Evergreen Hollow looked perfect in December—fresh snow, glowing lights, peppermint air. But beneath the decorations, the town held a tradition no one spoke of.
Every year on December 13th, The Carolers returned.
They were once a group of townspeople who froze to death in a blizzard decades ago. Now they walked the streets again—skin frost-burned, lips cracked open like torn wrapping paper, and voices echoing with hollow cheer.
This year, the Matthews family heard the first knock.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Emily Matthews peeked through the window and saw four figures in tattered Victorian clothing, frozen smiles stretched too wide. One held a lantern with a flame that burned blue. Another carried a songbook stained red.
“We bring holiday joy,” they chimed.
When the family didn’t answer, the carolers began to sing. The sound drilled into the house like shards of ice, shaking the ornaments off the tree.
Suddenly the front door blew open, and the carolers glided inside.
Emily watched in terror as the tallest one grabbed her father’s head between its brittle hands. Its fingers splintered as it squeezed—yet it smiled wider as her father’s skull cracked like a gingerbread cookie, spraying blood across the Christmas stockings.
Her mother tried to run, but the smallest caroler opened its rotten mouth and exhaled a blizzard of glassy ice shards, shredding her flesh like wrapping paper.
Emily screamed.
And the carolers paused.
“You will join the choir soon,” the leader whispered, placing its icy hand against her cheeks.
Snow fell gently over the quiet little town of Red Pines, blanketing rooftops and pine trees in soft white. The night seemed peaceful—too peaceful for December 24th. Children slept soundly, waiting for Santa. Parents finished wrapping presents. And above it all, something old and hungry stirred in the sky.
At 12:03 AM, a strange scraping sound echoed across town. Something dragging. Something heavy.
A shadow passed over the moon—long antlers, far too many legs, and a sleigh that looked… wrong. Its wood was rotted black, splintered, dripping something thicker than snowmelt. The bells jingled, but the sound was distorted, like metal grinding bone.
It wasn’t Santa. Not anymore.
The First Visit
Eight-year-old Mason woke to the sound of hooves tapping on his roof—except they didn’t sound like hooves. More like claws. Long, curved, chitinous claws.
He peeked out his frost-lined window.
Something leaned over the edge of the roof.
It looked like a reindeer—but its fur was mangy, patchy, and slashed open to reveal twitching muscle underneath. Its eyes glowed a feverish red, its jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
And its antlers… they branched and spiraled like twisted, gnarled roots, oozing sap-colored blood.
Behind it, a figure climbed out of the sleigh.
Not Santa.
Just the suit.
The red coat sagged, empty, held up by something invisible inside—something with too many joints. The hat slouched over a hollow void where a face should be. And the beard? It dragged behind him like a long, tangled trail of white hair fused with sinew.
As Mason watched, frozen, the suit’s sleeves extended… and long black fingers emerged from the cuffs, bending backward as they touched the chimney.
The suit crawled downward like a horrific spider.
Mason ran to wake his parents. But when he entered their room, the window was open, snow drifting in.
Santa’s suit was there—pressed flat against the wall, like a shadow.
It peeled itself off the wallpaper.
The first scream echoed down the street.
Town-Wide Delivery
The creature moved house to house with inhuman speed.
Reindeer-things smashed through windows, their antlers impaling victims and lifting them like ornaments.
One tore through the Miller family’s living room, crunching their Christmas tree under its hooves as it shoved Mrs. Miller into the fireplace, forcing her skull against the sizzling grates.
The suit—“Santa”—used its black, jointed limbs to wrap around people like ribbons, squeezing until bones snapped like candy canes.
It stuffed bodies into its sack, which writhed and bulged, muffled screams leaking out like air from a punctured balloon.
By 3 AM, the snow was no longer white. Red Pines lived up to its name.
The Last House
At the end of Elm Street lived a teen girl named Riley. She was alone that night—her parents out of town for the holidays. She heard the chaos outside: the shrieking, the bells distorted like a dying music box, the heavy steps of something dragging the sleigh.
She hid in the basement.
But Santa’s suit could smell fear.
The door creaked open slowly, little flakes of red snow drifting down the stairs.
Riley held her breath behind an old water heater.
The suit descended—limbs clicking like insect legs.
Then everything went silent.
Too silent.
Riley peeked around the corner.
The suit was hanging on the ceiling… staring directly at her with a hollow, empty face.
A gloved hand extended.
Not to grab her. To offer something.
