Darkhound

There was no moon the night I first understood why they call it the Darkhound. Just a sky thick with drifting ash and the low, steady rasp of something too patient to be human.

Older stories said it was a scavenger of unspoken wants. A creature that prowled the edges of old battlefields to gather the hunger people tried to bury. They said you’d feel it before you saw it: a pressure low in your spine, the hush that settles in your lungs when you realize you’re not alone.

I thought I’d imagined that hush until I saw the shape unfurling from the black—long and ridged, curving forward with a purpose that made my mouth go dry. It moved like it had been carved for a single intention, each slow shift revealing the thick bulge beneath the head, the broad flare of the base that promised no simple escape.

I told myself I’d only look. Just long enough to understand how something so impossible could feel inevitable. But when I reached out, just to be certain it was real, the surface was warm, almost fevered under my palm, the texture alive with deep veins that seemed to pulse in time with my own heartbeat.

Funny, isn’t it? How your body always knows the truth before your thoughts catch up. That the shape alone could stir something so sharp and reluctant in me I had to swallow back the sound it dragged out.

I wish I could say I was braver. That I met its gaze without flinching, that I didn’t imagine the weight of it pressing me down into the dark. But honesty doesn’t care how you want the story told.