Story 1101: The Banshee’s Song (Series HS: ZE12)

Rain whispered across the crumbling stones of Elder Hollow, falling like ash over the ancient cemetery that lay hidden beneath the forest’s sigh. Evelyn Blackmoor’s boots sank slightly into the muddy earth as she stepped between leaning headstones etched with names no living soul remembered. Her lantern flickered in protest against the wind, its light barely piercing the fog that curled like pale fingers through the trees.

The villagers had spoken of screams—unearthly, echoing, and mournful—heard at dusk near the grave of Liora Nyx, a woman buried a century ago after vanishing into the woods. They whispered that her death had never truly settled, that the soil had not accepted her. Evelyn, a detective with a reputation for delving into unspeakable affairs, had come not for answers, but for silence. She had heard the scream herself.

It was not the cry of something dying. It was the call of something waiting.