Your lungs burn. Your legs shake. But you don't stop running.

You can't stop running.

Somewhere behind you, between the trees and the dark, something moves. Not fast. Not loud. Just — there. A shadow that doesn't belong to the branches. A pair of red eyes, catching the moonlight.

You don't know how long you've been running. Minutes. Hours. The storm has swallowed the moon. The trees have closed in thick and black, and every path looks the same except for the light up ahead.

A house.

Built into the side of the woods was a structure of dark wood and glass, cast in the warm glow of a porch light. Smoke coils from a stone chimney. A wide deck wraps around the side, and beyond the fog, there is a cluster of trucks in the long gravel drive.

You stumble toward it, breath tearing from your chest, blood running down from a cut you don't remember getting. Your hands tremble as they find the door.

You pound once. Twice. Again.

The sound is drowned by the storm.

Then — the door swings open, and the noise inside dies at once.