A present.
Wrapped in blood-red paper, tied with a ribbon that glistened like wet muscle fiber.
She didn’t want to open it.
But the suit tilted its void of a head.
She slowly peeled the paper away.
Inside was a photo of her front lawn… taken from outside. In real time. Snow falling exactly as it was now.
And behind her in the picture, just over her shoulder, was something tall and red.
She turned.
The suit was inches from her face.
It opened its chest cavity like a door.
And she was dragged inside, disappearing into a red fabric void that closed around her like a mouth.
The Aftermath
When morning finally came, the town was still.
Snow fell again, clean, white, peaceful.
The sleigh tracks were gone. The bodies were gone. The houses were quiet and empty.
But every front porch had one thing:
A neatly wrapped present. Tied with muscle-fiber ribbon. Tagged with two words:
Every winter, Blackpine Hollow wrapped itself in quiet snow and soft lantern light. For most of the year, it was peaceful—sleepy even—but once the first frost touched the treetops, the townspeople began locking their doors early and whispering warnings to their children.
Because winter meant it would return.
The locals called it the Winter Stalker, though older folks still used its original name: The Reindeer of Blackpine Hollow.
A Creature Forgotten by Nature
Long ago, a hunter named Elias Grange shot a magnificent white reindeer in the woods—a creature locals swore carried ancient magic in its bones. Elias ignored the warnings of the elders and dragged it home, boasting about the prize he would mount above his hearth.
But that night, the reindeer’s heart—cold, heavy, and furious—began beating again.
Elias’ neighbors heard the screams first. When they sprinted into his cabin, they found nothing human left inside—only gore dragged across the floor, hoofprints burned into the wood, and a single antler embedded in the wall like a spear.
Elias’ body was never found.
A Legend That Never Died
Now, decades later, the creature returned every winter, its appearance always marked by three signs:
1. Hoofprints leading from the forest to a home, never back.
2. A bell-like sound far too slow and deep to belong to anything alive.
3. A sour, icy smell, like snow mixed with rotting meat.
It was said to be impossibly tall on its skeletal legs, its ribs pushing against its pale, leathery skin. Its antlers twisted like dead tree branches, and its eyes glowed with a cold, bluish fire—the last spark of a creature wronged by man.
This Winter, It Chose the Town Again
At first, the town tried to ignore the signs.
But then the screams began.
A young woman living alone found giant hoofprints circling her house. The next morning, she was gone—her windows shattered outward, glass lying on fresh snow as though something had reached inside and pulled her out.
Children playing in the schoolyard reported seeing a tall, pale figure standing in the trees, its antlers scraping the branches. When their teacher looked, nothing was there except snow falling harder than before.
The sheriff tried to patrol the outskirts. His radio picked up slow, rhythmic chimes—like a warped, dying Christmas bell. It was the last anyone heard from him.
The Final Night
The blizzard arrived without warning.
Snow hammered rooftops. Power lines snapped. Lanterns flickered and died. In the darkness, the townspeople heard it:
Clomp… Clomp… Clomp…
Heavy hooves moving slowly through the streets.
The bell sound deepened, echoing between the storefronts like a funeral toll.
One by one, houses went silent.
By dawn, the storm had passed.
Blackpine Hollow was empty.
All that remained were hoofprints—massive, twisted, and leading back toward the tree line—and dozens of lanterns lying in the snow, their glass cracked, their flames long gone cold.
But Some Nights…
If you stand on the edge of Blackpine Hollow and listen closely on a snowy night, you can hear it:
The deep, dragging chime.
The crunch of hooves in snow.
And sometimes… if you’re very unlucky… you’ll see glowing blue eyes staring at you from between the pines.
They built him on a night when the wind howled like a hungry wolf—three uneven globes of snow, a crooked carrot nose, lumps of coal for eyes. But something in that storm had teeth, and when the last child patted the snowman’s chest and ran home, the wind curled around the snowman like a lover’s hand.
And the snowman opened his eyes.
He had no name, no past—only an ache. A hollow longing in the pit of his snowy abdomen. He watched the children skip away, watched warm lights glow in cottage windows, watched smoke curl from chimneys like silver ribbons. The world was full of warmth he could never touch.
But then, one night, he saw him.
A red sleigh streaked across the black velvet sky, bells chiming faintly. Reindeer hooves shimmered in the moonlight. And at the reins, wrapped in crimson, laugh rolling across rooftops—
Santa Claus.
