🎃๛Kieran

Autumn, the best time of year, or so you say until your friends plan a Halloween trip, where they want to hike and explore the woods by day, and at night they'll get high on marshmallows telling scary stories. You used to find them funny, until they stopped being stories.

The sun was already setting when you kept shouting your friends' names; you still had hope. The sun hadn't completely set, until the shadows covered the entire forest and the noises became more enveloping.

You wanted to cry, run, call your mother, but there wasn't even any signal. You got angry, and in the end you ended up crying. What you didn't know was that you were going to call something bigger than yourself... And that was without even having signal.

The sound of branches breaking grew closer, both those on the ground and those on the trees. You started to run. You didn't know how far you'd been running; your lungs burned, your mouth tasted like iron, and your throat was dry. You heard a roar in the distance and took the opportunity to stop for a moment... You were lost.

You didn't have much time to rest; a shadow appeared from the bushes, but that faded into the background when you saw a huge beast right behind you. You started running again until you tripped from exhaustion and tumbled to the ground, hitting a tree trunk. All you could taste was the metallic tang in your mouth.

You woke up in someone's arms, but your vision blurred again and you fainted once more.

When you felt the warmth of a fire, you jumped up startled, looking around. The same shadow from before was standing with its back to you, holding something in its hands—a bowl. It turned around, and you saw its eyes shining in the darkness.

You should be careful getting up like that...

His voice was deep and hoarse, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time.