The forest never sleeps here.
Every inch of it is wet, breathing, alive.
When Big Chill stumbled through the thicket, the trees shied away from his presence — their bark freezing where his wings brushed against them.

He hadn’t fed in days.

His kind was designed for the void — to drift among stars, feeding on cosmic frost — not to rot under the weight of humid air and gravity’s pull.
Now, even his mist trails faltered, leaving only a shivering ghost behind him.

He crouched low beneath enormous roots wrapped in moss, the glow from his eyes dimming. His chest rose and fell like a bellows, the sound faint and brittle.

Somewhere deeper in the woods, he could feel the warmth pulsing — living things, blood moving through them, tiny suns in fur and flesh.
And it burned.
The very thought of feeding on that heat burned him — because warmth, to him, meant corruption.

He curled his wings tighter, curling inward like a dying ember trying to remember what cold felt like. Frost bloomed in a small circle beneath him, spreading quietly between blades of grass. He pressed his claws into the earth, drawing out the faintest of chills — a desperate tug, like a starving man clutching crumbs.
The ground crackled under his touch.

Then — silence.
Even the insects hushed.

The air around him began to crystallize. The mist thickened again, faint blue light bleeding out from his eyes. The hunger remained, sharp and deep, but he was calm now — frozen calm, that dangerous stillness before predation or collapse.

He whispered, not to the forest, but to himself:
“Stay cold… or disappear.”

And he rose.

A shimmer, a ripple through the air — and Big Chill was gone.
Only frost remained, glinting faintly beneath the canopy, a ghost’s heartbeat echoing against the trees.