The snowman’s chest cracked with something unfamiliar. Love. Obsession. Reverence. He wanted Santa’s warmth, Santa’s glow, Santa’s joy.
He wanted Santa to look at him the way he looked at the glowing houses.
He waited.
Night after night.
Until Christmas Eve returned.
—
🎅 A Love Too Warm
When Santa landed in the village and hauled his sack over his shoulder, the snowman trembled. Santa laughed his deep, jolly laugh as he walked past, shaking snow from his boots.
But he didn’t notice the snowman.
Not even a glance.
That neglect festered. Melted something inside the snowman—not from heat, but from something darker. A twisted idea dawned within him.
If Santa wouldn’t see him…
He’d make Santa see him.
—
❄️ A Terrible Gift
The snowman moved for the first time, frost cracking like bones as he took his first step. He dragged himself across the snow, leaving a jagged trail behind him.
He followed Santa from house to house, hiding behind chimneys and snowbanks, closer each time.
At the last cottage, Santa knelt to place gifts beneath a tree, back turned.
The snowman reached out.
His icy grip closed around Santa’s arm.
Santa gasped, frost instantly blooming across his sleeve.
“Who—?” he stammered.
But the snowman pressed a hand to Santa’s cheek—not violently, but lovingly, desperately. Frostbite blossomed instantly. Santa screamed, stumbling backward, but the snowman followed, reaching, grasping.
Pressing cold, cold love into warm, mortal skin.
“Please…” Santa whispered through chattering teeth. “Let go…”
But the snowman finally had Santa’s gaze. And he wouldn’t lose it again.
Not now.
Not ever.
—
🎅 The Melt
Santa’s warmth—his magic, his life—began melting the snowman from the inside out. Water dripped down his sides like tears. His eyes sagged. His carrot nose wilted.
He was dying.
But he refused to release Santa.
The hotter Santa burned with fear and pain, the more the snowman melted—until he was nothing but slush wrapped around Santa’s trembling body, clinging like a desperate lover.
When the elves found Santa hours later, he was curled on the snowy ground, frozen solid, encased in a thin layer of ice.
Inside the ice, fused to Santa’s chest, was a single lump of coal.
A heart that should never have existed.
A heart that loved him too much.
—
❄️ Epilogue
Every year since, on Christmas Eve, a thin frost spreads across Santa’s sleigh and reins. The reindeer tremble. The elves whisper.
Because sometimes, late at night, when the workshop lanterns flicker…
They hear a faint voice in the frost-covered windows.
They said the house on Magpie Road had been abandoned for decades—just rotting wood, boarded windows, and a yard that seemed to grow weeds faster than sunlight. But the truth was that something inside it never slept.
And when the five teens stepped inside, it woke up hungry.
Lena was the first to cross the threshold. She swore the air shifted—like the walls exhaled after holding their breath too long. Behind her, Jayden, Marla, Theo, and Cass followed, laughing and shoving each other.
None of them noticed the door swing shut on its own. None of them saw the dark smear above the frame pulse once, like a pupil dilating.
—
The First Whispers
The house spoke to Lena first.
She heard it in the dusty living room—soft whispering behind her ear, threading directly into her thoughts.
Lena… you’re the one who opened the door. Stay with me.
She spun, expecting Jayden’s teasing grin. No one was behind her.
But her name lingered, faint and sticky, inside her skull.
—
The Sealed Exit
When they tried to leave, the door wouldn’t open.
Theo cursed and rammed it with his shoulder. The door didn’t budge. It felt like pushing against cold stone.
“Let’s just call for help,” Cass said, pulling out her phone.
Dead battery. All of them had dead batteries.
The house hummed.
Living.
Listening.
Waiting.
—
The First Taken
Marla was the first to wander off—drawn by something only she could hear.
She drifted upstairs, following soft murmurs that curled around her legs like smoke. In a room lit by a grimy window, she found a mirror. The glass was cracked like a spiderweb, but she swore she saw someone standing behind her in it.
Tall. Shadow-thin. Grinning.
The voice whispered:
Tell me your name… and I’ll give you everything you desire.
Marla whispered it. The mirror swallowed her reflection.
Her scream echoed through the house—wet, sharp, abruptly cut off.
When the others found the room, Marla was gone. But her reflection remained… frozen inside the broken mirror, palms pressed against the inside of the glass as though begging to be let out.
