There used to be once a quiet village nestled deep in the woods of northern Europe, far from highways and some distance from assist — a vicinity called Hollowridge. The people there were kind, humble, and wary of strangers. They spoke in whispers about “the curse”, however no one ever said it out loud.
Then got here the Blood Moon.
And with it… the horror.
It started out with the cattle — discovered torn open, their bodies twisted in methods no beast may want to manage. Then dogs vanished. Then silence fell throughout the woods like a heavy blanket. The birds stopped singing. The wind grew cold, even although it was mid-summer.
And on the seventh night, a scream split the air.
They found Old Man Gerik putting from a tree — not by a rope, but via his own hair, wrapped tightly round a branch, eyes huge open, mouth nonetheless gasping. On his chest, scorched into his skin, was once a extraordinary symbol no one recognized.
Panic took the village. Doors had been bolted. Candles burned via the night. Children wept in corners.
But now not Matt.
He had returned to Hollowridge after years away — a soldier turned wanderer. He had left after the war, searching for peace, solely to locate it shattered in his childhood home.
Matt didn’t believe in curses. But he believed in evil — and this was no animal.
He studied the symbol. It wasn’t simply a mark — it was a summoning rune, something ancient and vile. He determined it carved behind the church altar, and in the well, and on the interior of his very own front door.
Someone in the village had invited something in.
That night, any other villager disappeared — a younger lady named Elsie. All they discovered was her doll, soaked in black blood.
Matt had viewed enough.
Armed with nothing but a lantern, a looking knife, and an old family journal that spoke of “forest spirits that feed on fear,” he went into the woods alone.
He accompanied the screams.
Deep underneath the old trees, in a clearing choked with fog, he determined it — a creature, tall and thin, draped in rags that moved like shadow. Its face used to be hollow, empty, barring for a large mouth full of enamel that regarded to go on forever. In its hand, it held Elsie — barely breathing.
Matt didn’t run.
He stepped forward, whispering the historic phrases he’d determined in the journal — a banishment rite, written in blood. The creature hissed, shrieked, its voice a refrain of suffering souls.
It lunged.
Matt grabbed a burning branch and drove it thru the creature’s chest, screaming the remaining word of the chant.
There was a flash — then darkness.
When the villagers determined him, he was once mendacity in the ashes of the creature’s remains, barely alive, but smiling. Elsie was safe.
The symbols vanished. The wooded area grew quiet. The curse used to be broken.
Matt by no means spoke of what he saw that night.
But from then on, every Blood Moon, the villagers light a fireplace in the core of Hollowridge — no longer out of fear…
…but to honor the man who confronted the horror and burned it away.
Matt — the soldier who delivered peace to a village haunted by way of shadows.