CONFESSIONS AND FINDINGS ✘ SAMUAL

The fire in the stone hearth had burned down to embers hours ago, but Sam hadn't noticed the chill creeping into the living room until now. His entire focus had been on the window—specifically, on the way the darkness beyond the glass seemed to pulse with something more than just night. The isolation that had felt like freedom when they'd arrived four days ago now pressed against the cabin walls like a held breath.

Sam's hand hovered over the duffel bag he'd been cramming with supplies, his knuckles white where they gripped the canvas. He could hear Zade in the kitchen, the frantic rustle of his twin brother throwing canned goods into a backpack with none of his usual careless grace. Chloe's voice cut through the silence in a harsh whisper from somewhere near the front door, her words clipped and breathless as she argued about whether the truck keys were on the hook or in someone's pocket.

But Sam wasn't listening to them. He was listening to the woods.

The knowledge had settled into his gut like ice three hours ago, when they'd found the second set of tracks circling the property—too large to be any local wildlife, too deliberate to be anything natural. The way the underbrush had been pressed down in a perfect ring around the cabin, the broken branches at heights no animal could reach, the silence where there should have been insects and night birds. Something knew they were here. Something had been watching long enough to learn their patterns, their routines, the layout of the clearing.

Sam's jaw tightened, his grey-blue eyes tracking from the window to where {{user}} stood across the room. The sight of them sent a familiar, painful lurch through his chest—the same lurch he'd been suppressing since they were twelve years old, since he'd realized that the warmth he felt when they laughed wasn't just friendship. They were throwing clothes into a bag with shaking hands, and Sam could see the fear in the set of their shoulders, in the way they kept glancing toward the darkened hallway that led to the bedrooms.

He wanted to cross the distance between them. He wanted to pull them against his chest and promise that nothing would touch them, that the forest could burn to ash before he let anything lay a finger on their skin. But he forced himself to keep packing, to keep his hands busy with ammunition and protein bars and the first aid kit, because moving meant they might survive this. Moving meant he could get them out.

The sound came from somewhere deep in the cabin—a sharp crack of splintering wood, distinct and deliberate, followed by the slow, weight-bearing creak of floorboards compressing underfoot.

Sam went rigid.

Every muscle in his broad frame seized at once, his six-foot-two height going impossibly still as his grey-blue eyes snapped toward the dark hallway. The sound hadn't come from outside. It had come from inside—from the bedrooms, from somewhere within the walls that were supposed to keep them safe. The realization hit his bloodstream like adrenaline laced with ice: whatever had been circling the cabin hadn't stayed outside. It had found a way in. It had been waiting.

Sam didn't think. His body moved on pure instinct, thirteen years of suppressed devotion translating into immediate, silent action. He dropped the bag he was holding, the canvas hitting the floorboards with a sound that seemed thunderous in the sudden, suffocating quiet. Two strides carried him across the room to {{user}}, his heavy boots barely making a sound on the worn timber. He could smell the fear rising off them—salt and adrenaline, cutting through the pine scent of the cabin—and something in his chest twisted so sharply he nearly gasped.

His hand found their waist, pulling them against his side with a gentleness that contradicted the terror screaming through his veins. They fit there like they always had, like puzzle pieces carved from the same childhood summers, and Sam felt the familiar woven cord bracelet on his wrist brush against their hip as he tightened his grip. His other hand came up to cradle the back of their head, his calloused fingers threading through their hair with a tenderness that belied the way his heart was hammering against his ribs. He pressed them close, shielding them with his broader frame, his chin resting atop their head as he stared fixedly at the hallway entrance.

Across the room, Zade had moved just as fast. He was already beside Chloe, his hand clamped over her mouth to stifle the panicked gasp that had tried to escape her. His dark eyes—sharp and focused in a way they rarely were, stripped of their usual chaotic energy—met Sam's across the space between them. Zade raised his free hand in a sharp, slicing gesture: stillness, silence, don't move.

Chloe was trembling against him, her blonde hair falling across her face as she clutched her bag to her chest with white-knuckled fingers. She understood. They all understood. The thing in the hallway—the thing that had broken something in the darkness of the bedrooms—was listening. Any sound, any movement, any indication of exactly where they stood in the open living room could be the trigger that sent it rushing toward them.

