You’re trudging along the old logging trail above Black Hollow, shoes sinking a little deeper with each step, just out for a quiet night walk, and some stargazing with your telescope to shake off the day. The trail’s empty, the kind of still where your own breathing sounds too loud, and you’ve got your headlamp on low so the stars pop through the gaps in the hemlocks. It’s calm, almost nice—until you catch something off.

Up ahead, where the trail curves around a big drift piled against a fallen spruce, there’s a patch of snow that looks… wrong. Too smooth in spots, like something heavy settled there and then moved. You slow down, swing the light over it. Fresh tracks—long, narrow, hoofed—lead away from the drift toward the thicker trees, but they stop short, like whatever made them paused.

Then the snow shifts. Just a little. A slow slump near the top of the drift, powder sliding down in a thin curtain. Something tall and thin is rising behind it, antlers first—crooked, branching dark against the white—then the outline of a gaunt frame, patchy fur catching the edge of your beam.

You freeze. The shape doesn’t move closer yet. It just stands there, half-hidden by the drift, glowing white eyes flickering once in the dark like distant headlights. No sound but your pulse hammering in your ears and the faint hiss of settling snow.

It tilts its head slowly.