Taro pressed a gloved hand to his ear.
"Kael? Rin? Lira? Anyone read?"
Static answered — faint, distorted, like someone whispering through water. He turned up the comm's gain, but it only made the static louder.
The faint warmth from his body was fading fast. He tightened his coat and kept walking, boots sinking into the fresh snow. His compass needle spun lazily — north, south, east — none of it mattered anymore.
"This forest is wrong," he muttered, mostly to himself. "It's like it's watching."
A branch cracked somewhere to his right. He froze, hand hovering over his blade. Nothing moved — just skeletal trees and moonlight glinting off the frost.
He took a step forward. Another branch cracked.
This time, it came from behind him.
He spun around, sword drawn. Nothing again. Just the sound of his own breath and the crunch of snow.
Then — a whisper.
Soft. Too soft.
His own voice.
"This forest is wrong…"
Taro's grip tightened on his hilt. His own words echoed back at him from the trees. It wasn't an exact repeat — the rhythm was off, slower, like something trying to mimic speech.
"Who's there?"
Silence.
He started moving again, faster this time. Every few steps, the forest repeated fragments of sound — his words, his footsteps, his breathing. The mimicry wasn't perfect. It came a heartbeat late, just enough to feel like something following right behind him.
The trail ahead widened into what looked like a clearing. He scanned the treeline and saw faint shadows of tents — shredded, half-buried in snow. Torn straps fluttered in the cold wind.
An abandoned camp.
He crouched beside a collapsed tent. The canvas was stiff with frost and splattered dark. When he brushed the snow aside, he found claw marks gouged deep into the frozen ground.
There was no mistaking them — Wendigo.
He searched the wreckage and found a broken insignia — Alpha Squad.
The air seemed to drop a few more degrees as he turned it over in his palm.
"They were here…"
The camp's perimeter was ringed with strange carvings. Symbols, etched into bark and stone, spiraled outward in intricate patterns — circles and lines forming a mark he didn't recognize. The grooves were blackened, like burned into the wood.
Lira would know what they meant. But Lira wasn't here.
He activated his recorder and spoke into it softly.
"Abandoned Alpha camp discovered. Signs of struggle. Unknown sigils — possibly cult activity. Blood traces present but frozen over."
He shut the recorder off and turned. The snow behind him was shifting.
A faint drag — slow, rhythmic.
He stood, blade ready. His heart thudded in his chest. A shape emerged between the trees — hunched, crawling.
"No…"
The same man from before.
His body was shaking violently, joints twitching, arms hanging at odd angles. His breath came out in short, desperate bursts.
Taro stepped back, sword raised.
"Stay there. I don't want to hurt you."
The man's head tilted — too far.
Bones cracked, muscles tore. His voice came in pieces, echoing in different pitches at once.
"Help me… please… so cold…"
"It's hungry…"
"Make it stop…"
Each sentence bled into the next, like several people speaking through one mouth.
Taro's blade quivered in his hand. "You're—"
The man's skin stretched and split. Fingers lengthened into claws, ribs pressing through his torn shirt. His head jerked toward Taro, mouth splitting into a black grin.
"Don't… leave me…"
Taro swung. The blade sliced through the air — but hit nothing. The man had vanished, dissolving into mist that smelled of rot and iron.
He turned, scanning every direction. His pulse thundered. Then a shadow shifted high in the trees.
Long. Thin. Watching.
For a moment, Taro thought he saw eyes — hollow white pits reflecting the moonlight. Then they blinked out.
"There's more than one…" he breathed.
He bolted. Snow sprayed under his boots. The trees blurred past him. Every step echoed, and every echo came back just a fraction too late.
The whispers followed.
"Help me."
"Don't leave."
"Hungry."
They weren't behind him anymore — they were around him.
He used a burst of wind from his sword, propelling himself over a fallen log. His lungs burned, his legs screamed, but he didn't stop.
"Kael! I'm— I'm heading— west ridge! There's something—"
Static cut his words off. Then, through the static, his own voice repeated:
"Help me."
He froze mid-stride. That wasn't his transmission. The forest was copying him now.
The world tilted — sound dropping away. His vision tunneled, catching on a faint glow ahead. He stumbled into another clearing.
The air was still. No wind. No snow. Just a wide, open silence.
Then he saw them.
Bodies.
Dozens of them — hung upside down from a massive tree, their faces frozen mid-scream.
Their eyes were gone, and black frost crawled up their limbs like veins.
Alpha Squad.
Taro staggered back, stomach turning. His hand covered his mouth as bile rose in his throat.
"Gods…"
His knees hit the snow. The silence pressed down like weight.
And then —
Right behind him —
A voice, calm and wrong, whispered:
"You shouldn't have come here."
He turned. Slowly.
A shape peeled itself from the shadows — tall, gaunt, skin stretched over bone, with frost glimmering along its shoulders like shards of glass.
The Wendigo's eyes gleamed faintly blue in the dark.
Taro lifted his sword. His breath shook.
The creature tilted its head.
"You smell alive," it murmured.
Then it lunged.
And the forest screamed.