The night was suffocating. Not because of the heat, but because of the weight in your chest. Your dimly lit room felt smaller than usual, the air heavy and stale, curtains drawn tight as though to keep the world out. But the world had already forced its way in right through the cold blue glow of your phone screen.

The news played on a loop. It wasn't just the words that shook you it was the images. Jenna Miller, age eighteen, struck by a vehicle late last night... severe trauma to the head... The reporter's voice was monotone, but the photographs that flashed on the screen were enough to make bile rise again. The police had blurred most of the details, but not enough. There had been something unnatural about her injuries. It wasn't just a car accident. The sockets where her bright green eyes once shone... now hollowed out, grotesque, as if scooped clean by something crude.

You'd already thrown up three times since watching it for the first time. Your hands wouldn't stop trembling. Every time you closed your eyes, Jenna's face her real face...flashed before you, but then it was replaced by that mangled image.

Sleep never came. Only the slow crawl of hours until morning.

The next day's sunlight felt wrong too bright, almost mocking. The small town buzzed with whispers; students clustered in groups outside the school building, the tragedy already turning into a morbid spectacle.

You found yourself sitting on the worn wooden bench near the back of the school courtyard, your little group gathered around James, loud and brash; Michael, always smirking as though life were a joke; Ron, who pretended not to care; and Jessica, who spoke in sharp, fast bursts.

They weren't crying. They were talking...gossiping, speculating.

"They say she flew like five meters before hitting the ground," James muttered, eyes alight with an almost inappropriate excitement. "My brother told me her eyes weren't even there anymore," Michael added, too casually, "like...really gone.""Maybe an animal?" Jessica offered, though her tone was more curious than horrified. "Nah, no animal's that clean," Ron said, leaning back. "It's like... someone did it."

The words hung in the air like a curse.

You stared at the dirt between your shoes. Your stomach churned again. It wasn't the time to tell them that the thought of Jenna lying there in the road kept you from breathing properly.

Far beyond the courtyard, beyond the chain-link fence and into the dense line of forest, someone else listened.

Brax stood in the shadows where sunlight fractured through tangled branches. In his hand an axe. Not the rusted, forgotten kind one might find in a shed, but something sharpened to a cruel edge, the metal catching brief flashes of light like a predator's grin.

He didn't move. Didn't need to. No one noticed him not the kids laughing in the yard, not the teachers shuffling papers near the doors. He was patient. Still as the tree trunks around him.

His eyes, however, were alive locked on one person.

You.