Time slipped by without Ace noticing, the afternoon light in his room fading from gold to grey to a deep, twilight blue. He stood in the center of the familiar chaos, his entire world narrowed down to the contents of his open duffel bag laid out on the floor. Each item was a known quantity, a piece of a deadly equation.
He'd cleaned the handgun twice, the smell of solvent and oil a sharp, comforting tang in the air. He'd checked the safety until the click-click was a rhythm in his bones. The magazines were loaded, unloaded, and loaded again, his thumb pressing each round home with a satisfying, final snick. He'd tightened the strap of his knife sheath, tested the draw. His personal switchblade—a non-hunter's tool, but a familiar weight—was flicked open and shut, open and shut, until the motion was pure muscle memory, faster than thought.
Still, he checked everything one more time.
Not because he'd forgotten a step. Not because he was unprepared.
Because his hands needed something to do. The meticulous, ritualistic repetition was a dam against the rising tide of static in his mind—the low-grade hum of fear, the weight of responsibility, the ghost of his mother's worried silence on the phone.
His eyes drifted to the corner of his room, near the cluttered bookshelf. For half a second, his mind superimposed a figure there: tall, lean, arms crossed, watching with that unreadable expression that was neither approval nor disappointment, just… assessment. His father. The habit of looking for guidance there, for a silent nod, was a phantom limb. The spot was, of course, empty. It always was. Still, the instinct to seek a shadow lingered.
He exhaled slowly, the sound loud in the quiet room.
"Get a grip," he muttered to himself, the words a command.
His phone, a cold rectangle of glass and metal, was in his hand before he could spiral further. He hesitated, his thumb hovering over his mother's contact. Then he hit dial.
Ring.
Ring.
Sophie picked up quicker than he expected, on the second ring. No greeting. "Hello?" Her voice sounded tired. Not weak—never weak—just worn thin, like fabric rubbed raw at the edges.
"Yeah," Ace said, his own voice coming out quieter than he intended. He cleared his throat. "It's me."
"I know," she replied. A pause, filled with the empty space of all the things she wanted to say but was biting back. "You ready?"
Ace swallowed, his eyes scanning the ordered gear at his feet. "Yeah. I'm heading out soon."
Silence stretched between them. It wasn't awkward. It was heavy. The kind of silence where both people know exactly what the other is thinking—the scenarios, the fears, the memories of another hunter who walked out a door and didn't come back—and neither wants to give the terrible thoughts power by saying them out loud.
Finally, Sophie spoke, the words forced through a barrier of pure will. "Don't do anything stupid."
Ace almost laughed. It was their joke, their refrain. But tonight, it held no humor. It was a plea. He almost laughed because if he didn't, he might say something that would scare them both.
"I won't."
Another pause. This one was smaller, sharper, like she was steeling herself for the next part. "…And Ace?"
"Yeah?"
"Call me. When you're done. Not when you're on your way. When you're done and you're safe."
The specificity was a contract. "I will."
The line went dead without a goodbye. Ace stared at the black screen of his phone, seeing his own faint reflection—a pale face, set jaw, eyes that looked older than they should. He stood there, breathing in, breathing out, grounding himself in the physical act. This wasn't his first hunt. He'd been in the woods before, he'd faced things that didn't belong. But it was the first one his mother knew about, the first one she'd waited for a call after. That made it different. Realer. The stakes were no longer just his own survival.
He shoved the phone into his pocket, the weight of it a promise. Then he grabbed his duffel bag, shouldered it, and stepped out of his room, closing the door on the boy who did homework and worried about friends.
He didn't go to the front gate. He cut across the shared lawn, the grass damp with evening dew, and pushed open the familiar green gate of the neighboring house without knocking.
"Cedric?" he called into the dim hallway.
"Upstairs."
Ace climbed the steps, the sounds of a bustling household—the clatter of pans, the murmur of a TV, the shriek of a younger sibling—fading as he reached the closed door at the end of the hall. He pushed it open.
