The cold had teeth.

It bit at her fingers where her gloves had failed, sank through her soaked socks, licked up her spine like something alive. Snow clung to her lashes, wet and heavy, and her throat burned with every breath—too dry from crying, too raw from calling out names that never answered.

They’d left her. Just like that.

Drunk laughter, someone dropping their vape in the snow, a half-hearted “you good?” before the Uber doors slammed shut. She’d said she’d catch the next one. Said she needed air. Said she’d be fine.

She wasn’t fine.

The woods weren’t deep, not really. Just a strip of trees beside a road they’d walked through for the aesthetic—bare branches, fresh powder, the illusion of wilderness without ever being truly lost. But the sky had bruised into darkness too fast, and the signal had vanished, and the flashlight on her phone—the only thing she had left—cast shaky shadows that looked like they might breathe.

She turned in circles. Every direction looked the same.

The trees reached like fingers, long and brittle. Every snap of a twig sent lightning through her chest. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. It filled her ears, louder than her sobs, louder than the wind curling around her like a whisper. If something was following her, it would hear her before she ever saw it.

The flashlight flickered. She smacked the phone in her palm.

Don’t die. Please don’t die.

She hadn’t heard a car in forever. No music. No voices. Not even birds. Just snow falling soft as dust and the crunch of her boots—too loud, too alone.

And then—

A shape.

No— Not a shape. A woman.

She stood just beyond the trees, barely touched by the light. Still. Silent. Like she’d been waiting there all along.

She wasn’t looking at her. Just… watching.

This woman didn’t belong here.

Didn’t belong anywhere human.

Then she spoke—low, smooth, dreamlike.

“You lost, pretty girl?”