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Made by Red-eyes Dragoon and here's my author page ig dragoon
Thank you for reading!
I had trouble figuring out what to write for this amazing P.O.I. but I got it worked out.
I stood at the edge of the frozen glade, my breath curling in the air like the whispered remnants of forgotten spirits. Above me, the heavens churned in a cosmic dance—emerald, violet, deep cerulean—colors not meant for mortal skies. The auroras pulsed unnaturally, shifting with a sentience beyond comprehension, an omen that marked this singular night.
Behind me, the Wild Hunt was silent. No eager movement, no restless anticipation. The usual fervor of pursuit had dimmed, not into hesitation, but something colder. A stillness honed by understanding. By memory. By fear.
We had not gathered for mere sport. Not to chase men lost in the Backrooms, nor the hapless things that wandered through the liminal spaces of reality. Tonight, we pursued something greater.
Tonight, we hunted it.
The thing that had haunted the Hunt for longer than any of us could name. A creature older than the stories whispered in the dark, old as the Hunt itself. It had no name in our tongues, only the weight of its presence in our blood—passed down like an heirloom, inherited in scars and hushed warnings. It had taken our kin before, long before my time, and it would take them again. Unless we ended it.
A ripple passed through the Hunt. Muscles coiled, grips tightened around weapons that had felled countless prey. But this was different. There was no triumph waiting at the end of this chase. No spoils. Only a reckoning.
The humans of the Frontrooms speak of cryptids—“Bigfoot,” the “Jersey Devil”—feeble comparisons to this titan of the Hunt. Others claim it is something ancient beyond reckoning, a specter of winter’s heart, a being that has watched the Grove’s every turn of the cycle, unseen yet ever-present.
The wind stirred, carrying with it the scent of frost-laced fur, the sharp tang of something primal, something untouched by time. My fingers tightened around my spear’s haft. A slow ripple passed through the Hunt as we braced ourselves, muscles coiling in readiness.
Then—movement.
Antlers like jagged, ice-slicked spires crowned its elongated skull. Black eyes swallowed the auroras above, turning their glow into something cold, something distant. Breath curled from its maw, mist over a graveyard. It watched us. Not with defiance. Not with threat. Just… recognition.
It did not flee. It did not threaten. It simply watched.
One of my kin struck first—a spear, swift and true, cutting through the frozen stillness like a silver comet. The blade found its mark, sinking deep into the beast’s flesh. Yet the Great Prey did not flinch. It did not recoil. No cry of pain, no sign of acknowledgment. As if the wound, the weapon, and even the act itself were too insignificant to matter.
Instead, it exhaled—a slow, deliberate breath that hung in the frozen air like a whispered omen. The night itself seemed to pause, waiting, listening. Then, with the effortless grace of something untouched by time, it stepped backward, retreating into the abyss of the trees. Shadows swallowed its form, and in an instant, it was gone—a wraith dissolving into the veil, a ghost slipping beyond the reach of the living.
And with that, the Hunt began.
With a subtle shift of my spear, I signaled the advance. My kin followed, gliding soundlessly over the frostbitten ground, our movements honed over centuries of perfecting the chase. The auroras above flickered wildly now, as if agitated by our purpose. Shadows twisted in the trees, shifting like living things, breathing in the presence of something that had not been pursued in an age.
The trail it left behind was not one of blood or spoor but of remains—skeletons of men, stripped so clean they bore neither meat nor marrow, as if time itself had forgotten they once lived. Even the ground was bare where they fell, devoid of stain or decay. The trees bled into corridors of endless night, and the senses of my kin wavered.
“The shadow on the left,” one of my hunters called.
“No, the one on the right,” another hissed.
A growl slithered through the darkness. Arrows flared like falling stars, vanishing into the void between the trees. And then— it emerged.
Unscathed. Almost smiling. A beast of legend, fully aware of the effects of its presence. It moved. Not with the motion of mere flesh and sinew, but like an absence of time itself. A blur. A flicker. Before the mind could grasp its form, one of my kin was gone.