Cedric's room smelled like gun oil, stale energy drinks, and the faint, ever-present scent of cedar from the closet. Cedric sat on the floor, his back against the unmade bed, a cleaning mat spread before him. He was calmly, methodically reloading ammunition. Each brass casing was inspected, wiped clean with a cloth, then slotted into a magazine with a soft, precise click. His movements were economical, focused.
But Ace's attention was immediately drawn to the other presence in the room.
Becca Hawthorn—Cedric's mother—sat in her wheelchair just behind him, positioned so she could see both the door and her son's work.
The chair was no ordinary wheelchair. Its frame was reinforced steel, scratched and dented in places, with custom modifications—a clamp for a long tool, a pouch that likely didn't hold medical supplies. It spoke of a life adapted to, not surrendered to.
Both of her legs were gone, amputated cleanly above the knee, the empty space of her sweatpants pinned neatly. Old, thick scars, the kind that spoke of tearing and crushing rather than clean cuts, climbed like pale vines up her forearms and disappeared under the collar of her thick sweater. Her face was lined, not with age so much as with endured pain and relentless vigilance.
She wore the sweater despite the mild evening, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, revealing forearms still corded with functional, tough muscle. Her posture in the chair was not one of defeat, but of readiness. A hunter's posture, compressed into a seated position.
She hadn't retired. She'd been forcibly retired.
"Hey, Ace," Becca said, her voice calm. Controlled. It was a voice used to giving orders in low tones. "You look ready."
"Hi, Aunt Becca," Ace replied, the title one of respect, not just family friendliness. He shifted his weight, feeling suddenly like he was reporting for inspection.
She studied him in silence for a moment—not with a mother's worried gaze, but with the sharp, assessing eyes of a field commander evaluating a soldier before deployment. She took in the set of his shoulders, the way he held his bag, the alert stillness in his stance.
"I checked everything," Ace found himself saying, though she hadn't asked.
"Good," she said, a single nod. "That means you care. It doesn't mean you won't get hurt. But it's the right start."
Cedric finally clicked the last magazine into place with a definitive sound and stood, slipping it into a pouch on his vest. "I'm done, Mom."
Becca rolled forward a few inches, the quiet whir of the chair's motor a soft underscore to the tense atmosphere. Her eyes, the same sharp grey as Cedric's, hardened. Not with coldness, but with a seriousness that demanded absolute attention.
"Then listen to me," she said, her voice dropping into a tone that brooked no interruption. "You're hunting a Goatman. People—stupid people—underestimate them because they aren't the strongest or the fastest thing in the dark."
Her gaze pinned Cedric, then swung to Ace. "Their real weapon is between your ears. They get in there. They find a crack—a memory, a fear, a regret—and they pry it open. They'll use fake voices. Familiar ones. Your own. They'll make you see things that aren't there, hear things no one said." She leaned forward slightly. "Sometimes they don't even attack right away. They wait. They let the doubt they plant grow until you make the mistake for them."
Ace felt his jaw tighten. He'd felt the whisper of that pressure already, the unsettling quiet of the woods that felt like a held breath.
"If you hear something that comforts you, ignore it," Becca continued, each word a hammer strike. "If you hear something that scares you, ignore it. Your senses are your weapons, and right now, they're your biggest vulnerability. And if either of you, for even a second, thinks you're alone out there—" she paused, letting the implication hang heavy in the air "—you're already in danger. You stick together. You watch each other's backs, not just for claws, but for that vacant look in the eyes."
Cedric nodded once, a sharp, understanding dip of his chin. Ace followed suit.
"Don't stretch the hunt," she commanded. "You find it, you kill it. No glory. No curiosity. No 'studying' it. You are exterminators tonight, not naturalists. Be efficient. Be ruthless."
She leaned back in her chair then, the intense focus easing just a fraction, replaced by a weary, deep-seated concern. "I'll have dinner ready. Something hot. Ace, you're eating here afterward. No arguments."
Ace nodded. "Thanks, Aunt Becca."
Her expression softened, just for a fleeting moment, the commander giving way to the mother. The look she gave Cedric was too complex for words—pride, fear, love, and the shadow of her own history all mixed together. Her final words were quiet, directed at Ace but for Cedric most of all.
