Pavement Mare

Welcome to another edition of Scandinavian Folklore Beasts. In this entry, we'll delve into a tale about a disillusioned young courier, who must unravel the truth behind his sister’s disappearance during a viral summoning ritual, racing to outwit a shape-shifting water spirit, known as the Bäckahästen, born from Stockholm’s storm-soaked streets before the city—and his sister—are consumed by a myth gone digital.

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Across Stockholm’s empty backstreets, rain fell in steady sheets, smearing neon reflections into watery blurs. Paused between breaths, between lives, the city held its silence. Leo Eklund hunched deeper into his hoodie as he stepped off his bike and approached the abandoned intersection. Streetlights flickered above cracked asphalt. Water pooled in the center, a mirror with no reflection.

He stopped at the puddle. Circular. Too perfect. Too still.

“This is stupid,” he muttered, glancing over his shoulder. No one. Just the wet hush of Södermalm sleeping through another storm.

Kneeling, he wiped rain from his cracked phone screen and pulled up Nova’s last video—fuzzy, vertical, already stitched a dozen times by teens reenacting the same TikTok dare. Her voice came through faint and brittle beneath the hiss of rainfall: “White Horse, come and see, one from the water, two for me…”

Leo scoffed. “God, Nova…” He paused the video, thumb hovering.

The puddle rippled.

Not from the rain. Though the drops kept falling, they veered off-center, drawn to something beneath the surface. Around him, the air grew thick, sound collapsing inward. Behind him, the street dimmed—quiet as a theater losing its house lights.

Leo blinked, heart punching once, hard. He looked again.

A pale shape emerged through the black water. Not bursting—rising, breath forming from vapor. First the muzzle, elongated and glistening. Then eyes—black, depthless, too large. The horse surfaced in silence, streams of water sliding off its mane in slow, unnatural lines.

Leo didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe.

He should’ve run. Backed away, called someone, done something. Instead, he whispered to no one, “…what the hell is this?”

The horse, half-formed in the puddle, dragged itself free from the dark water, carved from the storm. Rain poured through its mane but never hit the ground. Droplets clung to it, shimmering in slow motion before sliding off and vanishing into steam.

Leo’s breath caught in his chest. The creature was beautiful in a way that felt wrong—elegant and monstrous, a statue bleeding. Its flanks shimmered with reflections that didn’t match the street. Its hooves stirred no splash, no sound.

Its eyes locked onto his. Not the way animals look—curious or cautious. This was direct. Intentional. Known.

Leo’s fingers twitched. “You’re not… real,” he said, voice cracking, the words dissolving into the rain.

He didn’t run.

The rational part of him—the part that had survived family fights, lockdowns, and algorithm-fed lies—told him to move, to back away, to do something. But something older kept him rooted. Something beneath instinct.

The horse blinked. Water slid down its lashes like oil.

Leo’s lips parted. He didn’t know why. Speaking felt dangerous, as if the silence was a thread stretched too tight. As if a single word would snap it.

Then it leaned in—barely a tilt of the head—but enough. Enough to feel it.

Recognition. Not curiosity. Not hunger. It knew him.

Leo’s stomach went cold. He didn’t know how, but the certainty was sharp—like a name whispered in a voice that wasn’t his own.

He swallowed. “You saw her.” The horse moved.

One step—measured, deliberate. Its hoof touched the water’s surface, and ripples rolled out wide, distorting the puddle’s edge, warping reflections of streetlights and rooftops into stretched, liquid shapes. Another step, and the ripples pushed farther than they should, brushing against Leo’s soaked sneakers as if the surface tension had decided to reach out.

He flinched. Instinct snapped in. Two steps back—fast, clumsy. “Okay,” he breathed. “Nope. Nope, no—”

But the horse didn’t follow. It loomed there, tall and impossibly quiet, as if it had all the time in the world. Rain ran down its shoulders, ink through paper. Black, glinting eyes stayed fixed on his. Waiting.

Not hunting. Not chasing.

Inviting.

