Chapter 1

Years ago, when I first left my parents' house to go to college, I didn’t have enough money to rent a place of my own. We are from Eastern Europe, and my family has never been economically stable. Luckily, a close friend of mine who lived near the university campus offered to let me crash at his place. It seemed like the perfect solution. However, right next to his house, there was a massive, pitch-black, suffocating forest. Almost immediately after I moved my things in, my friend gave me a strict, unsettling warning: *“Never go into those woods. It’s incredibly dangerous, and people go missing in there all the time.”*

For the first few months, everything was completely normal. But then, the anomalies started.

One night, I woke up to the sound of something heavy walking across the roof of the bedroom I shared with my friend. Curious, and assuming it was just a stray cat, I crept over to the window and leaned out to catch a glimpse. The moment I stood there, my mind changed. The footsteps weren't light; they were large, rhythmic, and incredibly heavy. When I looked up toward the roof, there was no cat. Instead, perching on the edge, was a massive black bird—a species I had never seen in my life.

The creature slowly tilted its head to the side. Its eyes glowed an intense, visceral red, staring down at me with a sickening hunger, as if it wanted to consume me alive. Terrified, I slammed the window shut, backing into the room on the verge of tears. When my friend walked in a moment later to ask why I hadn't come down for dinner, I was too shaken to speak. I kept the secret to myself and forced myself to eat.

A few days later, I arrived home from the university and went straight to the room to change my clothes. When I glanced at the glass, my blood ran cold. The same black bird was sitting on the windowsill. This time, it didn't just want to watch; it wanted to get in. I tried to hiss and scare it away, but it didn't flinch. Instead, it began violently slamming its beak against the glass. It struck the window harder and harder until, with a sharp crack, it punctured a hole right through the pane.

Right at that second, my friend burst into the room. The bird shifted its focus instantly, launching itself directly at him in a frenzy of feathers and claws. My friend fought back desperately, grabbing what he could, and managed to strike the creature with a fatal blow.

But the bird didn't just die. Before its final breath, it spoke. It wasn't the mere fact that an animal was talking that paralyzed me with horror—it was the deep, raspy malice of the words it chose:

*"We will come for you and your family… whether it is here, or in hell."*

The bird went limp. My friend immediately turned on me, his face twisted in anger. He interrogated me, demanding to know if I had spoken to the bird before and what it had told me. I stammered, terrified, telling him it was only the second time I’d seen it and that it had never spoken to me before. Furious, he slammed the door and left me alone.

After that moment, my memory goes completely black.

I don’t remember falling asleep. I don't remember the night passing. The very next thing I knew, I woke up in the freezing dampness of the deep forest. I was tightly bound with thick ropes, paralyzed, lying on a bed of dead leaves. When I panicked and looked around, the true horror set in. I was surrounded by human corpses, all in advanced stages of decomposition.

Adrenaline took over. I thrashed and fought against the bindings until the ropes finally slipped, tearing my skin in the process. The moment I was free, I bolted. As I sprinted blindly through the thick brush, a heavy, snapping sound echoed behind me. Something was hunting me.

I dared to look over my shoulder, and through the shadows of the trees, I saw it. It was a massive, towering black entity chasing me down. It had a hairless, human-like face, but its skin was a rotting, sickly brown, infested with visible worms crawling beneath the surface. Its limbs were impossibly long and emaciated. But the worst part was its smile—a grin that no human anatomy could ever achieve. It was a massive, jagged maw of uneven teeth that stretched from ear to ear, splitting its face all the way down past the jawline.

The beast was massive but clumsy, unable to match my pure, terrified speed. I ran until my lungs burned, finally bursting out of the tree line. The monster stopped at the edge of the forest, staring at me from the shadows, no longer smiling, just drooling heavily as it watched me escape.

Disoriented, I walked for what felt like hours until I found a familiar road and made my way back to my friend's house. The front door was locked. I rang the bell repeatedly, but no one answered. Panicked, I ran to the neighbors' house. The moment they opened the door and saw me standing there, they looked like they had seen a ghost. One of them actually screamed.

They told me that two days ago, my friend had informed the entire neighborhood that I had tragically died. In fact, the neighbors had just attended my funeral earlier that week.

In that horrific second, the puzzle pieces fell into place. I didn't say a word. I turned around, ran as fast as my legs could carry me, and took the first train back to my parents' house. I have never gone back, and to this day, I have never told a single soul what my friend—or that forest—tried to do to me.