Story 1025: Crows Beneath the Skin

They found her wandering the outskirts of Ebonreach, a twisted patch of forgotten land where crops grew backwards and bones rose instead of weeds. A girl, maybe twelve, barefoot and whispering to herself, her dress torn and eyes like scorched glass.

When the townsfolk asked her name, she only said:

“I am where the crows sleep now.”

They took her in, but they shouldn’t have.

The girl—who they called Marla—never ate. Never blinked. At night, she stood by the windowsill, arms twitching, skin rippling like something was trapped beneath it. On the third day, the doctor tried to examine her.

He opened her shirt and recoiled.

Her chest was shifting. Feathers. Black and wet. Pressing from the inside.

They burned his clinic after he screamed himself to death.

As panic spread, Marla wandered the woods again. Wherever she walked, the sky darkened, and the crows came—not flying, but crawling, dragging themselves from beneath the dirt, eyes full of grave-soil and hate.