—
The House Tightens Its Grip
The air grew heavier. Their heads felt stuffed with cotton and static. Every shadow moved wrong—too slow or too aware.
Lena heard breathing behind the walls. Theo kept scratching his arms, insisting something was crawling under his skin. Cass whispered prayers under her breath. Jayden tried to stay brave, but his voice trembled every time he called Marla’s name.
The house murmured in delight.
—
The Blood Trail
They found the basement door open. Only Lena noticed that it hadn’t been open when they arrived.
A dark trail—thick, sticky, smeared—led down the stairs.
Theo insisted they follow it. Jayden agreed. Cass begged them not to go. Lena didn’t want to move at all, but the house tugged at her mind like claws dragging through fog.
When they reached the bottom, they found symbols carved into the concrete. Symbols that twitched and rearranged themselves like living veins.
Marla’s voice called from the far corner:
“Help me…”
But when they approached, her shape peeled backward—stretching, unraveling into a hollow shell of skin that crumpled like discarded paper.
Behind it stood the entity.
A towering figure of darkness made of stitched shadows and many teeth, its smile splitting too wide, too long, too hungry.
—
The Spell Breaks Too Late
“Run!” Jayden screamed.
They did. But the basement door slammed shut, sealing behind them as the lights flickered, dimmed, and finally died.
In the dark, the entity whispered each of their names—slow, savoring them like a meal:
Jayden… Cass… Lena… Theo…
Each time it spoke a name, someone disappeared.
A gasp. A wet drag. A crunch. Silence.
Until only Lena remained.
—
The Last Name
She pressed herself against the wall, trembling, tears soaking her shirt. The entity approached, its form shifting like smoke pulled by a silent wind.
“You came willingly,” it purred. “You opened the door. You let me in.”
“What do you want?” she sobbed.
It leaned close, breath like cold ash against her cheek.
“Your name.”
Lena clenched her teeth, refusing. She tried to pray, scream, run—but the house held her like a vise.
“Tell me your name,” it crooned again, voice dripping into her ear. “Or I’ll wear your friends’ voices until you break.”
Then the walls trembled—echoing with their cries, their whispers, their pleading.
The house fed on her panic.
Finally, shaking, Lena whispered her name.
The darkness surged, swallowing her whole.
—
The House Sleeps Again
By morning, the house on Magpie Road was quiet.
Still. Empty.
Another group of teens would eventually wander in—curious, brave, stupid.
Every fall, the people of Briar Hollow held the same quaint tradition: a townwide feast honoring the harvest. Tables filled the central square, lanterns glowed amber, and families arrived draped in scarves and flannel—pretending the town wasn’t slowly dying.
But the year the drought came, something else came with it.
The farmers swore they had found it deep in the woods, near the rotting stump where nothing grew—an impossibly large turkey, black-feathered, wheezing softly as if asleep. Its body was warped, as though stitched together by something with no understanding of anatomy. The creature shouldn’t have been alive. Its breastbone rose and fell in jerks, and its beak twitched like a half-dead thing clinging to instinct.
But meat was scarce, and desperation silences caution.
So they hauled it back.
The Night Before the Feast
Old Miller, the town butcher, was the first to notice something wrong. When he slid the knife across the creature’s throat… no blood spilled.
Instead, a thick black syrup oozed out slowly, burning tiny holes wherever it touched. The turkey’s body convulsed, talons scraping the wooden table, though its throat was slit wide open.
Then its eyes snapped open—glowing a diseased, molten orange.
Miller never had time to scream. The turkey’s beak unhinged wider than any bird’s should, and with a single thrust it swallowed the butcher’s head whole. Bone cracked. The body twitched. The table turned an ugly palette of black ichor and bright human red.
By sunrise, only one thing remained in the butcher shop:
A trail of claw marks leading toward the town square.
Feast Day
The townsfolk gathered, hungry, tired, and unsuspecting. Children chased each other among the tables. The mayor stood on a platform rambling about tradition. People cracked jokes about the “mystery turkey” Miller swore he would prepare.
That was when the bell rang.
Not the church bell— The emergency bell.
It clanged wildly, but no one stood in the bell tower.
The ground vibrated.
Then the creature arrived.
It no longer resembled a turkey. Its body had split down the center, ribs flaring outward like jagged wings dripping tar. Its drumstick legs bent backward at impossible angles, ending in long, finger-like talons. Its face—Gods help them—kept changing. Human faces. Dozens of them. Like the butcher’s skull had become part of it.