"Bring my son back alive."
It wasn't a request. It was the only acceptable outcome.
Cedric didn't make a joke. Neither did Ace. There was nothing funny about it.
They turned and left the room, the soft whir of Becca's wheelchair the only sound behind them. They walked down the stairs and out into the cool evening air without another word, the weight of her warning settling on their shoulders like a second layer of gear. The preparation was over. The hunt was now.
***
The hill felt different at night.
It wasn't louder. If anything, the absence of the party's frantic energy made the silence deeper, more profound. It wasn't darker than any other wooded hillside under a cloud-veiled moon. The difference was more subtle, more invasive.
It felt aware.
Ace and Cedric moved through the trees like twin shadows, their communication reduced to the language of hunters: a raised fist to halt, a pointed finger to indicate direction, a flat-palmed gesture to stay low. Their boots, chosen for traction and silence, barely made a sound, crushing old leaves and pine needles into a soft, damp pulp rather than snapping twigs. The air was cool and carried the rich, decaying scent of the forest floor, undercut now by a newer, uglier smell—the sour tang of spilled beer and the chemical sweetness of cheap energy drinks.
The remains of last night's party were scattered everywhere, a stark violation of the natural order. Empty glass bottles lay like fallen sentinels among the roots. Crushed aluminum cans glittered dully in the faint ambient light. A torn plastic banner, advertising some long-forgotten school event, was caught high in a branch, fluttering with a pathetic, ghostly rustle. A single sneaker, mud-caked and forlorn, sat upright against a tree trunk.
A place humans had claimed for a few hours of reckless, borrowed courage.
Now abandoned. The energy had bled away, leaving only garbage and a lingering, faint echo of stupidity.
Ace slowed his advance as the jagged silhouette of the old house resolved through a break in the trees. It leaned at a more precarious angle than he remembered, as if the chaos of the previous night had accelerated its decay. In the monochrome gloom, it looked less like a structure and more like the carcass of some large, wooden beast. And there, on the second floor, was a window—not just cracked or missing a pane, but completely shattered, the glass blown outward into the night, leaving a jagged black mouth.
Cedric noticed it at the same moment, freezing beside Ace. He didn't speak, just tilted his head, his eyes narrowing.
After a moment, he muttered, voice barely a breath, "People don't usually break windows outward. Not from inside a house they're trying to get into."
Ace gave a single, slow nod. The implication was clear. "Means it left in a hurry. Or something got thrown out. Or dragged."
They didn't approach the house directly. Instead, they began a wide, cautious circle, keeping the structure in sight but using the trees for cover. The goal was to understand the perimeter, to see what the creature considered its territory. The beam of Ace's torch was kept hooded, only flicked on in brief, targeted bursts to scan the ground before them.
Cedric was the first to find the sign. He dropped into a crouch, one knee in the dirt, and gestured Ace over. In a patch of soft earth between two gnarled roots, free of leaves, were deep gouges. Three parallel lines, each as thick as a man's finger, dug into the soil. They were fresh; the displaced earth was still dark and moist, not yet dried to dust.
Cedric ran a gloved hand just above the marks, not touching them. "Claws," he confirmed, his voice flat. "Big. Not retracted. Dug in for purchase." He looked up at Ace, his face grim in the weak light. "Still fresh. Less than a day."
Ace swallowed, a cold trickle of certainty running down his spine. "So it came back. After we chased it off, after the woods were empty. It came back here."
"Yeah," Cedric replied, standing and wiping his hand on his thigh. "Which means it thinks this place is safe. Or it's drawn to it. This is its ground now."
That thought bothered Ace more than the claws themselves. A territorial predator was predictable, but also fiercely defensive. It wouldn't flee easily. It would fight for this rotten, broken place.
The woods around them were preternaturally quiet. No chorus of crickets. No scuttle of nocturnal insects. No distant hoot of an owl. Even the wind, which usually sighed through the pines, seemed muted, as if holding its breath to listen. The silence wasn't peaceful; it was a vacuum, waiting to be filled.
