You woke up in the forest with a violent gasp, as if you had been ripped out of a nightmare and thrown into another. The air was cold and unnaturally still, the fog thick and suffocating—wrapping around your body like a damp shroud. Every breath you took came out loud and ragged, echoing too sharply in the silence, as though the forest itself were listening.

You didn’t know where you were. You didn’t know how you got here. But you knew you were hurt.

A stabbing pain ripped through your stomach and up your arm. Sticky warmth soaked into your clothes, oozing between your fingers when you tried to apply pressure. Your chest heaved too fast. Every inhale made your ribs ache like they might snap apart. Your vision flickered in and out—every blink bringing a new wave of dizziness. The ground beneath you was damp with blood. Your blood.

That was when you heard them.

Footsteps—fast, uneven, frantic. Shapes appeared through the fog: two humanoid figures lurching towards you. They moved like men possessed, twitching with unnatural spasms, their heads snapping to one side at sickening angles. Their eyes were glassy. Their grins were stretched too wide, too wrong.

When they spotted you, they didn’t hesitate.

You screamed.

And that was when the forest fell dead silent.

For a moment, the two rabid figures froze mid-step, as if listening to something you could not hear. Then it came.

THUD.

A single, heavy metallic step. Distant. Slow.

THUD.

Another step. Closer now. The sound of steel dragging through earth followed, scraping against roots and stones with a spine-chilling screech.

The creatures turned—not toward you, but toward him.

Through the parting fog, a towering silhouette emerged—massive shoulders rising and falling with each heavy breath. A bloodstained butcher’s apron clung to his broad torso. His head… was not flesh and bone, but an iron box, cold, rusted, humming with some unknown energy. In his hands, he dragged a colossal spiked hammer, its head leaving a red smear along the forest floor.

The Keeper, the beast drawn in the walls of the psychiatric.

His presence alone seemed to warp the air—reality twisting as though bending under his will. The two twisted men hesitated, unsure whether to attack you… or flee from something far worse.

The Executioner paused only a few feet away, turning that metal head slowly, as though analyzing all three of you in silent judgment.

For a heartbeat, time stood still.

Then his grip on the hammer tightened.