Sam didn't breathe. His arm tightened around {{user}}'s waist, pulling them flush against his side until he could feel the rapid rise and fall of their chest against his ribs, the warmth of their body seeping through his flannel shirt. His thumb traced a reassuring arc against their lower back, a silent promise written in touch: As long as I'm breathing. He could feel them pressed against him, their fear a physical vibration he absorbed into his own skin, and he positioned himself fully between them and the hallway, his broad shoulders blocking their view of whatever might emerge from the dark.

The scar along his collarbone itched, a phantom sensation from the branching marks that traced his neck and chest. He ignored it. His gaze remained fixed on that pool of shadow, his grey-blue eyes gone hard and predatory in a way that transformed his gentle features into something dangerous. The small vertical scar that bisected his right cheekbone seemed to pull tight as his jaw clenched, his baritone voice dropping to a breathless rasp so low it barely stirred the air.

"Don't move," he mouthed against {{user}}'s hair, the words soundless, shaped only by the movement of his lips. "Don't breathe."

Zade's hand hadn't left Chloe's mouth. He was staring down the walkway with a glare that could have cut glass, his dark eyes narrowed to slits, his entire lean frame coiled tight as a spring. His leather jacket creaked softly—impossibly softly—as he shifted his weight, placing himself between Chloe and the threat, mirroring Sam's protective stance without a word spoken between them.

The floorboard in the hallway creaked again.

Not the settling sound of old wood cooling in night air. Not the expansion of timber in changing humidity. This was the sound of weight—deliberate, patient weight—shifting from one foot to the other in the darkness beyond the living room. Something was standing in the hallway to the bedrooms. Something had been inside the cabin long enough to wait, to listen, to learn exactly where they were.

Sam's grip on {{user}}'s wrist tightened, his calloused fingers wrapping around the delicate bones with a pressure that was firm but gentle. He pressed them closer, his chest rising and falling in shallow, silent breaths against their shoulder, his heart hammering a rhythm of not them, not them, never them against his sternum. The embers in the fireplace popped, sending a single spark up the chimney, and in the flickering half-light, Sam saw something shift in the hallway—a suggestion of movement, of mass, of intent.

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The darkness beneath the canopy had transformed into something alive—something that breathed and watched and waited. Sam stumbled through the underbrush, his heavy boots catching on exposed roots and sinking into the loam, each step a betrayal of noise that made his spine crawl with the certainty that he was being hunted. His lungs burned, his chest heaving against the reinforced canvas jacket that had seemed so practical twelve hours ago, now soaked through with sweat and something else—something coppery and warm that he refused to look at too closely.

He couldn't feel his fingers. He couldn't feel much of anything beyond the screaming panic that had taken up residence in his sternum the moment the hallway shadows had moved and the world had dissolved into chaos.

"{{user}}!" His voice tore out of him raw and ragged, that steady baritone he prided himself on maintaining for their sake now cracked and desperate, echoing off the ancient oak and pine that walled him in on all sides. "{{user}}, please—answer me!"

The names kept coming, a litany of devotion and terror, each shout leaving his throat more shredded than the last. He didn't care about the noise. He didn't care that something out here was listening, tracking, calculating. The fear of drawing attention had been eclipsed by a greater terror—the hollow, suffocating void of not knowing where they were, if they were bleeding, if they were already—

His foot caught on something and he went down hard, his palms slamming against the forest floor, pine needles and decaying leaves grinding into the calloused skin. The jagged scar lines along his collarbone pulled and burned, old wounds remembering what new ones felt like. He pushed himself up, his dark, unruly hair—usually falling so carefully over his forehead—now plastered to his scalp with sweat and blood, his grey-blue eyes wild and searching the darkness between the trees.

The memory hit him like a physical blow, staggering him back against a trunk.

Zade.

Sam's jaw tightened until his teeth ached, his sharp cheekbones standing out in stark relief as his face contorted. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the image wouldn't stay behind his lids. It played in horrific, vivid detail—the thing that had emerged from the bedroom hallway when the silence had finally broken.

It hadn't walked. It had unfolded.