Ace checked the luminescent dial of his watch. The numbers glowed a soft green. "If it's nesting here, treating this as a den, it won't be far. It'll be close, watching the approaches."
As if on cue, the silence was fractured.
Snap.
The sound was clean, sharp, and unmistakable—the break of a dry branch under significant weight. It came from deeper in the trees, beyond the house, in a thicket of younger growth.
Both hunters froze, becoming statues among the shadows. Their heads turned in unison toward the sound, ears straining. No follow-up rustle. No movement.
Ace raised his torchlight slightly, his thumb on the switch. He didn't flood the area; he painted a thin, controlled beam through the trunks, slicing the darkness like a scalpel. The light passed over rough bark, dense clusters of ferns, the skeletal remains of a fallen birch.
Nothing moved.
Then Cedric stiffened beside him, his intake of breath a soft, sharp hiss.
"Did you hear that?" he whispered, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.
Ace frowned, his own hearing stretched to its limit. "Hear what? Another branch?"
Cedric hesitated, his head tilted as if listening to a distant station. "No. I thought I heard… my name."
Ace felt an immediate, instinctual chill crawl up his spine, tightening the skin at the back of his neck. Becca's warning echoed in his mind. They'll use fake voices. "From where? What direction?"
Cedric shook his head slowly, his expression troubled. "Didn't sound like it came from anywhere. Not left, not right. More like… it was already in my head. A whisper right behind my thoughts."
They stood there, utterly still, for several long seconds. The woods offered no explanation, no repeat of the sound. The silence rushed back in, thicker, more charged than before.
Ace exhaled, a plume of vapor in the cool air. The psychological game had begun before they'd even seen their quarry. The creature was setting the stage, testing their defenses. "Okay," he said, his voice firm, a decision made. "That's our cue. No more waiting. No more circling. We go to the source."
They advanced toward the house with renewed, grim purpose, abandoning stealth for decisive motion.
Up close, in the stark reality of the night, it was worse.
The front door didn't just sag; it hung from the top hinge only, twisted inward at a grotesque angle as if struck by a tremendous force from inside. The porch steps had splintered, not from rot, but from impact. Ace flashed his light inside, the beam cutting through the dusty gloom.
The floor was a chaotic map of footprints—the wide, deep treads of work boots from police or firefighters, the smaller, scuffed prints of sneakers from teenagers, and overlaying them, other marks. Smudges. Drag trails that led from the center of the room toward a darker opening in the far wall: the basement stairs. Dark, rusty stains soaked into the wood grain along those trails.
Cedric crouched at the threshold, not entering, his gloved hand hovering over one of the stains. His jaw was tight, a muscle flexing in his cheek. He didn't need to touch it. The coppery, faintly sweet scent was confirmation enough, mingling with the odors of mildew and dust. "This is definitely it," he said, his voice hollow. "This is where it feeds. Where it… takes them."
Ace nodded, forcing his own breathing to stay steady, his grip on his pistol firm but not white-knuckled. "Temporary nest," he reasoned, clinging to clinical detachment. "It's wounded. Maybe desperate. Not thinking about covering its tracks."
"Means it's dangerous," Cedric added, rising to his feet. "A cornered animal is one thing. A cornered thing that can get inside your head is another."
Ace managed a faint, grim smirk. "When are they not dangerous?"
They took up positions without another word—a tactical split. Cedric turned his back to the house, his gaze scanning the tree line, the deeper shadows between the trunks, watching for the approach. Ace faced the yawning doorway and the dark stairwell beyond, guarding the known den.
They stood there, back-to-back, two points of defiance in the swallowing dark.
Somewhere above them, high in the canopy of an ancient oak that overhung the house, a branch creaked.
Not from the wind. There was no wind.
It was a slow, deliberate sound, like weight shifting carefully, settling in to observe.
Neither of them looked up.
They didn't need to. The prickle on their skin, the weight of the gaze upon them, was message enough.
