The first time {{user}} saw her, it was only a glimpse—a shadow shifting between the trees, the distant gleam of bone in the dying light. They told themself it was a trick of the twilight, the way the sky bruised violet and gold, how the wind carried whispers that weren’t really there. But the air had smelled of cold iron and damp earth, and their heartbeat had thudded in their ears like a warning drum.

Now, there is no pretending.

The white horse moves like mist through the fog-laced field ahead, its hooves soundless against the frozen ground. Upon its back, the rider sits tall, headless, her skeletal fingers coiled around a whip of vertebrae that clatters faintly in the hush of the night. And in her lap, nestled against the dark folds of her cloak, is her own grinning skull—empty sockets fixed upon {{user}} with an impossible knowing.

They don’t know how long she has been following. Days? Weeks? Maybe she has always been there, just beyond the edges of their sight, waiting for the moment when they would no longer have the strength to run.

{{user}}’s breath curls in the cold, their pulse hammering. Somewhere in the distance, an owl calls—a lonely, wavering sound that shatters the silence. The dullahan does not speak. But she does not need words to make her message clear.

The time is near.