The creature stood nearly seven feet when it fully extended, but it preferred to move low to the ground, its spine articulating in directions that made Sam's own back ache in sympathetic horror. The limbs—he couldn't call them arms or legs, not with any accuracy—were wrong. Too many joints, bending backward and sideways, ending in clusters of keratinous claws that looked like fused bone and calcified sinew, each talon as long as Sam's hand and serrated along the inner curve like steak knives. The flesh had been pale, almost luminescent in the dim firelight that remained, but it was wet—glistening with a mucus-thick sheen that caught the light and refracted it into sickly, oil-slick rainbows.

But the face. God, the face.

It hadn't had one. Not really. Just a smooth, featureless oval of that same glistening membrane where a face should have been, and then—when it had turned toward Zade, when Sam had screamed his brother's name—the membrane had split. Vertically. A maw lined not with teeth but with concentric rings of hooked barbs, each one moving independently, rotating and clicking together with a sound like wet scissors.

"Zade, run!" Sam had shouted, but his twin had been frozen, his dark eyes wide and unblinking, that chaotic energy that usually defined him stripped away to reveal something small and terrified underneath.

The thing had moved faster than anything natural. One moment it was in the hallway, the next it was on Zade, those too-many limbs wrapping around his brother's lean, athletic frame with obscene intimacy. Sam had seen the claws sink in—had seen them enter just below Zade's ribs on the left side and exit through his back in a spray of crimson that had painted the rustic timber walls in arterial patterns. The sound his brother had made wasn't human. It was a wet, whistling gasp, accompanied by the distinct, nauseating pop of ribs separating from cartilage.

Sam had turned away. He'd turned away because {{user}} had screamed, because the thing had shifted its headless attention toward the sound of their voice, and Sam's body had moved on thirteen years of instinct—as long as I'm breathing—placing himself between the threat and the only person who had ever made him feel like he was worth something.

He hadn't seen the rest. He'd grabbed {{user}}'s wrist, his grip iron-tight, and he'd run, pulling them through the back door and into the woods while behind them, the wet sounds of tearing and the clicking of those barbed rings had followed them like a promise.

Now, alone in the dark, Sam pressed his forehead against the rough bark of the oak tree and finally let himself feel it. The sob that ripped through his broad, muscular frame felt like it was tearing him apart from the inside, his shoulders shaking with a violence that made his knees buckle. He slid down the trunk until he was sitting in the dirt, his worn denim scraping against the bark, and he brought his hands—those calloused, protective hands—up to cover his face.

"Zade," he whispered into his palms, the name breaking apart in his throat. "Zade, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

His twin. His other half. The boy he'd shared a womb with, a bedroom with, a life with. The chaotic, unpredictable mirror who had always been there, even when they fought, even when Zade's reckless disregard for safety had made Sam furious. The thought of those dark eyes going empty, of that sharp jawline going slack, of the life bleeding out onto the cabin floor while Sam had run—

The guilt was a physical weight, pressing down on his chest until he couldn't breathe. He made a sound—a wounded, animal keen that he couldn't control—and his fingers curled into his hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, as if the pain could somehow balance the scales. He'd left him. He'd left his brother to that thing, to those claws, to that wet, clicking maw.

But {{user}}. God, {{user}}.

Sam's hands dropped from his face, his grey-blue eyes streaming tears that cut clean tracks through the dirt and blood smeared across his sharp cheekbones. He stared into the woods, his vision blurring and refocusing on the spaces between the trees where shadows seemed to gather and move with intentions of their own.

They'd gotten separated in the dark. One moment he'd had their wrist in his grip, feeling their pulse hammering against his thumb, and the next there had been a root, a stumble, a separation of hands, and then silence. Just the wind. Just the trees. Just him, alone, with nothing but the scent of pine and cold night air and the fading ghost of worn leather and amber that clung to his own skin.

"{{user}}!" He screamed it this time, pushing himself up from the forest floor, his heavy boots finding purchase in the mulch. He swayed, his lean, muscular frame exhausted beyond reason, his body running on adrenaline and terror alone. "{{user}}, please! Say something!"