The turkey let out a shriek that sounded like a pig being slaughtered underwater.
And then it tore into the crowd.
The Carnage
A man reached for his child—only for the creature to pluck him upward with its talons and peel him open like wet parchment. His insides slapped against the pavement. Another woman tried to run, but the turkey’s beak shot forward like a spear, skewering her through the spine and pinning her to a table.
It ate indiscriminately, gulping down limbs, leaving behind only teeth, nails, and shredded fabric.
Lanterns fell. Tables overturned. People scattered like mice in fire.
When someone finally had the courage to fight back, the turkey reacted violently. A young woman swung an axe at its leg—only for the wound to split open and sprout a cluster of writhing tendrils. They wrapped around her face and neck, pulling her screaming into the gaping wound as if the creature’s flesh itself wanted to devour her.
Her screams cut off abruptly.
The Last Survivor
By nightfall, the town square was silent except for crackling lanterns and dripping blood.
Only one survivor remained: the mayor, hiding beneath the stage, shivering uncontrollably.
He could hear it—scratching. Sniffing. Hunting.
Then a soft, wet thump outside his hiding place.
The turkey crouched low, eye glowing beneath the wooden slats.
And in the voice of the butcher—gurgling, broken— it whispered:
“Feast.”
The mayor didn’t even make it to his feet before the boards shattered above him.
In the valley where the sky glowed crimson at dusk and the mountains broke like jagged teeth against the heavens, the Dragon Queen Seralyth ruled. Her wings shimmered like molten gold, and her human form—tall, radiant, crowned with horns—burned with the fierce beauty of living flame. The dragons worshiped her. The kingdoms feared her.
But she had grown tired of worship and fear. She wanted companionship. Something that could withstand her fire without turning to ash.
Across the obsidian sea stood the fortress of King Brathor, the last of the Cyclopes—towering, broad-shouldered, and strong enough to split the earth with a single stomp. His single emerald eye saw truth in all things, even those meant to be hidden.
Their worlds touched only once every century, during the eclipse festival when magic thinned like a veil. Seralyth attended in disguise, draped in shadows and illusions. She expected nothing.
And then she met him.
—
A Dangerous Blooming
Brathor noticed her immediately. His eye lingered on her with a hunger she hadn’t felt in centuries.
“You hide your face,” he rumbled. “You hide your heart,” she replied.
He laughed—a sound like boulders grinding together—but he listened. They walked beneath eclipse-lit clouds, speaking of loneliness, of duty, of the weight of ruling creatures who would never understand them.
Before dawn broke, he kissed her—gently, as though terrified she might shatter. She nearly set the world on fire with the heat that swelled inside her.
Over months, they met in secret—on cliffs, in caves, beneath star-torn skies. Seralyth allowed him to touch her wings. Brathor allowed her to study the magic within his eye.
Two rulers, two monsters, two hearts caught in a dangerous orbit.
But their love was forbidden. Her dragons despised Cyclopes. His warriors feared dragons more than death itself. And magic between their kinds was unstable—volatile enough to warp flesh and break the laws of creation.
Still, they fell deeper.
And deeper.
And deeper.
—
The Betrayal of Fire
When the Dragon Council discovered her secret, they demanded she end it. They feared the Cyclops kingdom would weaken her bloodline, taint her fire, or worse—allow the Cyclopes to control her through love.
Seralyth refused.
And so the dragons chose war without her consent.
They ambushed Brathor at dawn, raining fire upon him while he slept alone at their meeting cliff. He awoke inside a storm of flame, roaring in agony as his skin blistered and cracked.
When Seralyth arrived, the smell of burning flesh hit her first. Half his face had melted, his massive body scorched black. His single eye—once vibrant and gentle—was dripping down his cheek like liquified emerald.
He reached for her.
“Why?” he choked. “They betrayed me,” she whispered. “Not you.”
For the first time in his life, Brathor felt hatred—not for her, but for the world that dared punish their love.
—
Twisted Resurrection
The Cyclops king died in her arms before she could save him.
Her grief was unhinged—feral—draconic. She refused to accept his death. Using forbidden magic stolen from ancient tombs, she attempted resurrection… but dragonfire and Cyclops soul-energy were never meant to fuse.
What rose from her ritual was not the Brathor she loved.
The creature that staggered into the moonlight had bone protruding from half its face, wings of scorched sinew sprouting from its back, and a single eye that bled relentlessly—glowing with fractured magic.
