Prologue for January 2017

The woods were unnaturally quiet as all sound seemed swallowed up by the night. All was silent save for the slow drip drip of blood onto the snow. The walls of the longhut were smashed to kindling, the insides strewn about like children's blocks. There was nothing left intact within. Furniture shattered, bedding in ruin and an axe buried uselessly into the wall. Bright splashes of blood a stark relief to the wood.

There had been a family here once. They had lived in this longhut, and so had they died in it. Their bodies discarded carelessly, every scrap of flesh stripped clean by teeth like knives. The father, mother, even the children were dead; no devoured. Naught left but skin, teeth, and bones cracked open, now empty of marrow.

Trees around the longhut lay in splinters, a path of ruin leading southward.
Unnatural silence lay thick and heavy upon the land, broken only once by the harsh, mocking laugh of a crow.

The ancient one had awoken...