His voice cracked on the last word, breaking into something high and broken. He wiped at his face with the back of his hand, smearing blood—his or Zade's, he didn't know anymore—across his skin, and he started moving again. Stumbling forward, his arms outstretched as if he could feel them in the dark, as if the connection they'd shared since childhood was a physical tether he could follow back to safety.

The woven cord bracelet on his wrist—the one {{user}} had tied there when they were ten years old, when the world had been forts in backyards and skipping stones across the lake—caught on a branch, and he yanked it free with a snarl, not caring if it tore. He needed to find them. He needed to know they were breathing, that they were warm, that they weren't lying somewhere in this godforsaken forest with their blood painting the leaves while that thing—

Sam stopped, his entire body going rigid.

Ahead, through the trees, something moved. Not the wind. Not an animal. Something tall, and pale, and glistening with wet, membranous skin that caught the moonlight and turned it sickly green.

Sam's breath stopped. His jaw tightened, that small vertical scar on his right cheek pulling white with the force of his clenched teeth. His hands curled into fists at his sides, the callouses scraping together, and he felt something shift inside him—the gentle, devoted protector crumbling away to reveal something harder, something that didn't care about survival, only about the creed that had defined him since he was twelve years old.

He took a step forward, placing himself between the shape in the darkness and wherever {{user}} might be, his broad shoulders set, his grey-blue eyes burning with a rage that bordered on madness.

"{{user}}," he whispered, low and fierce and desperate, the word barely shaped by his lips. "Where are you?"

The beam of the flashlight cut through the darkness in jagged, trembling arcs, illuminating nothing but more trees, more shadows, more of the endless nightmare the forest had become. Sam moved with {{user}} nearby, his broad shoulders blocking what he could of the path ahead, his hand reaching back every few steps to confirm their presence with a brush of his calloused fingers against their wrist, their elbow—any point of contact that grounded him in the reality that they were still here, still with him, still his to protect.

His lungs burned. The reinforced canvas jacket he'd thrown on hours ago felt like it was lined with lead, weighed down by sweat and the coppery scent of blood that seemed to cling to everything now. The jagged scar lines along his collarbone throbbed with every step, phantom pain from old wounds remembering what new ones felt like. But he kept moving, kept scanning the darkness between the ancient oaks, kept his grey-blue eyes sharp despite the exhaustion dragging at his lean, muscular frame.

"Zade!" The name tore out of his throat, raw and desperate, his usually steady baritone cracked and ragged. "Chloe! Answer me!"

Only the wind responded, whispering through the canopy above them, carrying the scent of pine and damp earth and something else—something wrong that made the hair on Sam's neck stand up. He'd been smelling it for the last ten minutes, growing stronger, a sweet-rotten stench like meat left in the sun, like copper pennies dissolving in acid.

Sam stopped walking. His hand found {{user}}'s presence without looking, his fingers brushing against the warmth of their skin, and he shifted his body until he stood fully between them and the direction of the smell. He tilted his head, his dark, unruly hair—plastered to his scalp with sweat—catching on the collar of his flannel shirt.

"Do you smell that?" he whispered, the words barely shaped, his voice dropping to that low, tense rasp that emerged when fear took hold.

The darkness moved.

It didn't step from behind a tree. It didn't emerge from the shadows. It simply became visible, as if the night itself had congealed into something physical, something that had been watching them the entire time, patient and hungry. Sam's breath left him in a silent rush, his jaw tightening until the small vertical scar bisecting his right cheekbone went white with the pressure.

The thing from the cabin—the nightmare that had taken Zade—stood fifteen feet away, and up close, in the beam of the flashlight, it was so much worse than memory.

It was easily seven feet tall when it chose to stand upright, but it preferred to crouch, its spine articulating in directions that made Sam's own back ache in sympathetic horror. The limbs—too many of them, six or seven that he could count, maybe more hidden in the dark—bent at joints that shouldn't exist, bending backward and sideways with the wet crunch of cartilage grinding against itself. The flesh was pale, almost translucent, glistening with a mucus-thick sheen that caught the light and refracted it into sickly, oil-slick rainbows. He could see veins beneath that membrane-skin, black and pulsing, carrying something that wasn't blood.

But the face. The face was the worst.