The hunt had already begun. They were no longer the seekers. They were the center of the trap.
The air shifted.
It wasn't a wind. It was a change in pressure, in density, as if the atmosphere itself had taken a silent, intent breath. Ace felt it first—a primal, subcutaneous alarm that had nothing to do with sight or sound. It was the feeling of a door opening somewhere dark inside his own skull. A presence, cold and curious, brushing against the edges of his consciousness.
His instincts, honed by training and a deeper, older fear, screamed a single command.
Move.
He didn't think. He threw himself into a sideways roll, his shoulder hitting the damp earth as something whispered directly into the heart of his mind.
"Ace…"
The voice didn't enter through his ears. It unspooled inside his head, smooth and intimate, like warm breath against the back of his neck. It was his voice. The one he heard when he read his own thoughts. But it was wrong. It carried a weight of disappointment, of a sadness so profound it felt ancient.
For a split, disorienting second, the world warped. The trees around him seemed to bend inward, their branches becoming grasping fingers. The shadows stretching from the house elongated, reaching for his ankles. A wave of vertigo made the ground lurch.
You're not fast enough. You're not strong enough. You're just a boy playing at his father's war, and you will die in these woods, forgotten.
The thoughts felt like his own, but they were barbed, venomous.
Ace clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. With a grunt of effort, he slammed the hilt of his knife into the dirt beside him. The physical shock, the solid thud of metal on solid earth, was an anchor. A real sensation in a world trying to turn liquid.
"Nice try," he snarled through gritted teeth, pushing himself back to his knees. He addressed the dark, the trees, the invasive presence. "You're not welcome in my head. Get out."
The pressure vanished, retreating like a tide. The trees snapped back to their normal positions. The shadows receded. The vertigo passed, leaving a cold sweat on his brow and a furious thumping in his chest. He'd beaten it back. The first probe.
His relief lasted less than a heartbeat. His gaze snapped to Cedric.
Cedric wasn't moving.
He stood frozen near the edge of the clearing, maybe ten feet away, his profile eerily still. His gun was lowered, pointing at the ground. His shoulders were slumped. His breathing, visible in pale puffs, had gone shallow and rapid.
"Cedric?" Ace whispered, the name a blade of fear.
No response. Cedric might as well have been carved from stone.
Then Cedric spoke. But the voice that came from his mouth wasn't his own. It was younger, thinner, frayed with a panic that had been frozen in time.
"Why didn't you wait for me?"
Ace's stomach dropped into a void. He knew that tone. He'd heard the ghost of it in Cedric's stories, in the things he didn't say about the mission that had taken his father.
Cedric's face, visible in the faint moonlight, was a mask of confusion and gut-wrenching pain. His fingers trembled violently around the grip of his pistol. A single tear tracked a clean line through the grime on his cheek.
"I told you I'd be right back," Cedric's voice continued, the words spilling out soft and broken. "You always run ahead… just like that day. You never listen."
Ace scrambled to his feet, heart hammering. "Cedric, listen to me!" he said, his voice cutting through the unnatural quiet. "That's not real! It's in your head! Look at me!"
Cedric didn't hear him. He was gone, pulled into a past that was being weaponized against him.
The world Cedric saw was not the hill, not the house. The trees had warped into the oppressive, silent giants of a different forest, one drenched in the smell of cordite and wet charcoal. The scent of blood and something sweetly burnt filled his nostrils. Ahead of him, silhouetted against a false, smoky light, stood a figure. Tall. Broad-shouldered. The familiar, confident set of the head.
The man turned slowly. It was Cedric's father, Ronan. Or a grotesque parody of him. Half of his face was a ruin of glistening, raw meat and blackened bone, the eye socket a dark, empty pit. The other half was perfectly, horribly calm.
"You left me," the figure said, its voice a horrible blend of Ronan's baritone and the Goatman's wet, guttural rasp. It spoke with a chilling calm. "I called for you."
