Story 1016: Skinwalker’s Debt

The wind carried no scent. No howl. No life.

The survivors stumbled into the Red Wastes, a sunless expanse where the sand bled rust and the stars blinked like watching eyes. Somewhere between dusk and nightmare, they arrived at a burial field dotted with half-buried effigies—horned beasts, clawed men, feathered skulls.

Obsidian Crow circled above, wings casting shadows shaped like antlers.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Gideon Moth muttered, clutching his shovel like a crucifix. “They don’t forget debts. Especially not him.”

A fire sparked on the horizon, alone in the dark. Around it danced a figure in bones and warpaint, his voice weaving a chant in a tongue older than blood.

The Skinwalker.

Once a guardian spirit, now a vengeful entity warped by famine, war, and betrayal. Legend says he made a pact with the first dying god: immortality in exchange for consuming the names of those who broke sacred oaths.

And someone in the group had broken one.

The firelight twisted.