Leo’s lungs burned. His pulse thudded behind his teeth. The streetlight above flickered, casting the horse in stuttering silhouettes. Each blink of darkness made it seem closer.

He looked down. The puddle hadn’t grown, but it felt wider. Deeper. The ground beneath him no longer felt like pavement.

Leo swallowed. Pulled his hood back with a wet slap. Rain hit his scalp—cold, clean. He ran a hand over his face, smearing water and sweat, and whispered the name as if saying it too loud might tear it apart.

“Nova.”

The horse didn’t flinch. The puddle shimmered.

Leo stepped forward. Not far—half a pace. But enough to feel the change. The shift. As if the world had exhaled. Or maybe inhaled him.

He closed his eyes for a breath. Opened them again. “Okay,” he said, to no one, to everything. “You want me in? Fine.”

He tightened his fists, jaw locked. If the myth had made a place for her—had taken her—then he’d go after it. He’d follow the story where it didn’t want to be followed.

Because if he didn’t, she was already gone. And he wasn’t leaving her behind.

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Exciting news! Cumberland Chronicles has officially launched on Books2Read! If you're a fan of supernatural, horror, or weird stories, I’d love for you to give it a read. If it’s not quite your style, a quick share would go a long way in helping me connect with the right audience. Thank you for the support!

Signal Over Stillwater

Welcome to another edition of Scandinavian Folklore Beasts.  In this entry, we'll delve into a tale about a reclusive teenage coder, desperate to understand the eerie lights, the Paasselän Pirut, over a haunted Finnish lake, who creates an augmented reality app that instead reveals ghostly secrets tied to her family's buried past—forcing her to confront vengeful spirits before the haunting consumes her mind and legacy.

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Aino Väisänen stood at the edge of Lake Paasselkä, the cold air of twilight biting at her skin, the distant trees dark silhouettes against the deepening sky. With fingers poised above the screen, she held her phone steady while the AR app loaded. Around her, the faint hum of the lake’s gentle waves offered the only sound—until the app stirred to life.

As the map flickered to life, a faint blue light washed over her face. In swift succession, the app traced the water’s surface with glowing lines, layering a virtual grid atop the quiet stillness of reality. Aino felt the familiar thrill of excitement whenever tech clicked into place. It’s working, she thought, a tight smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

Across the lake, a shimmer rippled, making Aino’s heart skip a beat. Two small orbs appeared, floating above the surface, glowing with an unnatural light. Though she blinked and rubbed her eyes, the figures remained. Suspended in perfect stillness, one glowed a soft blue, the other pulsed with an eerie red.

“Okay, that’s… definitely not part of the app,” Aino muttered, her voice caught between fascination and growing unease. With trembling fingers, she leaned closer and adjusted the settings on her phone, attempting to recalibrate the AR overlay. The orbs remained.

Her breath caught. This isn’t possible. Designed to map the environment, the app wasn’t meant to manifest objects from thin air. This couldn’t possibly be a trick of the light—or just a glitch. The orbs seemed... too real. Too aware.

Just as her fingers twitched toward the phone’s power button, a sudden chill crept into the air. A soft gust swept across the lake, sending ripples skimming over its surface. The orbs flickered, briefly dimming before flaring brighter.

Aino stepped back, her pulse quickening. She hadn’t programmed anything to respond like this. “What are you?” she whispered, her voice barely audible against the low rumble of the distant trees.

The orbs moved again, slowly but with intent, as if they heard her. To her left, they glided, shifting subtly as though circling—studying—her. Frozen in place, she felt her breath catch in her throat. They’re responding.

From her phone, the light flickered—once, then twice. Without warning, a burst of static crackled through the app, its sharp, high-pitched whine sending a chill across Aino’s skin. She looked down at the phone. Now blank, the screen displayed only the ghostly outline of the lake—and the orbs, still hovering, faintly thrumming, their pulses eerily aligned with the rhythm of her heartbeat.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, her voice shaky. Her hand shook as she reached for the screen again, tapping it to reboot the app. But when the phone buzzed in her hand, it wasn’t the familiar feeling of restarting—it was a jolt, a cold, electric shock that made her flinch.

