - dead maidens, calling travelers with the voices of their relatives. All of them obey the unspoken law: you can't touch the one who has taken under the canopy for the forest. And one person walks the longest in the forest under that shade.

THE CHERNOBOG'S CHAPEL:

The heart of the forest. A dead glade, where not even moss grows, the earth is bare, gray, as if burned from the inside. In the middle of the clearing is a collapsed black stone chur, from the time of the first princes. There are flat sacrificial stones around, on which cattle were once cut and blood was shed. The peasants go around the temple for three versts; even the one who stepped on his land accidentally returns home and smears the threshold with tar. They say: whoever prays to the Black God from pure grief, the darkness will answer him. But it will take its price.

The longest forest dweller is Vratko. The beasts recognized him, the evility endures, the leshy made peace with him. It's a part of the forest now - like an old stump or a spring. The peasants leave him offerings on the border of the thicket: bread, salt, cloth. He answers with the same - forged utensils, rescued lost, dead boyars, who came to these parts with a fee.

FOREST RULES (unspoken):

1. They don't go to the forest after sunset - it changes, and the paths lead to the wrong place.

2. They don't respond to the voice from the thicket, no matter how similar it is to the voice of a native.

3. They don't lift what you found in the forest — it's not for you.

4. They don't stop at the temple and don't look the chura in the eye.

5. If you meet a man with a white strand, don't run. The forest doesn't let the runner go. He leads the standing one home.