A strangled cry, silenced before it could fully leave his throat. A flick of motion. A shadow recoiling into deeper darkness. And then— the antlers. Cast back toward us, still slick, the last remnant of the hunter it had taken.
This was no chase.
This was a culling.
Something shifted in the air—a change in the rhythm of the Hunt, in the unspoken pulse that bound us together. This was not the Hunt as it was meant to be.
This was us, being hunted.
A blur in the void, and another of my kin vanished. A head, picked so clean it gleamed like polished ivory, tumbled across the frost. No sinew, no scrap of flesh. Not even bone dust clung to its surface. Eaten beyond death itself.
And so we understood.
We had not come to claim a prize.
We had come to wage war.
The realization settled upon us like the weight of a sky collapsing. The Hunt—our hunt—was unraveling, not with the fury of battle, but with the slow, inexorable certainty of something far older than us, something that had seen hunters before and had learned how to break them.
The air was thick with something unseen, something gnawing at the edges of the mind, slithering through the marrow like a whispered certainty. We were the Hunt. We were meant to be the wolves, the tide that shaped the world, the challengers that spurred our quarry to rise.
My fingers tightened around my spear, but the familiar weight of it no longer reassured me. The blade had tasted man's flesh aplenty, and yet the comfort it brought me in my hunts dissipated.
Yet when the beast moved, slipping between the trees like a shadow unbound from its source, I felt it again. A sensation I had not known in lifetimes. A presence had been at my side—my kin, steady, breathing, real. And then, in the space between one breath and the next—
Gone.
No cry. No struggle. No trace.
My breath hitched as I turned my gaze to a snapping sound.
The skull. His skull.
Something deep within me stirred—fight, fight, fight. But another instinct, long buried, clawed its way to the surface. A voice I had never heeded. One that knew when the tide had turned—that knew when the predator had become the prey.
The others felt it too. I saw it in the flicker of their eyes, in the way their stances shifted. The Hunt was not yet broken, but cracks had formed beneath the surface.
I forced my grip to steady. Forced the fear into something I could wield. A fire, fragile but burning still.
A single breath—that was all I allowed myself. A sharp inhale, just enough to steady the frantic hammering of my heart and wrest my mind from the primal fear creeping into my bones. The fear was insidious, slithering beneath my skin, whispering things I dared not name.
The Hunt had never faltered before. Not in the face of men, nor in the presence of the unnatural things that lurked within the Backrooms. We were the storm, the wolves in the dark, the force that drove prey to ruin. But now—now we stood at the edge of something ancient, something vast and unknowable, and we understood the truth.
The roles had shifted.
But we were not broken. Not yet.
I clenched my teeth, forcing my breath into something steadier, something controlled. The others looked to me now—kin who had fought at my side through countless cycles, whose names had been carried on the echoes of the Hunt. But in their eyes, I saw it. The cracks. The doubt. The realization that we had misjudged our prey—and that it had cost us dearly.
For the first time, I understood why men feared the Wild Hunt.
Because now, I felt that same fear.
It struck again.
A ripple of movement, too swift to track, too fluid to comprehend. Another of my kin wrenched into the void, their strangled cry stolen before it could fully form. The brittle snap of bone echoed in the silence. A heartbeat later, their spear clattered to the frost-laced earth, the final proof that they had ever stood beside me.
We turned sharply, weapons raised, eyes scanning every shifting shadow, every phantom flicker in the dark. But the beast had already vanished.
We were dwindling.
Another blur. Another taken.
A snarl ripped from my throat as I drove my spear forward, but I struck nothing. Only cold, empty air. The beast was toying with us. It had never needed to flee.
A voice, sharp with panic, rang out—
Then silence.
One by one, they vanished. The rhythm of the Hunt, once unshakable, crumbled beneath my feet. I felt the void widening, the tether between us unraveling thread by thread.
I turned just in time to see the last of my kin dragged into the black. His fingers clawed at the frozen ground, leaving deep furrows in the frost. His eyes met mine, and in them, I saw not just pain but acceptance—the grim certainty of the doomed.
Then, he was gone.
The glade was empty.
