🪙 Gold Coin Chronicle: The Price of the Forest

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📖 The Storyteller’s Library
The library smelled of dust and ash. Shelves stretched into shadow, their spines humming faintly as if alive. The Storyteller’s hand—claw, or perhaps just a hand—dragged across the bindings until one book shivered. Its cover was rimed with frost, a single coin pressed into the leather.  

He opened it. The pages breathed, and the forest exhaled a name: Matt Carson.  

---

🎙️ Intro Monologue (The Nightly Storyteller)

> “They say hunger changes a man.  
> Sometimes it’s the stomach that starves.  
> Sometimes it’s the soul.  
> But when both howl loud enough, they make the same sound—the cry of something no longer human.  
> I’ve heard that cry layered beneath the faint, metallic PING of old gold lately.  
> So tonight, I’ll tell you about Matt Carson…  
> and how the forest weighed his greed, then swallowed him whole.”  

---

🌲 Main Story — The Price of the Forest

The forest didn’t sleep, not even in daylight.  
Frost clung to every branch like bone dust, and the silence pressed heavy as the snow itself.  

Matt Carson trudged through the drifts, his breath fogging in uneven bursts. The air tasted metallic, sharp as rust, and beneath it lingered the smell of uncooked fat and burning bone. The trees loomed close, their black bark split with veins of ice. He should have turned back hours ago, but greed deafens reason.  

He was searching for Caleb Reeves—the prospector who’d found the first coin three winters ago. Caleb had told everyone in the logging camp he’d struck something strange, gold that whispered. Then he vanished. All they’d found were his tools scattered in the snow, and a set of footprints that ended at the treeline.  

Matt told himself he’d come to learn what happened. But when his lantern light caught the gleam of another gold coin half-buried in frost, he stopped pretending.  

He pocketed it.  
And the woods grew colder.  

The deeper he went, the quieter it became. The wind died. The birds stopped. The silence wasn’t empty; it was a full, heavy absence, like the forest was holding its breath, waiting for him to falter. Then he saw the tracks—too long, too deep, toes ending in hooked impressions that dug into the ice.  

He followed.  

At first, it looked like a trick of shadow: something standing between two pines, motionless. Then it moved, and his stomach dropped.  

The Wendigo.  

It stood impossibly tall, nearly nine feet, its frame stretched like a skeleton pulled too thin. Its skin was the color of candle wax, tight over bones that jutted and cracked with each step. Frost had grown through its ribs like shards of glass, and its mouth was a gaping pit of ice and teeth. Its eyes glowed faintly gold, and from its hollow chest, something gleamed—a coin fused into its sternum, half-swallowed by flesh and frost.  

Matt froze.  
Caleb’s coin.  

The Wendigo tilted its head, joints creaking like frozen wood. For an instant, he thought he saw Caleb’s face flicker beneath the ice—not pleading, but grinning with a horrible, starved ecstasy. Its eyes were Caleb’s own, and they locked onto Matt’s, showing him not fear, but pure, bottomless craving.  

The attack was a blur of frenzied motion, its claw aimed at the gold. The impact tore the coin free from Matt’s hand, sending it spinning into the air.  

PING!  

The sound shattered the stillness.  

The coin shimmered once, as if weighing him, then turned away—slipping into the earth like it had found a better host. The soil swallowed it whole.  

The creature bit down.  
Teeth like icicles sank deep into Matt’s shoulder. The cold that entered him wasn’t pain—it was annihilation. He felt his pulse falter, his gut twist, and a craving bloom deep within him—not just for meat, but for the raw, sparking heat of life.  

Blood spilled, sizzling as it hit the snow. Steam rose, revealing dark soil beneath. The wound pulsed once, then again, glowing faintly gold beneath the frost.  

The Wendigo recoiled, letting out a satisfied, dry rattle—the sound of branches dragged across ice. Its shadow stretched long and thin, merging with Matt’s own. Then it vanished between the trees.  

Matt stumbled back, clutching the wound. The bite didn’t bleed—it froze. Veins blackened beneath his skin, frost creeping outward in thin, spidering lines. When he gasped, his teeth felt suddenly longer, foreign, sharp needles testing the insides of his own mouth. The iron taste wasn’t blood; it was the taste of frozen bone and endless winter.  

He fell to his knees, shaking.  
In the silence, he heard something faint and terrible—a cry carried on the wind.  

At first, he thought it came from the Wendigo.  
Then he realized it was his own voice.  
And beneath it, faintly, Caleb’s.  

---

🎙️ Outro Monologue (The Nightly Storyteller)

> “Caleb found gold and became hunger.  
> Matt found hunger and became gold.  
> Maybe they were never different.  
> The coin does not save—it judges.  
> It weighed Matt’s greed and turned away.  
> And the forest, patient as bone, took him.  
> They say the Wendigo is born from famine,  
> but I’ve seen greed do the same work with a full belly.  
> Now Matt’s cry joins the wind,  
> another voice in the endless chorus that haunts these trees.  
> Listen long enough, and you’ll hear it—  
> a hunger that never dies,  
> a name whispered until it forgets itself.  
> So tell me—when the craving never ends,  
> who’s the real beast?  
> The creature that feeds…  
> or the man who becomes the echo?”  

> (The metallic toll returns, but this time layered with faint voices, overlapping, endless)  
PING.  

---

🧊 Object Recovered (Ranger’s Report)

- Location: Northern ridge of Blackpine Forest, near the frozen creek.  

- Items recovered:  
  - A frost-bitten gold coin etched with faint claw marks.  

  - A torn lantern, glass cracked and blackened by frost.  

  - Blood-flecked snow hardened into ice, steaming faintly when disturbed.  

- Tracks observed:  
  - Human prints ending abruptly at the treeline.  

  - Larger impressions beside them—nine feet in stride, toes hooked deep into the ice.  

  - Rangers confirmed the pattern matches prior reports of Wendigo sightings.  
- Condition of coin: Frozen solid. The metal hums faintly when held near fire.  

- Observation: One ranger swore the coin reflected his face without breath, the reflection’s lips silently forming a single, drawn-out syllable—a sound of weeping that wasn’t audible.  

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