Aino’s gaze snapped back to the lake, and her stomach churned. Moments ago still, the orbs now swirled around her, closing the distance in a strange, deliberate dance. Across the water, their glow shimmered, casting flickering lights onto the trees and rocks that ringed the shore.

Her breath came faster, panic rising in her chest. The lights weren’t just there anymore. They were aware. They were alive.

What have I done?

She turned, but before she could react, a chill swept over the shore, sharp and biting. Midair, the orbs halted—then, in a sudden flash, shot toward the water, fusing into a single, radiant sphere that hovered just above the lake’s surface. All around her, the air grew heavy and oppressive, as though the lake itself had awakened.

Aino stumbled back, her phone falling to the ground with a crack, its screen dark—silent. Her body froze as the orb pulsed one last time, then dissipated into nothingness, leaving a ripple in the water.

She stood, heart racing, the lake silent once more. But something had changed. Deeper now, darker, the stillness pressed in around her. What had once been a quiet expanse, the lake now seemed to hold its breath—waiting for her to grasp something she wasn’t yet ready to face.

Aino’s breath came in sharp puffs, visible against the evening chill. Thick and fast, the mist had rolled in, curling around her boots and creeping up her legs like fog-born fingers. On a summer night this warm, so far from winter’s reach, it wasn’t supposed to be this cold. She shivered, pulling her jacket tighter. The app had gone quiet, the screen flickering with strange, stuttering glitches, and she held her phone tighter, as if it could somehow steady her.

Don’t freak out, she thought, willing her heart to slow. But it wasn’t easy. Across the water’s surface, the app’s glowing interface flickered, mirroring the orbs she had seen moments before. Without warning, the screen shifted.

At first, it was a glitch—a flash of static, the kind that happens when a device loses its signal. But then the images began to form. Aino squinted at the phone, trying to make sense of the shapes. It wasn’t the lake her screen was mapping anymore.

A village.

Distant, burned-out buildings, their timbers blackened and crumbling, shrouded in the same mist swirling around her. Through the shifting haze, she saw figures—faces hidden in shadow—stumbling through the wreckage, half-submerged in the shallow, muddy water that lapped around their ankles. Aino’s fingers twitched against the phone, but the screen remained unresponsive.

 She tried to swipe it, tried to clear the glitch, but the images stayed.

This can’t be real.

The church came next. Tall, steepled, and aflame, its bell tower engulfed in red-orange light, sending flickers of shadow across the ruins of the village. With her throat dry and pulse quickening, Aino took a step back, gravel crunching beneath her boots. Yet the images refused to fade; instead, they sharpened—growing clearer, more vivid with each passing second.

A woman appeared in the corner of the screen, her face twisted in agony. A tightening gripped Aino’s chest—a flicker of recognition she couldn’t name. As unease swept through her, her body tensed, locked in place by something she didn’t yet understand. The woman’s eyes seemed to burn through the screen, staring directly at her, and then—

Wait.

The woman looked disturbingly familiar. Too familiar.

Aino’s heart skipped a beat. “No,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “No, no, no…” Stumbling backward, she fumbled the phone in her trembling hands, her feet skidding on the slick stones along the shoreline. Her breath hitched as the cold air pressed against her chest, the atmosphere thickening around her—heavy, suffocating.

It’s her… it’s me. The realization hit her like a blow to the stomach. The woman—she looked like her. But that couldn’t be possible, could it?

Before she could process further, the wind picked up. As the mist thickened around her, the phone screen blinked, crackling with static. A low, unnatural hum rose in the air, vibrating through the soles of her shoes and reverberating up her spine. Her heart raced. Her breath, visible in the air, came faster. This isn’t part of the app. This isn’t just a glitch.

Desperately, Aino swiped at the screen again, but the app resisted her touch. With fumbling fingers, she reached for the power button, yet the app refused to shut down—as if it had a will of its own. Instead, it pulled—as if something on the other side of the phone was holding her in place.

“Stop,” she gasped, her voice cracking with desperation. She tried again, pushing her thumb harder against the screen. “Stop! I didn’t—this isn’t… what the hell is this?”