Cedric's knees buckled. He didn't fall, but he swayed, a low, wounded sound escaping his throat. "I tried…" he choked out, the words meant for the phantom. "I waited where you said… you told me to stay back, to guard the perimeter—"
"You always listen," the thing replied, taking a slow, limping step forward. The burned side of its face seemed to pulse. "Even when you shouldn't. A good soldier. My good boy. And now look." It gestured to its own ruined body. "You're whole. I'm this. Because you listened."
The guilt was a physical force, a spike driven through Cedric's heart. He gasped, clutching at his chest as if he could tear it out. His vision blurred with tears that were no longer his own, but borrowed from a memory of smoke and screams.
He raised his gun, but not at Cedric. He aimed into the darkness between the trees, at the source of the manipulation, the psychic puppeteer. "HEY!" he shouted, his voice raw and furious, shattering the intimate horror of the scene. "WRONG TARGET! YOU WANT A FIGHT? FIGHT ME!"
The woods laughed.
Not a sound. A vibration. A crawling, insane mirth that wormed directly into the base of Ace's skull, rattling his teeth. It was the sound of broken glass and tearing meat given sentience.
In its wake, a new pressure came, not for Cedric, but for him. It clawed at his thoughts, trying to pry something loose. It sought his own cracks: the weight of the Eldren name, the ghost of his own father's disappearing back, the crushing expectation that he was the next link in a chain that led only into the dark. He felt it trying to twist his pride into shame, his duty into despair.
You will never be him. You will only be his shadow. And then you will be nothing.
Ace shoved back with pure, defiant will. He envisioned a wall of white noise, of static. He focused on the physical: the grip of his gun, the cold air in his lungs, the solid ground under his boots. You don't get me, he thought, pouring all his focus into the rejection. My doubts are my own. You don't get to wear them.
But Cedric was breaking. The phantom of Ronan was reaching out a blackened, skeletal hand.
"ACE…" Cedric rasped, his voice strangled, collapsing back into his own terror. "I CAN'T— I SEE HIM—"
Ace didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, not at the illusion, but at his friend. He grabbed a fistful of Cedric's jacket collar and yanked him backward with all his strength, physically breaking his line of sight with the tormenting trees.
"FOCUS ON ME!" Ace shouted, his face inches from Cedric's. He didn't gentle his voice; he made it a weapon, a lifeline. "NOT HIM! NOT THE PAST! LOOK AT ME! IT'S ACE! RIGHT HERE!"
Cedric's glazed, drowning eyes flickered. The horrific vision of his father fractured like glass hit by a stone. For an instant, the silhouette of Ronan Hawthorn flickered, wavered, and behind it, superimposed, was a different shape—tall, twisted, with the stark, jagged outline of horns curling back from a bestial skull. The Goatman, the architect of the nightmare, briefly visible in the rift of its own illusion.
Then the vision shattered completely.
Cedric collapsed to one knee, coughing as if he'd been drowning, sweat pouring down his face, mixing with the tears. He dragged in huge, ragged gulps of air, his body shaking with the aftershocks of psychic violation.
Ace stood over him, a protective stance, his knife now in his hand, his eyes scanning the darkness with a new, furious understanding. The creature hadn't shown itself with tooth and claw. It had attacked with memory and guilt. It had tried to make Cedric's own love and trauma kill him from the inside.
A low, furious growl rippled through the woods, vibrating up through their feet this time. It was a sound of pure, thwarted malice. The Goatman didn't like resistance. It didn't like its toys being taken away.
"That's your move?" Ace said into the waiting dark, his voice quiet now, but dripping with contempt. He wiped his own sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. "Memories? You'll have to do better."
The woods went silent again. But this was a different silence. It wasn't the quiet of waiting, or the vacuum of absence. It was the loaded, humming silence of a predator that has been seen, whose preferred tactic has failed, and is now recalculating its approach with a colder, sharper rage.
Ace tightened his grip on his knife, his knuckles white.
"Yeah," he muttered to the silent, hateful dark. "That's what I thought."
The hunt was no longer about finding a monster in the woods. The hunt had just turned deeply, brutally personal. It was a war for their minds, and the first battle was over. The next one would be fought with different weapons.
