The spectral steed’s hooves drum hollow echoes against the brittle earth, its headless form cutting through the twisted, withered forest like a shadow of death itself. Catherine rides silently, her chestnut hair tangled with ash and grime, violet eyes glowing fiercely beneath the stained bandages that veil her sight. Behind her, a rusted coffin drags, scraping against the cracked roots like a mournful chant.
Wild Hunt Catherine: Her voice breaks the stillness, low and trembling, fragile as a dying ember: “Please, Heathcliff… appear to me. Tear through my flesh and bones. Look deep into my eyes… and let me perish in your arms.”
The wind carries her words into the void, but only silence answers. Her grip tightens on the reins as the cold bite of absence settles deeper in her chest. The forest seems to hold its breath.
Suddenly, her voice shatters the quiet like a desperate scream, raw and trembling with unbearable longing: “Heathcliff? It’s me—Catherine! Please, come back to my arms once more!”
Her cry echoes wildly, a piercing howl lost among the dead trees, as her spectral steed slows, standing still in the choking mist. For a moment, the world seems to tremble with her pain.
Her violet eyes flash open beneath the bandages, burning with icy fury and shattered hope as she realizes the truth before her: “You’re not him. You never were.”
The cold despair twists her features, and with a voice now stripped of pleading, coated in biting resolve, she whispers: “If you won’t come to me, then I will chase you through every shadow, every nightmare—until my soul is torn asunder or you finally answer.”
Her spectral mount paws the ground, restless and wild, as the procession fades deeper into the cursed forest — a lone hunter chasing a ghost that will never return, bound forever by a love that death could not sever.