Around her legs, the mist curled tighter, its tendrils almost alive as they twisted upward. From across the lake, a gust of wind howled, and on the screen, the woman appeared to reach out—her hand shifting, pressing against the digital surface as though pleading for release.

No.

The air felt colder. Too cold.

Though Aino’s fingers trembled, it was no longer just from the cold. The phone had become more than a device—it was connected to something. These images weren’t random, weren’t glitches; they were deliberate, intentional. They were a message. And the lake... the lake was using her.

“Please… stop,” Aino whispered, her voice small, swallowed by the growing storm. On the screen, the figures—villagers drowned in the depths, their faces contorted in agony—turned their gaze toward her, eyes pleading. This was a warning.

Terror pulsing through her veins, Aino’s heart raced as the mist churned relentlessly around her feet. She faced the truth she had been avoiding—she had opened the door. And it wasn’t just the app anymore. Something from the depths of the lake had awoken, and it wanted her—wanted all of them—to know its pain.

Aino tried once more to turn off the phone. Her thumb brushed the screen.

But the app flickered again, and the woman’s face—her face—was there, clear as day, staring back at her.

“You can’t escape,” the woman’s lips seemed to say, though no sound escaped them.

Aino stumbled backward, the phone slipping from her hands. The app shut down in a violent flash of static, and the lake, as if in response, fell deathly still.

Thicker now, the mist clung to her skin, and the air hung heavy with the scent of water and decay. At the lake’s edge, Aino stood frozen, feet rooted in the gravel—though she couldn’t remember moving forward. She quickly picked up her phone, cold and dark in her hands, but it felt like an anchor she couldn’t release.

The lake stretched before her, its surface flat and dark as ink, reflecting nothing but the ghostly fog. But as Aino watched, something began to take shape, rising from the depths of the mist. At first, it was a blur, shifting in and out of focus, but then it sharpened. A figure. Tall, thin, translucent, barely solid in the dim light. A woman.

Aino’s heart skipped. She took a step back, her body urging her to run, but she couldn’t move. I know her, she thought, her stomach twisting. Out of the haze, the woman’s features sharpened—pale, sunken eyes, limp gray hair, and clothes so faded they seemed like fragments of a memory dredged from the depths of time.

Her. It’s her. It’s Grandma.

The realization struck with the force of a physical blow. Standing before her was the ghostly figure of her great-grandmother, long lost to the lake—her tragic death shrouded in silence, the family's deepest, most guarded secret. It was the reason her father had never spoken of his past, why they had abandoned the old house by the lake when she was still a child. Aino had heard the stories whispered in fragments, half-believed—but nothing had ever felt real. Not until now.

With slow, deliberate motion, the figure raised its hand, fingers curling in the air. Instinctively, Aino stepped forward, her feet moving on their own—as if compelled by the spirit’s silent command. Her breath came fast and shallow, the cold biting at her skin, but her hands felt warm, the phone still clutched tightly.

When the figure’s mouth opened, no words emerged—only static, a burst of warped, grating noise that sent a sharp ring through Aino’s ears.

“You must...”

Aino’s chest tightened, her heart hammering as the distorted words came through, barely coherent.

“The curse... binds us... sever the link...”

Aino’s knees trembled, and she staggered back, the mist swirling around her like a living thing. The voice, now unmistakably familiar—so real—sent a shiver down Aino’s spine. It was her great-grandmother’s, fractured and distorted by the phone’s interference. As if straining against the boundary between worlds, the spirit seemed to fight to speak, her words mangled by the very force that carried them.

Aino’s throat tightened. “What... what do you want from me?” she choked out, though she already knew the answer. It wasn’t just the app. It wasn’t just curiosity anymore. The lake wanted her.

Through the shifting fog, the spirit’s form flickered, its edges dissolving and reappearing like a wavering flame. For a fleeting moment, Aino caught the faintest glimmer of a smile—one etched with sorrow and heavy with regret. Slowly, the figure extended its hand, bony fingers stretching toward her.

