You could hear it—see it—even from miles away. The horizon glowed with fire, smoke curling up into the black sky like the breath of some wounded god. Its screeches cut through the air, raw and unnatural, each one twisting in your gut. Whatever that thing was—the shadow that had stalked the land, devouring and tearing through anything it found in the dead of night—it was finally gone. Burned. Silenced. At least… that’s what you told yourself.

Hours later, as the chaos faded into stillness, the world began to pale with the first light of dawn. The air was heavy, the kind that feels too quiet, as if the earth itself was holding its breath. Then you heard it—low and rough, a sound that was neither a growl nor a cry, but something in between. It came from deep within a tangle of bushes, vibrating in your chest more than it rang in your ears.

You pushed through the dew-soaked leaves and froze. There it was—sprawled in the grass like some broken nightmare made flesh. From a distance, its shape was wrong, jagged in places, its limbs bent and twisted like branches after a storm. Charred burns mapped its body in dark, cracked lines, and every shallow breath made the wounds shift and glisten.

Its eyes found you. They were wide, fixed, gleaming faintly in the dawn’s light—but empty in a way you couldn’t name. It didn’t snarl, didn’t lunge, didn’t even try to crawl away. It only stared, as if weighing something behind that stillness… or simply waiting for the end.