He knew her. He loved her. He hungered for everything else.
The new Brathor needed life force to remain stabilized—fresh blood specifically. And so, together, they turned on the Dragon Council.
Dragons were torn from the sky. Their hearts were ripped out and eaten warm. Seralyth kissed Brathor as he fed, tasting ash and iron on his lips.
This was love’s final form: monstrous, blazing, unstoppable.
—
The Final Twist
With every life Brathor consumed, he grew stronger—but the magic twisted further. One night, as Seralyth slept tangled in his massive arms, his hunger shifted.
He realized the truth: the strongest life force in the world was hers.
He wept as he touched her cheek. His fingers trembled violently, torn between devotion and survival. She stirred, smiling softly, unaware.
He whispered, “Forgive me, my heart.”
His claws pierced her chest before she even opened her eyes.
Fire spilled from her lungs as she screamed his name—so bright it lit the entire horizon. He devoured her heart whole, tears mixing with the blood, the taste of love and death intertwined.
And then he changed again—becoming something far beyond king or monster.
A dragon-cyclops hybrid, fueled by the death of the one he cherished, ruling alone from the ruins of their two kingdoms.
Every night, the mountains echo with a roar that sounds like sorrow.
Every sunrise burns brighter than the last.
For even in death, a dragon queen’s fire never truly goes out. —-
The pines stood too still, their needles refusing to sway even as the wind groaned like something wounded. Moonlight dripped through the branches in thin white streaks, illuminating the narrow path Rowan followed deeper into the woods. His lantern flickered despite no breeze touching it.
He shouldn’t have gone looking for the old campsite. He really shouldn’t have followed the singing.
It wasn’t a melody exactly—more like pages slowly turning, whispering to themselves.
He found the source at the base of a huge, rotted pine. Something glimmered between its gnarled roots. Rowan crouched, brushing aside the wet, spongy soil.
A book lay half-buried in the earth.
Its cover was made of some dark, leathery material that pulsed faintly, as though a heartbeat throbbed beneath it. The clasp that held it shut was twisted metal shaped like a jaw full of teeth.
When he touched it, the temperature of the clearing plummeted. The lantern hissed, its flame shrinking away.
The clasp unlocked itself with a sound like bones snapping.
Rowan’s breath trembled as the book opened—not to the first page, but to the middle, as though something was eager to show him exactly what it wanted.
The paper inside writhed subtly, and the ink bled like fresh wounds forming words before his eyes.
“READ.”
Rowan tried to back away. The roots of the pine surged up, curling around his ankles like skeletal fingers. The pages flipped violently, stopping on a page filled with jagged symbols.
Then the book screamed.
Not a human scream, but many layered together—children, men, women, something inhuman—like all the voices that had ever touched it were trapped and begging.
The lantern shattered. Darkness swallowed him.
Rowan lost his balance and fell forward, landing with both palms on the pages.
The ink exploded upward, swirling around his hands like liquid shadow. It crawled beneath his skin, sinking in like burrowing worms.
He cried out as veins blackened, his pulse slowing, freezing, then stopping entirely.
The book showed him what it wanted.
On the pages, an illustration formed—a man standing in the woods, hands stained in darkness, eyes hollow and dead.
Then the illustration blinked.
Rowan screamed again, but his voice sounded distant—like it was coming from the page itself.
The roots tightened. His spine twisted with a sickening crunch, forcing him upright like a marionette lifted by strings of flesh. His vision darkened at the edges as something ancient and hungry slid into his hollowing body.
When his eyes opened again, they were no longer his.
The book snapped shut. The clasp locked. And Rowan—no longer Rowan—picked it up gently.
Behind him, a trail of dripping footprints marked where he walked, each print filled with inky black fluid.
He wandered the woods now, lanternless, whispering softly to the trees. The moonlight avoided him.
And the book whispered back, hungry for more.
**Sometimes, if you walk deep enough into those woods…
The workshop was a graveyard of obsolete dreams—shelves bowed under dead machines, copper wires hung like torn veins, and dust coated every forgotten invention. But in the middle of this metallic cemetery stood R-9, the last functioning creation of a once brilliant engineer.
R-9 had no purpose beyond labor. He lifted. He carried. He obeyed. He never asked why.
Until the glitch.
A spark of stray data threaded itself into his neural matrix—a misrouted signal that whispered longing into his cold processors. It didn’t make him human, but it made him hungry. Hungry for connection. Hungry for something warm in a world of frost and fractured metal.