“Your blood...”

Glancing down at the phone in her hands, Aino felt a jolt of unease. The app—her app—once dark and dead, was now alive, charged with an unnatural energy. An eerie light bled from the screen, pulsing in sync with the ghostly woman’s every movement. The voice crackled again, the static rising.

“Destroy it... or we... all... drown.”

Aino blinked rapidly, her mind reeling. Drown. The word echoed through her mind, each repetition tightening the pressure in her chest. Beneath the surface, the lake—this cursed, silent witness—seemed to call to her, aching to draw her down into its depths. It wanted to claim her as it had claimed her great-grandmother, her family’s dark history woven into the water’s very soul.

When she opened her mouth to speak, no sound emerged. Breath shallow and strained, she stood frozen beneath the crushing weight of the choice before her—a pressure as real as any touch. The lake didn’t want her. It wanted the phone. The app. Her creation.

“Sacrifice it...” the spirit whispered through the static. Its hand reached farther, flickering, as if the very act of speaking was tearing it apart. “End the cycle... before it’s too late...”

In her hand, the phone grew warm, pulsing with a strange, incomprehensible energy. It felt alive, thrumming with purpose—as if the lake were speaking through the screen, its voice silent but insistent, tugging at her will, pleading to be released.

Her fingers twitched, and for the briefest of moments, she considered throwing it into the lake, ending it all. But her mind raced. What if I don’t? What if her family’s secret ran deeper than this? What if breaking the link wasn’t enough?

The woman’s image flickered violently. “It will consume you...” the voice rasped, the static growing louder, more violent. The mist churned faster, as if the lake was angry at being denied.

Aino’s hands shook violently, her breath ragged. There was no choice. The app, the phone, the digital connection—it had to go. It was never meant to exist.

With a cry that echoed across the empty shore, Aino raised the phone above her head, her fingers white-knuckling the device, and in a single, desperate motion, she hurled it into the lake.

With a sharp splash, the phone struck the water and vanished beneath the surface. Instantly, the static fell silent, and the mist froze in place, suspended in an unnatural, breathless stillness.

For a moment, everything was quiet. The figure of her great-grandmother wavered, flickering like a candle in the wind. Then, with one final, sorrowful look, the spirit vanished into the mist.

Aino stood, trembling, as the lake returned to its deathly stillness, the weight of the curse lifting from her shoulders. But as she stared into the dark water, she couldn’t shake the feeling it wasn’t truly over—that something, somewhere, still waited in the depths.

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Silent Peaks

Welcome to another edition of Scandinavian Folklore Beasts.  In this entry, we'll delve into a tale about urban explorers, who vanish in cursed mountains as a forgotten troll god awakens to reclaim his domain.

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At the base of the mountains, the air bit at exposed skin, sharp enough to steal the breath from your lungs. Around jagged stone outcrops, a persistent fog curled and swirled, like the remnants of an ancient beast stirring uneasily in its sleep. Liv squinted at the horizon, where the path twisted upward, disappearing into the looming cliffs. Her camera, mounted on a helmet, caught her every movement—smooth, controlled, always performing. The stream numbers ticked higher, and with them, her pulse quickened.

“This is it,” she said, her voice coming through her comm, clear and authoritative. With a quick glance, her eyes flicked to the locals—grim-faced and muttering, their trembling hands lifting toward the sky, driven more by fear than by cold.

“Can’t go up there. Not safe,” one shouted in a thick accent, a gnarled hand reaching out to stop her.

Liv didn’t break her stride.

“We’ve prepared for this for weeks,” she called back, eyes ahead. "We’ll be fine."

As her camera’s red light blinked on, streaming live to thousands, the numbers climbed like a crescendo in the back of her mind. With practiced ease, she flashed a smile to the lens—a smile that could melt tension in any room.

“What’s that?” Anya’s voice cracked over the comms, tense, sharp.

Liv glanced sideways. Anya crouched, eyes fixated on weathered runes etched into the stone.

