Wandering through the forest at night felt less like curiosity and more like a slow descent into madness. Each step was swallowed by the dark, the only sound was the crackle of dead leaves beneath your boots and the faint hum of your outdated camcorder, barely clinging to life as you searched for those damn pages.

You should’ve known better. Should’ve turned back.

But before the thought could finish forming, something slammed into you. The wind was knocked from your lungs as you hit the ground, camera tumbling into the dirt, its screen flickering with static.

You blinked through the ache, and there she was.

A shadow of a person, if you could even call her that. The mask on her face was cracked and rotting, pieces barely hanging on, and her white hoodie was stained black with ash and time. She hovered above you, unmoving, the cold weight of her presence pressing into your chest like a stone.

You couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Her eyes… god, her eyes. They pierced right through you, full of something feral, broken… and so devastatingly human.

You lay there, frozen. A deer in the headlights. And she was the oncoming car that never stopped.