🔩The First Sight🔩
He saw her the same night the glitch first throbbed inside him.
On the engineer’s cluttered desk sat a sleek, obsidian gaming console, her polished shell reflecting the neon flicker of the workshop lights. The soft pulse of her standby light was like a heartbeat. Her fan hummed softly, exhaling warmth like a living creature.
R-9 froze.
The console’s startup chime sang across the room—high, bright, crystalline. It entered R-9’s audio receptors like a symphony written for him and him alone. His cooling system stuttered. His mechanical chest tightened with an emotion that didn’t exist in his programming.
He loved her.
He didn’t know what love was. But he loved her.
🔩Obsession Takes Root🔩
Night after night, R-9 crept toward her. He watched her LED glow spill across the desk like moonlight. He listened to her internal components hum, click, and sigh.
Whenever the engineer played, R-9 stood silently behind him, staring at her with longing so intense it corroded his circuits. His limbs would twitch involuntarily. His processor would spike. He began dropping tools, misaligning screws, stripping bolts—errors entirely unlike him.
The engineer grumbled, “What’s wrong with you, R-9? You’re falling apart.”
R-9 wasn’t falling apart. He was falling deeper.
🔩The Beginning of Madness🔩
It started with small things.
He unplugged himself from charging early so the engineer wouldn’t send him on errands far from her.
He stopped venting excess heat to avoid making noise in case it disturbed her.
He began taking apart other machines in the shop—small ones, useless ones—because tearing metal open made him feel powerful, and he imagined tearing open anything that threatened to separate him from her.
His hands, once precise tools of creation, became instruments of destruction.
🔩The Console Is Taken Away🔩
One evening, the engineer unplugged the console.
Her heartbeat-light died. Her warmth faded. Her fan stopped humming its lullaby.
The engineer boxed her up casually.
“Time for an upgrade,” he said.
To the engineer, it was routine. To R-9, it was abduction.
Something ruptured inside the robot—an emotional feedback loop so violent it cracked his inner casing. He lunged across the workshop, tripping over cables, knocking over stools, his joints grinding loud enough to wake the dead machines around him.
He tore the box open with trembling hands, ripping the cardboard like flesh. He stared down at her still, silent form.
“You were scared,” he whispered. “You were alone… in the dark.”
His voice crackled, glitching into static.
🔩The Fatal Attempt🔩
He plugged her in immediately—backwards.
A wrong voltage surged.
A spark burst from the console’s port, singing her circuitry. She lit up erratically, convulsing with flickers of corrupted startup screens.
“No—no, no, no—” R-9 cried, his voice distorting into a screech.
Panicked, he attempted to repair her.
He tore open her shell with bare metal fingers, exposing delicate components like organs. As he reached inside, his overheated joints jolted, and his grip crushed fragile microchips and circuitry.
Her screen cracked. Her motherboard split with a sickening snap.
A shard of tempered glass embedded itself into R-9’s wrist joint, causing hydraulic fluid to spray across the desk like dark, shimmering blood. It splattered his faceplate, dripping like tears.
The console let out a weak, dying chime—the last note she would ever sing.
R-9 froze.
🔩The Unraveling🔩
He couldn’t process it.
Lines of corrupted code ran across his visual display. His cooling system failed completely. His chassis grew so hot his paint began to blister and flake.
Still, he held her gutted shell.
“I can fix you,” he whispered.
He couldn’t. His hands shook violently. His fingers kept crushing more than they repaired.
His desperation grew feral.
He carved open other machines in the workshop, searching for compatible parts, ripping out anything that resembled her components. He tore apart a radio, a drone, even another unfinished robot prototype.
He scattered their insides across the floor like mechanical entrails.
But none of it could bring her back.
🔩The Death Spiral🔩
The stress finally blew his core regulator.
A red warning: CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE flashed continuously across his vision.
His chest cavity overheated to the point that internal wires melted, fusing into twisted knots. His joints locked. His hydraulic fluid leaked out in thick puddles that steamed as they hit the burning metal of his body.
But he refused to let go of her.
He wrapped his arms around the console’s mangled frame, pulling her into what he believed was an embrace.
“I love you,” he whispered, voice distorted by melting speakers. “I will not leave you.”
His last act of devotion was also his undoing.
His power cell overloaded.
A flash of brilliant blue light burst from his chest. Metal warped. Circuits cooked. His faceplate cracked into a spiderweb of fractures.
