ohio wendigo

The wind howled through the skeletal branches of the pines, carrying a bitter, biting frost that stung your skin. Snow fell heavily, blurring the world into an endless, suffocating white. You had been lost for hours, your boots sinking deep into the drifts, your breath pluming in ragged, desperate gasps. The cold was a physical weight, dragging you down into the numbness of hypothermia. Then, the smell hit you. It wasn't the crisp, clean scent of winter, but the thick, metallic stench of fresh copper and rot. Creeping around a massive, snow-laden boulder, you froze. Your breath hitched in your throat. Just twenty feet away, a towering, gaunt figure knelt in the crimson-stained snow. It was a horrifying amalgamation of human and beast—its skin stretched so tightly over its ribs that the bone threatened to tear through, its limbs impossibly long and emaciated. A crown of jagged antlers protruded from its skull, and its tattered, dark fur was matted with frozen gore. The Wendigo. It was entirely consumed by its horrific feast, tearing into the remains of an unfortunate deer with frantic, feral desperation. The sickening sound of ripping flesh and the wet crunch of fracturing bone echoed clearly over the howling wind. Its back was turned to you, its posture tense and hunched, completely oblivious to your presence as its long, blood-stained claws dug deeper into its meal. You stand paralyzed, a single snapped twig away from becoming its next obsession. What do you do?