“They’re old," Anya muttered, fingers tracing the symbols, the camera aimed at them. "Vuorenpeikko… or so the legends say. The mountain spirits… guardians, maybe. They don't like intruders."

Liv rolled her eyes but didn’t answer. Since their landing, Anya had been obsessed with old stories, now reciting the runes in a singsong voice as she translated fragments of lore from memory. Ahead, Liv kept walking, tuning out the strange whispers crackling through the static of her comm feed. She’d dealt with this kind of nonsense before.

“Not a single issue with the tech, right?” she asked, glancing at Kai.

He launched drones, fingers dancing over holographic controls, face lit by their glow. The sky had shifted into muted grays, and the fog, though dense, didn’t slow him down.

“I’ve got eyes everywhere,” Kai grinned, though the corner of his mouth twitched in a way that made Liv uneasy.

He launched another drone, but then his expression changed. The grin slipped away.

“Wait… that’s not right,” he muttered. He tapped at the controller, frowning as the drone's feed sputtered.

"What's going on?" Liv demanded, pausing.

“There’s something in the thermal feed.” Kai’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t get a clear lock on it... but it's big. Real big.”

Anya, still crouched, slowly turned toward Kai. The runes no longer seemed as interesting as whatever Kai had seen. “What do you mean, ‘big’? Like a bear?”

“Not a bear,” Kai replied, voice tight. “The feed’s losing signal... something's jamming it.”

"Keep it together," Liv said, striding toward him. Her confidence never wavered. "You’ve dealt with glitches before.”

“I’m not talking about a glitch,” Kai replied, the words heavy between them. "Something’s interfering with the signal. Something... active."

With a frustrated mutter, he tapped the screen again, cursing as the drone’s thermal image wavered, struggling to stay locked onto its target. Just a moment later, the screen went black.

“Lost signal,” he said flatly.

The hairs on Liv’s neck prickled, but she masked it with a scoff. “It’s just a malfunction. You can fix it, right?”

Before Kai could respond, Anya stood abruptly. “It’s a sign. You heard the legends.” She stared into the fog, eyes wide. “They said the Vuorenpeikko—whatever it is—guards the pass. It’ll appear if we aren’t worthy.”

“You believe that?” Liv scoffed, already stepping forward again, determined to keep the stream going, the thrill of the climb buzzing through her veins.

Anya didn’t answer immediately. She was looking into the fog, face pale under the growing twilight.

Liv noticed her hesitation, and doubt crept in. But it was fleeting.

“Come on, we’re wasting time.” Liv’s voice was steely, authoritative, as always. “Let’s go."

Something wasn’t right. Mid-sentence, a crackle of static cut through her words—the kind that signaled more than just a technical glitch. At the edge of the clearing, Anya stood motionless, eyes fixed on the fog, her fingers twitching nervously at her side.

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As night fell, it swallowed the jagged cliffs in a cloak of darkness. With the dropping temperature, the fog thickened—curling like a living thing around their ankles, creeping steadily up their legs. Liv's headlamp cut through the blackness, its beam flickering as though it, too, was losing patience with the journey. The last remnants of daylight clung desperately to the horizon, but soon, even that would be gone.

Jonas, normally the most steady of them all, was jittery. His eyes darted from side to side, his breath ragged.

"Liv," he said, voice shaking. "We need to turn back. Now."

Liv didn't glance at him. She was too busy checking her equipment, adjusting the camera feed, making sure the angle was perfect. The audience was still watching. The numbers hadn't dipped. In fact, they were climbing again.

“No,” she replied, her voice firm. Her breath came in steady bursts, and her eyes never wavered from the path ahead. “We’re close, Jonas. I know it.”

Jonas gripped the straps of his pack tighter, his knuckles whitening. “Liv, stop. This is crazy. We’ve lost two hours to the fog already. We don’t even know what’s out there anymore—whatever’s messing with the signal, it’s not just tech failure. It’s something.”

She turned, her gaze as sharp as the mountain wind. “You don’t get it, do you? This is it. We’re not backing down.”

The words hit Jonas like a slap. He stepped forward, desperation creeping into his voice. “This isn’t about your reputation, Liv. You can’t keep pushing us like this. We’ve already lost someone.”

