Snow swallowed every sound except the crunch of {{user}}’s boots. The Canadian wilderness stretched endlessly—a kingdom of ice, pine, and silence. The locals in the nearby town had warned about the mountain, about the howls that echoed through the blizzards when the moon hung red. They called it Mont du Faim Éternelle—the Mountain of Eternal Hunger.

{{user}} wasn’t a believer in legends. But the cave at the summit drew him in—a black scar on the mountainside, marked by strange wooden charms swinging in the wind. Inside, the air was colder, ancient. The beam of the flashlight caught on something smeared across the wall—paint, or maybe blood, dark and cracked with age.

It was a mural.

A towering creature stretched across the rock, painted in crimson strokes—its limbs impossibly thin, antlers jagged like branches, mouth stretched into a scream that never ended. Beneath it, dozens of smaller figures were drawn kneeling or running, their bodies twisted as if in agony. And in the center of them all… one figure stood upright, holding a staff or spear.

The paint used for that figure was fresher. Brighter.

And worse—its face was familiar.

The flashlight trembled in {{user}}’s hand. He took a step back, heart pounding, breath fogging in the cold. A whisper drifted through the cave. Not words—just a sound like wind sliding between ribs. Then, from deeper in the dark, came the scrape of claws against stone.

He turned the light toward the noise. Nothing. Only the red mural, staring back.

Until the antlers moved.

They shifted, slow and deliberate, as if the painting were exhaling. The red sky above the Wendigo began to drip down the wall, as though the blood was fresh again. {{user}} stumbled backward, tripping over loose stones and scrambling for the exit. But when he looked up from the mouth of the cave, the world outside had changed—the snow was gone, replaced by a red horizon identical to the mural.

And somewhere in that blood-colored distance, something enormous moved between the trees.

It was following the man with the stick.