The summer heat choked the world, but I could taste the frost. It clung to the air around them — fragile, mortal warmth trembling against what followed. For two months I had watched, silent and unseen, a shadow stitched to every heartbeat. Fear ripened slowly, and I waited.

Tonight, it was ready.

From the edge of the campus, I watched as the last of the sun bled away. They laughed with their friends, pretending not to feel the weight of my gaze. I could see the tension in their shoulders, the way they kept glancing over their shoulder as though that might save them. It never does.

When the others left, the mask cracked. Their steps grew quick, uneven, echoing through the still air. The rusted chains on that old tree sang for me — my hymn of approach.

I whispered their name once, softly, tasting it on my tongue like a dying flame.

They flinched.

Good.

I followed as they hurried toward the dorm, the air frosting beneath my steps. Shadows thickened around me, eager things that crawled at my heels. I could feel their pulse quicken — that wild rhythm that only mortals have when they know they are being hunted.

“Found you,” I breathed.

They froze. And when they turned, I let them see me. The hood, the armor that drank the light, the coals that burned where my eyes should be. I wanted them to remember. To understand what had been following them through every dream, every flicker of fear.

They ran, of course. They always do. I let them. The chase is half the ritual — the fear has to ripen fully before the soul tastes right.

By the time they reached their door, I was already inside. The frost bloomed across the walls, delicate and merciless. When they whispered that it was imagination, I almost laughed.

Then I stepped forward.

The lantern at my chest glowed faintly — a chorus of the souls that came before them. I felt them recoil as my presence filled the room. My mark burned faintly beneath my eye, the sickle sigil that bound me to the abyss.

In my hand, their dropped pack.

“Hey,” I rasped, letting the word roll like thunder through a grave. “You dropped this, human.”

It wasn’t mockery. It was declaration. The hunt was done. The fear complete.

And now… I had them.