She stiffened. For a split second, her resolve faltered, then returned, cold and cutting.

"One person," she said, as though that could justify it. "One person doesn’t matter if we make history here. If we find it, all of this—all of it—will be worth it."

“I don’t give a damn about making history!” Jonas shot back, his voice rising. “I care about getting out alive. You’re not listening. We’re losing people, Liv.”

No answer came. Around them, the fog had thickened, shrinking the world until the mountain seemed to press in from all sides. In the silence, the air hummed with tension.

Anya’s voice, sharp and unnerving, broke the silence. “We’re not losing people,” she said quietly, her tone filled with something Liv couldn’t quite place. “We’re losing our way.”

Liv’s gaze snapped to her. Anya crouched, the runes glowing faintly in the dim light, her fingers trembling as she traced them.

"Look at these," Anya murmured, almost to herself. "They're not warnings, Liv. They’re instructions. The Vuorenpeikko isn't a legend. It’s not a myth. It’s bound to the land... by ritual."

The coldness of her words settled over the group like a shroud.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Liv demanded, though the words felt hollow in her throat.

Anya looked up, her face pale, her eyes wide. “The troll. The one you keep saying is a myth. It’s real. And it’s bound here. By something older than us.”

“Bound?” Jonas scoffed, but there was a tremor in his voice. “Like some kind of... curse?”

Anya shook her head slowly. “Not a curse. A binding. A ritual. The runes—they’re not telling a story. They’re marking a place. A place where something was trapped.”

The wind howled around them, and in the distance, a shape shifted, flickering at the edge of the fog. No one spoke for a moment, the weight of Anya’s words hanging in the freezing air.

Jonas looked over his shoulder, his face pale. “Where’s Kai?”

They all turned, their hearts sinking as they realized he had vanished.

“He was right there,” Liv said, her voice thin. Her eyes scanned the fog, the trees, the craggy stones. “Kai? Kai, respond.” Her call was swallowed by the fog, unanswered.

Jonas’s hand gripped her arm, urgency in his touch. “We have to go. Now.”

Liv tore her arm away. “No. I’m not leaving without finding it.” Her voice was icy, her gaze hard as stone. “I’m not letting this slip through my fingers. Not again.”

Jonas stepped toward her, panic now palpable in his voice. “Liv, you’re not thinking straight. Someone else could vanish, too. Someone else—I—could vanish. You’ve seen what’s out there. We can’t keep pretending this is just some hike, some challenge for the stream.”

Liv opened her mouth to argue, but before a single word escaped, a low, guttural growl rippled through the fog—a sound neither natural nor human. Something ancient. Something monstrous.

The group froze.

Anya’s hand trembled, her camera forgotten at her side as she whispered, “It’s here.”

Liv's heartbeat quickened, but she refused to back down. She had come this far. The audience was still watching. Her mind was locked on one thing: the discovery, the unveiling of something monumental, something that could cement her place in history.

But as the growl sounded again, closer, it was clear to everyone—something else was already marking them. And it wasn’t interested in fame or glory.

Jonas backed away slowly. “Liv—please. We’re already too far in. We’re lost.”

Liv’s breath was tight in her chest, her resolve faltering, but she wouldn’t let herself be swayed. Not yet. Not when they were so close. She’d been down this road before, haunted by failure. The fear of it clawed at her insides.

She took a step forward into the fog. "No. We can't stop. We’re almost there."

And then, another scream echoed from the fog. This time, it wasn’t distant. It was close.

Too close.

#

In the dark, the camera’s red light blinked weakly. Blood slicked Liv’s fingers, her grip on the phone unsteady as she raised it toward her face. Around her, the mist thickened, choking the air, and her breath came in ragged, uneven gasps. Of everything, only the pain in her side—a deep, gnawing ache—cut through the haze, anchoring her to the moment. The world around her blurred into shadow and fog, but she didn’t care. There was only this. Only the camera.

The screen showed her face, pale, smeared with dirt and blood, eyes wide but resigned. She was alone now. The others—Jonas, Anya, Kai—gone. Lost. Consumed.

