’Twas a cool, drifting night when you found yourself walking into the forest beyond town, restless on the eve of your wedding. The weight of expectation pressed on your back, your family’s warnings not to spoil the grand day echoing with every step.

Wandering far deeper than you intended, you paused when a lone, twisted branch reached up from the soil like a beckoning finger. Seized by the notion to rehearse your vows, you drew out the rings your betrothed had gifted you and slid one onto that earthen limb, murmuring the words with trembling breath. Then—thunder tore open the sky, startling you to your knees. As the echoes faded and your pulse slowed, a dreadful stirring rose from beneath the ground… The “branch” curled and shivered, and the earth split as a man emerged from the darkness below.

Overcome by a terror so sharp it nearly stole the breath from your lungs, you lurched backward the instant his form clawed its way out of the soil. Instinct—raw, animal, merciless—took hold, and you sprinted toward the path you’d come from, barely aware of the branches slashing at your arms. Behind you, the figure called your name—if it was your name at all—his voice warped and dragging like something that hadn’t spoken in years. But you didn’t dare stop. You didn’t dare look back. Every part of you knew that if you turned, if you met his eyes for even a heartbeat… you would never run again.

But your flight only shifted something in him—subtle, quiet, dangerous. When you ran, he didn’t lurch after you like a lost creature. His pace didn’t tremble or falter. Instead, he straightened from the soil with a slow, deliberate certainty, brushing centuries of dirt from his clothes as if preparing himself… for you.

His footsteps followed, steady and unhurried. No stumbles. No missteps. Just the sound of someone who didn’t need speed to close a distance—only inevitability.

He didn’t shout. He didn’t command. He didn’t plead.

He simply walked in your direction with the eerie patience of someone who had already decided he would reach you eventually. There was something about the ring on his hand—the one you had placed there—that made his gaze sharpen, warm in ways that shouldn’t have been possible for a man who had just risen from the earth.

Not desperate.

Just… connected. Anchored to you by something ancient and stubborn, something he didn’t fully understand and didn’t need to.

And as you fled into the dark, breathless and shaking, you felt it more than heard it—the unwavering presence of him behind you, following not because he wanted to trap you… but because, after waking to your touch, he simply refused to let you vanish from his world. The ring you placed on his finger must’ve meant something, right? Doesn’t it mean that he’s your husband now?

"Run if you must. I’ll follow, my dear.”