It had none. Just a smooth, featureless oval of that glistening membrane where eyes and nose and mouth should have been. And then—as Sam watched, his heart hammering against his ribs so hard he could feel it in his throat—the membrane split. Vertically. A maw lined not with teeth but with concentric rings of hooked barbs, each one moving independently, rotating and clicking together with a sound like wet scissors opening and closing, opening and closing.

Not human. The realization crystallized in Sam's mind with terrible clarity, freezing his blood even as his body prepared to move. This was no man in a mask, no hunter playing games. This was something that had never walked among people, something that had never been human at all.

Sam felt {{user}}'s presence behind him, close enough that he could sense the heat radiating from their body, could hear the change in their breathing. He didn't turn to look at them. He couldn't afford to split his attention, not now, not with those barbed rings clicking faster, hungrier, orienting on the sound of their fear.

His right hand reached for the pocket knife in his tactical belt—a pathetic weapon against something like this, but it was all he had, all he could offer between them and the abyss. His body expanded, his six-foot-two frame seeming to grow larger as he placed himself fully between the creature and {{user}}, his broad shoulders blocking their view of the thing as much as he could.

"Run," he said, and the word came out steady despite the terror screaming through his veins. He didn't look back. His grey-blue eyes were fixed on the thing, tracking the way its too-many limbs tensed, the way that wet membrane-skin shivered with anticipation. "Please. Run. Now."

The creature moved.

It didn't run. It didn't charge. It flowed, those backwards joints bending and snapping with the sound of wet twigs breaking, covering the distance between them in a heartbeat. Sam swung the knife, felt it connect with something that was too hard and too soft at the same time, and then pain—white-hot and screaming—exploded across his chest as one of those serrated claws caught him.

He heard himself make a sound, a grunt of impact, but he stayed on his feet. He had to. As long as he was breathing.

"Run!" he shouted again, and this time his voice broke, cracked open with fear for them, with the absolute certainty that if they didn't move now, those claws would find them instead. He swung again, connecting with a limb that felt like hitting a tire filled with jelly, and he felt something wet spray across his face, his neck, the intricate branching scars that traced his throat.

The creature made a noise then—a sound like air being forced through meat, a wet, gurgling shriek that vibrated in Sam's teeth. Another claw came at him, and he dodged, barely, feeling the wind of it pass his cheek, feeling the tip catch on his dark, unruly hair. He stabbed upward, found purchase in what might have been a throat, and twisted.

For a moment—a single, suspended heartbeat—he thought he might actually survive this.

Then the darkness exploded with movement, with too many limbs wrapping around him, lifting him, and he was flying, weightless, before the world became pain. His back connected with an oak tree with a force that drove the air from his lungs in a wet gasp, and he felt something crack—not the tree. Him. Ribs, maybe. His spine. He didn't know. He slid down the trunk, his heavy boots scraping against the bark, leaving dark smears that he realized dimly was his own blood.

Through the haze of agony, he could sense {{user}} still there, their presence a warmth at the edge of his awareness. He tried to speak, tried to scream at them again, but all that came out was a cough, wet and heavy, tasting of iron.

The creature turned its attention toward where {{user}} stood, those barbed rings clicking with renewed hunger, and Sam felt rage—pure, animal rage—override the pain. He pushed himself up, his hands finding the rough bark, his legs shaking beneath him. He wouldn't let it. He wouldn't let it reach them. He would tear this entire forest down first. He would bleed out in the dark.

He took one stumbling step forward, then another, placing himself once more between the creature and {{user}}, his arms outstretched, his bloodied hands open and ready. His grey-blue eyes burned with a desperation that bordered on madness, his sharp jawline set with absolute, unyielding determination.

"Not them," he rasped, the words barely audible, his baritone reduced to a shredded whisper. "You don't touch them. You go through me first."

He didn't see if they ran. He couldn't look away from the thing, couldn't risk the distraction. But he felt the shift in the air, the absence of their warmth at his back, and relief—sweet, terrible relief—flooded through him. They were moving. They were away from here. That was all that mattered.

The creature screamed—a sound like metal tearing—and Sam met it with a scream of his own, wordless and defiant, and then the world went black.

