Story 1153: The Lantern Stag

There were stories told by hunters and drunkards about a creature that roamed the deepest thickets of the Moonwood, where no path dared remain and no bird sang after dusk.

They called it The Lantern Stag.

A beast made of bone and bark, its towering antlers tangled with glowing lanterns—some metal, some bone, some fashioned from the skulls of children. Its hooves never touched the earth. It moved in silence, its presence heralded only by the flickering lights swaying in the dark like fireflies drifting on a breeze from nowhere.

The stag did not eat flesh. It did not chase or maul or roar.

It remembered.

And when it looked into you with its burning eyes—eyes like twin hearths in the cold of death—it judged the weight of your sins.

Few ever saw it. Fewer survived.

And yet, Daren Holt, a poacher with blood on his boots and trophies in his cellar, set out to find it.