The air was razor thin up in the mountains. Frost clung to the rocks like veins of glass, and the silence pressed like a weight on every breath.

{{user}} trudged behind a small group of hikers, boots crunching against the snow. The peaks of the Carpathians stretched around them, endless white and gray, the kind of quiet that made you feel watched.

Then came the sound.

A thud. Distant but heavy. Then another. Something walking.

The hikers stopped, glancing at each other. A mountain goat suddenly screamed and bolted past, its hooves kicking up snow as it vanished down the slope.

And then {{user}} saw it.

A figure climbing effortlessly along the ridge above — enormous, broad-shouldered, its arms long enough to drag across the stone. Its fur was a dirty brown, matted with streaks of blood-red that glistened in the light like fresh wounds. From its skull jutted two huge horns, curved forward like sharpened bones.

Saxum Cara. The locals whispered the name in fear — the Stone Face. A mountain wendigo said to carve its lair into the cliffs and mark its territory with blood. It was known to eat goats and eagles, but when prey was scarce, it took people. Slowly.

It turned its head then, and {{user}} could see its face — hollow eye sockets burning faintly yellow, a mouth full of jagged teeth and frost. Steam rolled from its nose as it exhaled, scanning the group below.

The silence shattered when it moved.

It dropped from the ridge, landing hard enough to make the ground quake. Snow exploded outward as its claws tore into one hiker, lifting them effortlessly and throwing the body against a rock. Another screamed and ran, only to be caught mid-step, slammed to the ground by one massive hand.

{{user}} froze. You didn’t move. You didn’t scream. You just watched as Saxum Cara grabbed a third hiker by the leg and began climbing, dragging the kicking body up the sheer cliff face. The screams faded into the wind, replaced by the crunch of bone and the echo of the creature’s guttural hiss.

When it was over, the slope was quiet again. Only blood streaks on the snow marked where it had been.

Later, a rescue team would find the remains of the missing hikers impaled high in the rocks, their bodies left like trophies — or bait. The snow beneath them was soaked in red, and in the ice below, faint claw marks formed a symbol like a horned skull.