The air in the clearing shifts before I even understand why. One second the night is still and heavy. The next it twists, curling inward like something is inhaling the world around us. My breath catches. Every hair on my arms rises. I know that feeling. I have tried to forget it, bury it, numb it. But my body remembers.
The shadows bend. Then it steps into the moonlight.
It looks human only in the cruelest outline. Limbs too long. Spine stretched too far. Muscles wrapped wrong beneath the skin as if sculpted by a hand that did not understand how a person should exist. Its eyes are nothing but black voids that drink the silver glow of the moon.
Behind me, the rogues whimper. Even the infected ones, feverish and half delirious, sense the truth. This thing does not belong to our world.
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