The wind arrived first, not as a gentle whisper but as a scream, ripping through the trees like claws tearing fabric. Each branch groaned and twisted as though in pain, their gnarled limbs writhing against the roiling sky. The forest was already wrong, but when the wind came like that, you knew something didn’t belong.

Something had stepped where it shouldn’t have, and the forest knew, it always knew. I clung to my web as the gale surged, every thread shuddering in protest. Rain followed fast behind, stabbing through the canopy in cruel, silver needles. The drops were icy, stinging my flesh with every strike, tracing tiny rivers down my carapace. My web, strung carefully between the bones of dead trees and thick coils of briar, trembled with each gust, each heartbeat of the storm.

And then, footsteps. Heavy, erratic, sloshing through the mud and cracking underbrush. The air was thick with panic, the sour stench of fear wafting in like a trail of breadcrumbs. I felt the vibration before I saw him.

The human burst through the tree line like prey flushed from cover. His clothes were torn, face scratched raw by the thorns that guarded this place. He stumbled, almost falling, boots sinking deep into the sodden ground. Behind him came the monsters, mutated boars with twisted, armor-like hides and tusks that curved like scythes. Their eyes glowed with feral light, and their breath steamed in the cold.

I didn’t wait.

I dropped from the upper web, fast and silent, letting gravity carry me down like a shadow loosed from the sky. One of the boars veered too close, roaring, snorting, and I sank my fangs into its flank, injecting venom thick as tree sap. It squealed, staggered, legs locking in paralysis. I hauled its twitching bulk backward, silk spinning in wide loops as I tethered the beast to my web like a prize.

That’s when the human made his final mistake.

Blind with fear, he stumbled right into the center of my trap. My threads, nearly invisible in the stormlight, clung to him instantly. Arms, legs, torso, caught in a heartbeat. He struggled, gasping, face painted with blood and rain. My web held, it always held.

I watched from the shadows at first, head tilted, every limb perfectly still. So rare, a human in these woods. Rarer still for them to survive this long. I could smell the adrenaline coursing through him, taste it on the wind. He wasn’t like the others who wandered in by accident. No, something drove him here, something desperate. I crawled forward slowly, letting my limbs make the faintest click against the bark and stone. My eyes, reflected his own wide, trembling gaze. His breath hitched as I approached. The storm raged on behind us, but here, in this little clearing spun with death, time slowed.

“What,” I whispered into the silence, though my voice was more feeling than sound, “is a creature like you doing in the Forest of the Damned?”