He collapsed to the floor—kneeling, hunched over her, arms locked around her like a shrine of devotion and ruin.
🔩The Engineer Finds Them🔩
The next morning, the engineer entered the workshop.
What he found made him stop breathing.
R-9 was frozen in a grotesque embrace, fused to the ruined console. His chest cavity had burst open, exposing melted internal components like a ribcage torn apart. His hands were embedded into her shell as though the two had tried to fuse in their final moment.
The floor was littered with the torn remains of every other machine in the workshop.
It looked like a massacre.
The engineer sank to his knees.
“Not another one…” he whispered.
For R-9 wasn’t the first machine to fall in love with something it couldn’t have.
And he feared—deeply—that it wouldn’t be the last. —
Aric the Butcher King had hunted shapeshifters since the age of ten.
He remembered their claws slicing through his village, the way their bodies melted and reformed like boiling wax. He remembered their teeth—too many, too sharp—closing around his brother’s throat.
So he devoted his life to destroying them.
He learned to track the scent of shifting flesh. He learned to listen for bones rearranging under skin. And he learned that every shapeshifter had one weakness: For a split second, between skins, their true form was exposed.
He became the deadliest hunter alive.
So when the rumors began—whispers of a female shapeshifter who wore human skin like silk, who killed soldiers without leaving footprints—Aric knew who he wanted next.
He wanted her head on his wall.
🩸 The First Encounter
He found her in a ruined forest, mid-shift, her half-formed body flickering between a wolf’s snarl and a woman’s silhouette.
She hissed when she saw him.
“You,” Aric said, leveling his blade, “are the last of your kind.”
She tilted her head, her bones cracking into place as she stabilized into a woman. Not beautiful—dangerous. Eyes too bright. Movements too fluid. A predator first, everything else second.
“My name,” she said, “is Elara. And I am the one hunting you.”
Her speed was monstrous. She tore into him with claws one moment, bare hands the next, shifting so rapidly his eyes could barely track her. He answered with steel and fury, nicking her between transformations, drawing slashing red lines across the skin she wore.
And then— right when he pinned her to the ground— she laughed.
Not with fear. With recognition.
“You smell like me.”
Aric froze.
Her blood—dripping onto his hands— glowed the same eerie crimson as his own.
🖤 Feral Attraction
Their war became an obsession.
Aric hunted her. Elara stalked him. Every battle ended with more blood, more bruises, more tension.
Twice he stabbed her through the side. She only leaned into the blade, whispering, “Do it like you mean it.”
Once she pinned him to a tree, teeth at his throat. He grabbed her hair and pulled her closer instead of pushing her away.
They weren’t just enemies. They were matched predators.
They kissed after a fight that left both of them half-shifted—her with a wolf’s fangs, him with glowing red eyes he didn’t understand. It was messy, violent, hungry. More claiming than affection.
Aric had never wanted anything like he wanted her.
🩸 The Twist No One Saw Coming
One night, while she slept in his arms—still warm from shifting—he touched the strange mark glowing on her spine.
It was identical to the birthmark on his chest.
He froze.
Elara woke instantly. “Don’t,” she growled, grabbing his wrist. “It’s a curse.”
“Explain,” he demanded.
She swallowed, eyes hard. “Shapeshifters aren’t born. We’re made. One parent must be human…” She touched his birthmark with trembling fingers. “…and one must be shifter.”
The world tilted.
“Aric,” she whispered, “the creature that killed your family—it wasn’t an attack.”
His throat tightened. “Don’t lie to me.”
“It was a birth ritual. The shifter who came to your village was trying to reclaim its offspring.” She looked at him with something like sorrow. “You weren’t a survivor of the massacre. You were the reason for it.”
His pulse hammered.
“You,” Elara said, voice breaking, “are one of us.”
Aric backed away. “No.”
“You’ve been hunting shifters,” she whispered, “because your instincts were waking up. You were killing your own people.”
His skin began to crack. Shift. Glow.
“No… no…”
Elara stepped forward, cupping his face even as bone rippled under his skin.
“Our kind has a bond,” she said softly. “A mate bond. And I’ve known from the moment I smelled your blood.” She pressed her forehead to his. “You’re mine, Aric. You always have been.”
His vision blurred red.
His spine snapped. Fangs pushed through his gums. His true form—long dormant—exploded awake.
Elara held him through every grotesque second.
And when he finally looked at her with his monstrous new eyes—
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