Chapter 1: Dear Father
The forest was a cathedral of rot. Above, a crescent moon—a skeletal smirk in the sky—cast feeble light through the choking canopy. Shadows pooled like spilled ink between ancient oaks, their branches clawing at the darkness. Elara ran. Not with hope, but with the raw, animal instinct of prey that knows the hunter is *close*. Her lungs burned. Bare feet shredded by roots and stones left bloody prints on moss. The air reeked of damp earth and her own terror. She didn't dare look back. The *presence* behind her was a physical chill, a weight pressing between her shoulder blades, growing heavier with every gasping breath.
*huff*. *huff*
She'd fled for miles. Or hours. Time bled into the suffocating dark. Her legs trembled, muscles screaming. Vision blurred at the edges. Then—betrayal. A gnarled root, slick with decay, snaked around her ankle. She pitched forward. The impact drove the air from her lungs. Dirt filled her mouth. Rot filled her nose. She lay sprawled, trembling, the frantic drumming of her heart the only sound… until the silence shifted.
No footsteps. No rustle. Only the sudden, crushing weight of being observed.
Slowly, Elara turned her head. He stood five paces away, a silhouette carved from the night itself. Tall, unnervingly still. A wide-brimmed hat shadowed his face, but moonlight caught the sharp line of his jaw, the unnerving stillness of his posture. Not a man. A void
He didn't speak. He simply tilted his head, a faint, dismissive gesture. Get up.
Elara scrambled backwards, elbows gouging the soft earth. "Please!" The word tore from her raw throat, a ragged sob. "I don't know you! I've done nothing! Who are you?" Her voice cracked, shrill with hysteria. "Why are you doing this?"
Silence. He took a single, deliberate step forward. The forest floor didn't sigh beneath his boot.
"Money?" she babbled, tears carving paths through the grime on her face. "Is it money? I have none! Take my ring! Take anything! Just let me go!" She fumbled at her finger, ripping off a cheap silver band, holding it out like a pathetic offering. "Please! Why?"
He stopped. The air thickened. His stillness wasn't patience. It was the coiled tension before the strike. He glanced at the ring in her trembling hand. Then back at her face. A flicker—not of anger, but of profound, soul-crushing boredom.
It vanished. Replaced by cold purpose.
He moved. Not with speed, but with terrifying inevitability. One polished boot lashed out. It connected with her ribs. A wet, sickening *crack* echoed through the trees. Elara's scream shattered the silence—a raw, animal sound of pure agony. She curled inward, vomiting bile onto the leaves.
"Why?!" she shrieked between retches, blood bubbling on her lips. "What do you *want* from me?!" Her hand, still clutching the ring, stretched towards him in a final, futile plea.
He knelt. One knee pressed into the small of her back, pinning her shattered body. A gloved hand tangled in her sweat-soaked hair, wrenching her head back until her neck bones groaned. Moonlight finally illuminated his eyes beneath the hat's brim—dark pits reflecting nothing. No rage. No satisfaction. Only an abyss.
His free hand drew a blade. Thin. Hooked. It gleamed dully.
Elara's remaining defiance evaporated. "No!" she wailed, thrashing weakly. "Please! I'll do anything! Tell me what you want! Who sent you?!"
The blade descended.
The first cut traced a slow, deliberate line from her collarbone to her sternum. Skin parted like wet paper. Blood bloomed, shockingly bright. Elara's scream choked into a wet gurgle. He worked without sound, without haste. The hooked point caught a tendon in her forearm, lifted it. A sharp *twang* vibrated up her arm. She shrieked, the sound raw and broken. "STOP! PLEASE! WHAT DID I DO?!"
He peeled back a flap of skin, exposing glistening red muscle and white fascia beneath. He observed it, tilting his head slightly, as if studying a flawed specimen. Elara's body convulsed, a fish drowning in air. "Who are you?!" she sobbed, her voice dissolving into whimpers. "Just tell me why…"
He didn't answer. The blade moved again. A precise slice along her inner thigh, deep enough to scrape bone. A fresh scream tore loose, weaker now. He broke her fingers. *Snap. Snap. Snap.* Dry twigs underfoot. Each crack elicited a broken gasp, a fresh wave of tears. "Mercy…" she slurred, consciousness fading. "Just… mercy… Why…?"
He carved. He peeled. He explored the ruin he was creating with detached precision. He severed the tendons at her ankles. Silence hung heavy, broken only by Elara's wet, ragged breaths, the drip of blood onto leaves, and the occasional, sickeningly soft *schlick* of the blade parting flesh. Her questions had died, replaced by whimpers and the awful, wet sound of her trying to breathe through broken ribs and blood-filled lungs.
He stood. The crescent moon was lower now, casting longer, deeper shadows over the grotesque tableau. Elara was a ruined thing, twitching in a widening pool of black. One eye, wide and unfocused, stared past him. A final tear, clear and incongruous, traced a path through the blood on her cheek.
He looked down. The profound boredom had returned, deeper, heavier. He flicked a speck of crimson from his sleeve.
A different blade appeared in his hand—long, straight, lethally sharp. It flashed once.
Thud.
Elara's head rolled away, coming to rest facing the trees, the unanswered plea frozen forever in her dead eyes. Her body shuddered once and lay still.
He surveyed the carnage—the head, the mutilated torso, the glistening entrails spilling onto the forest floor, the dark, soaking earth. The silence was absolute, save for the buzzing of the first flies.
Then, without turning his head, without raising his voice above a flat, disinterested murmur that cut through the stench of blood and voided bowels, he spoke:
"Clean this up."
From the absolute darkness beneath the oldest oak, where even the moon's sickle-light died, I stepped forward. The smell—copper, bile, and raw meat—was as familiar as my own heartbeat. My stomach clenched, bile scorching my throat. I swallowed it down. Weakness was death here.
He didn't look at me. He simply ceased to be. One moment, a dark pillar amidst the slaughter. The next, empty air.
I stood alone. The flies buzzed louder. My traitorous heart hammered against my ribs. My hands, already stained with unseen filth, trembled slightly before I clenched them into fists.
He was gone. The monster. The silent architect of this horror.
My father.
And I was left with the pieces of another unanswered "why."