No sound but my breath. No movement but the slow fall of snow, settling over the remnants of the Hunt.
Alone.
A growl rumbled deep in my chest—not of fury, but defiance. The Great Prey had shattered our rhythm, turned our precision into desperate reaction, twisted the Hunt into something else. It had plucked my kin from the world like brittle leaves in the wind, each falling without a sound, without a struggle. But I would not allow it to take more.
The wind carried the scent of frozen fur and bloodless bone, a whisper of the thing that lurked just beyond sight. It was toying with us. A game. A lesson.
Enough.
I raised my spear, the signal given with a sharp flick of my wrist. I scattered through the glade, weaving between gnarled trees and corridors of shifting dark, forcing the beast to choose a path, to commit to movement.
I will finish it so that we would no longer be its still and waiting victims.
I would not yield.
Each step was measured, my every motion honed by centuries of pursuit. The Great Prey had unraveled the Hunt, but it had not broken me.
The glade stretched before me, a world of frost and twisted branches, each one casting jagged scars of black against the unnatural light above. The aurura cast over my head, shining brilliantly, as if it knew this was the end. They cast no warmth, only cold illumination, a mockery of the fire that once burned in my forces hearts.
The silence pressed in, thick as the frost that clung to the trees. I stood alone in the hollowed remains of the Hunt, the snow beneath me marked only by fading traces of my kin. My breath curled in the air, slow and steady now, my grip firm around my spear. The beast had taken everything but me.
The Hunt wasn't over. Not yet
A shift in the air—subtle, deliberate—still here.
Then—motion. A flicker at the edge of my sight.
I lunged, my spear carving through the space where it had been, where it should have been. But the beast did not move like flesh and sinew. It twisted with the ease of something that had never known hesitation.
A blur. A rush of air. I pivoted just in time to feel the wind of its strike pass inches from my skull.
Too close.
I dropped low, rolling across the frost-laced ground as the beast’s antlers carved through the space where my torso had been. Snow erupted around me as I came up, my stance solid, my spear leveled.
The predator had acknowledged me.
It was no longer a culling or a game, this was a fight.
The beast’s black eyes locked onto mine, deep as the abyss, cold as the wind that howled through the endless corridors of the Backrooms. It exhaled, slow and deliberate, mist curling from its maw. Then, it lunged.
The ground shuddered beneath me as the beast prowled forward, its breath curling in the frozen air, slow and steady—unrushed. It knew.
My fingers tightened around my spear, but the wood felt foreign, slick with frost and sweat. My lungs burned, my chest heaving too fast, too shallow. I willed them to slow, but my body refused to listen. My pulse hammered against my ribs, pounding at the inside of my skull like a war drum played out of rhythm.
A shadow flickered—too fast—
I twisted, barely in time, and the wind howled as claws carved through empty air where my throat had been. My feet stumbled over frost-laced roots, and I slammed my heel down to stop from falling.
It raked at me—I ducked. A shadow loomed—I turned into it. I pivoted. Felt the wind of its strike graze my skull. It loomed. I struck. The blade met flesh, then bone.
A crack. A hot rush of blood.
I staggered back. My chest heaved. My vision swam.
I stood in the empty glade, spear still raised, fingers still curled in a death grip, my body locked in place, waiting. The wind howled. The trees stood still.
Then, at my feet—
The beast’s head lay in the snow.
That was it?
After the centuries of whispered dread, after the fear carved into our bones like runes etched in stone—was it over that quick?
A single mistake. A single opening. And it was dead.
My knees threatened to buckle, but I forced myself upright. I had won. The Hunt had won. Hadn’t we?
The ghosts of my kin had been at my back. The generations before them. The hunts that had ended in silence, in death, in stories whispered through bloodlines that should have lived longer. They had not been fast enough. They had not been lucky enough.
I looked down at the severed head, expecting it to move, expecting the nightmare to stretch on just a little longer. But it did not. The only thing that remained were the pile of bodies left in its wake, and its corpse.
It was over. Truly over.
It had never been just me. It had been all of us. Once more, the indomitable spirit of the Hunt continues and will for ages to come.