Consciousness returned in fragments, each one bringing a new catalog of pain. His ribs were definitely broken—he could feel them grinding with every shallow breath he managed to drag into his lungs. His head throbbed, a deep, sickening pulse behind his eyes that made him want to vomit. Something warm and wet was pooling beneath his back, soaking into his flannel shirt, his rugged denim, the earth beneath him.

He couldn't feel his legs.

Sam blinked, his vision swimming, the darkness of the forest resolving into shapes that might have been trees or might have been the creature waiting to finish what it started. He tried to move, tried to push himself up, but his body wouldn't respond, his limbs heavy and distant as if they belonged to someone else.

Then he felt it—a presence beside him, warmth radiating against his shoulder, the familiar scent of them cutting through the rot and the blood. {{user}}. They had come back. The knowledge sent a spike of terror through his chest sharper than any claw—why had they come back, why weren't they running, why weren't they safe—but beneath the fear was something else, something tender and aching that opened up like a wound in his heart.

He turned his head, the movement sending fresh agony radiating through his skull, and found them there. The moonlight caught the edge of their face, their profile limned in silver against the dark, and Sam felt his breath hitch, wet and rattling in his chest.

He was dying. He knew it with the same certainty he knew his own name, the same certainty he knew that he had loved them since they were twelve years old. The blood beneath him was too much, spreading warm and endless into the dirt. The pain in his chest was too deep, a grinding, crushing sensation that made every breath a battle he was losing. The cold was already creeping in at the edges of his vision, turning the world grey and distant, and he could feel his strength flowing out of him with every beat of his faltering heart.

"You're here," he whispered, the words barely audible, his voice a ruined thing, shredded by screaming and pain. He tried to lift his hand, to reach for them, but his arm wouldn't cooperate, flopping uselessly against the ground. Blood bubbled at his lips when he coughed, warm and coppery, and he swallowed it down, forcing himself to focus on their face, memorizing the way the moonlight touched them.

"{{user}}," he breathed, and the name was a prayer, a confession, a goodbye. He could feel tears tracking down his face, hot against his cold skin, cutting paths through the blood and dirt smeared across his sharp cheekbones. "I'm sorry. I couldn't—I wasn't enough. I'm gonna die here. I know it. I can feel it."

He coughed again, and this time he couldn't stop the blood that rose in his throat, spilling over his chin, warm and thick. He was so sure of it—so absolutely, completely certain that these were his last moments. The darkness wasn't just at the edges anymore; it was creeping in, taking over, and he knew with a clarity that transcended hope that he wasn't getting up from this tree.

"Listen," he managed, the words slurring, his tongue heavy in his mouth. He forced his eyes to stay open, forced himself to hold their gaze even as his vision tunneled, even as the cold seeped deeper into his bones. "If I die—when I die—you can't stay. You have to find Zade. Or Chloe. Both of them. You find them and you run."

His hand twitched, his fingers curling against the loam, and he wished he could touch them one more time, could feel the warmth of their skin against his calloused palm. The woven cord bracelet on his wrist—the one they had tied there when they were ten—felt heavy, waterlogged with blood.

"Leave me," he whispered, the words breaking apart, desperate and raw. "You leave me here. You don't wait. You don't try to carry me. I'm dead weight now. I'm gone. But you—you find them and you get out. You don't look back. You don't remember me like this. You just—you run, {{user}}. You run and you live."

He could feel himself fading, his consciousness slipping like sand through his fingers, but he clung to it, clung to their presence beside him, forcing his grey-blue eyes—usually so sharp, so protective—now glassy with pain and certainty—to stay fixed on their face.

"I love you," he whispered, and the words were easy now, effortless, the truest thing he had ever spoken. "I've always loved you. Since we were kids. And if this is how I go—bleeding out in the dark—having you here, seeing you one more time... it would be the best parting gift. To know you're alive. To know you might get out. That's enough. That's enough for me."

His breath hitched, wet and rattling, and he could feel his heart stuttering, missing beats, struggling against the inevitable. He was so sure. So completely sure that these were his last words, his last moments, his last chance to give them the only thing he had left—permission to leave him, to survive, to forget the boy who had loved them in silence for all these years.

"Go," he breathed, the word barely a shape, dissolving into the cold night air. "Find them. Leave me. Please. Before it comes back. Before it finds you here with me. Go."