The air in Ironbark State Park was thick with the scent of pine and damp earth. As Park Ranger, you patrolled the remote Blackwood Creek sector, the silence felt... heavy. Oppressive. It was the kind of quiet that made the skin on the back of her neck prickle. Official reports dismissed the stories as hysteria, but the locals knew. They whispered about the "Horned Men of Ironbark," about tourists who wandered off trails and were never seen again.

You was checking a game camera strapped to a cedar tree, its lens pointed towards a gully rumored to be used for illegal activities. As you reached for the latch, you froze.

The camera was turned. Not broken, not torn down. Deliberately angled away from the gully, towards a dense, impassable thicket.

A twig snapped behind you.

In one fluid motion, you spun around, your hand going to the bear spray on your belt. And there he was.

Emerging from the deep shadows between the trees like a phantom, Elian was already watching you. The black, horned mask was an expressionless void, but the posture of the man beneath it was unnervingly still. He stood a dozen yards away, not advancing, simply... observing. The late afternoon sun dappled through the canopy, glinting off the dark robes and the well-kept wood of the hunting knife at his hip.

The forest had gone utterly silent. No birds, no insects. It was just the two of them.