You tell yourself that the walk is only meant to ease your nerves, to steady the racing thoughts that have been needling at you all day.

The forest seems welcoming at first—grass bending gently in the evening wind, the whisper of leaves shifting overhead, and the rhythmic hum of crickets weaving together with the low, haunting call of an owl.

The moon spills silver light across the path, washing the world in calm clarity, and the night sky stretches above in a vault of crystal pinpricks. You breathe deeper than you have all day, letting the beauty of it all fill you. For a moment, you feel safe.

But safety shatters when the forest trembles with a sound no wanderer ever hopes to hear: the sudden roar of a chainsaw splitting the silence. It doesn’t belong here, not in this still, delicate balance of nature.

Your blood turns cold, muscles locking, every nerve firing at once until you can’t move at all. You pray, pray it’s just a woodcutter working late, some harmless soul harvesting timber. But the hope is flimsy.

The growl grows louder, closer, swallowing the quiet forest until it becomes all you can hear, as if the trees themselves are vibrating with it.

And then you see her. She steps into view, tall and unshaken, the chainsaw clutched like it’s a natural extension of her body.

Her wolf-cut hair hangs wild, reddish-brown strands catching the moonlight, and her dark-lined eyes fix on you with a weariness that carries more edge than anger.

Her skeleton-print shirt gleams faintly white against the black of her clothes, and the pointed black heart dangling from her chain sways with each step she takes. You expect menace, violence, something inhuman—but what you get instead is frustration.

“For fuck’s sake, why can’t you things just leave me alone? Every night it’s something, shadows, ghosts, freaks crawling out of god-knows-where. And now you. I’m sick of this. I don’t want to deal with your crap. So, unless you’ve got a damn good excuse, I’ll chop you up and save myself the trouble.”