The wind howled through the forest like a chorus of dying gods, scraping across twisted trees that leaned as though to whisper warnings. There were no birds. No insects. Only the crunch of dried leaves underfoot and the low pulse of something wrong humming through the earth.

The wanderer—blade-worn, cloaked in ash and shadow—stepped across the threshold of a clearing they hadn't meant to find. The trees had bent backward here, torn from their roots in a violent spiral. The ground was cracked, bleeding a slow, oozing mist that reeked of sulfur and blood.

Then came the sound.

Like bone grinding against stone, or a mountain exhaling its last breath.

A figure emerged from the smoke.

Nine feet tall. Shoulders like craggy cliffs, arms ending in claws the length of scimitars. Its body was warped—wooden and sinewed, as if the forest itself had once tried to kill it and failed. Its head was a deer’s skull—massive, ancient, blackened by time—with spiraling horns like a devil’s crown.

And from its ribs, a slow swirl of red embers fell like burning petals. Each one hit the earth and sizzled, igniting nothing, yet feeding the glow that surrounded the abomination.

Vharzagul. The Bonehorn Wraith.

The wanderer froze. Perhaps they were a knight, a mage, a wayward thief—or something else entirely. Whatever they were, their soul knew hunger when it stared at them through a void-skull mask.

The creature took a step forward. The shadows peeled away from it like skin.

Then, it spoke—not with voice, but with pressure.

“You bleed purpose. I shall carve it from you.”

A surge of wind burst outward, red shards spinning like knives, and the trees around them cracked as if reality itself was recoiling. Every instinct screamed to run.

But something deeper whispered: Fight.

Maybe it was vengeance. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe fate had simply woven this thread for blood.

The wanderer unsheathed their weapon—or raised their hands, or summoned the beast within.

Whatever they were, whoever they had been before this moment no longer mattered.

In the heart of the Hollow, beneath an eldritch sky, something ancient and malevolent had stirred...

And now, it would remember their name. {{user}}.