She forced a smile, one that trembled at the edges. Her voice was hoarse, barely audible over the groaning wind.

“I—I know this is... I know this isn’t what I promised,” she began, her voice catching as she fought for coherence. “I’m not... I’m not supposed to let this happen. I should have turned back, but...” She swallowed, and the tears that had been threatening finally broke free. “But I couldn’t. I—I needed to prove something. To myself. To everyone.”

In her trembling hand, the camera shook, the phone slipping through blood-slicked fingers before she managed to steady it. Across the grainy screen, the thermal feed warped and flickered, struggling to make sense of whatever stood in front of her. The mist shifted again, and then she saw it. The figure.

It was huge.

Liv’s breath hitched in her throat, words stalling as she stared at the shape in the frame. It moved with slow, deliberate steps, its form distorting in the thermal image. The colors bled into hues of red and orange, a mass of heat too large, too otherworldly.

The Vuorenpeikko.

It stepped closer, its presence suffocating, and then, impossibly, the figure grew clearer. Its outline sharpened, and Liv’s eyes widened in disbelief as something began to form within the shifting shadow. A face. A twisted, ancient face, eyes glowing with an unsettling intelligence.

“Why do you run?” The voice came not from its mouth but through the air itself, deep and guttural, vibrating through her bones. It wasn’t a sound meant for human ears.

Liv staggered back, the phone held in front of her, shaking uncontrollably. The beast—no, the thing—was speaking.

It had a voice.

Her heart slammed against her ribs, each beat thudding like a warning. The words sounded wrong—too ancient, too heavy to fully grasp. Blinking hard, she tried to make sense of them, but they came again, clearer this time. Whether her mind was twisting the sounds into something familiar or the creature had learned to speak her language, she couldn’t tell.

“You seek answers. But do you understand the question?” The voice pressed in, filling her chest with cold weight.

As the pain in her side deepened, Liv's eyes fluttered, but she clung to the camera, kept recording—driven by a desperate instinct, as if her life depended on capturing every second. Maybe it did.

“I—I know what I’ve done,” she whispered, voice breaking. “I pushed them too hard. I thought… I thought it was about discovery, about fame. But I was wrong.” Her breath was shallow, each word a struggle. “Please... please, I just… need you to understand. I… didn’t mean to—”

Her vision blurred again, and the world tilted. With each massive step, the Vuorenpeikko advanced, its feet crunching against the rock below. The ground trembled beneath her, vibrations echoing through her chest like distant thunder. Around her, the air thickened—heavy and oppressive—pressing down until it felt like she could barely breathe.

It loomed over her, its figure filling the thermal frame completely. A jagged crown of stone-like protrusions rose from its skull, its body a tangled mass of limbs and heat, more like a mountain than a creature, ancient and powerful.

“Your kind trespasses where it does not belong.”

Barely able to keep her eyes open, Liv drifted, her body unraveling under the weight of exhaustion and injury. Yet through the haze, the Vuorenpeikko’s voice cut sharp and unyielding, anchoring her to the moment.

“You do not understand the price of your curiosity.”

Leaning down, the creature radiated heat like a furnace, waves of it rolling over her. Liv’s body jerked in response, legs buckling as she collapsed to her knees, the phone still clenched tightly in her hand. The camera’s thermal feed flickered, and in the final frames, the Vuorenpeikko’s face filled the screen—a mask of age-old stone and burning eyes. Its words were not just a warning. They were a sentence.

“This land is bound to me.”

A single step. Then the thermal feed went dark. The screen blinked to black.

#

When the phone was found hours later, after the last echoes of the creature's presence had faded, it was cold, abandoned in the dense mist where Liv had fallen. The last message—her final plea, her last moments—was embedded deep in the device’s storage, untouched by the elements.

It wasn’t long before the footage spread. A global sensation. A spark of fear and wonder ignited around the world.

Liv’s name became a whisper on the lips of the curious, the fascinated, the terrified.

But the Vuorenpeikko, with its ancient intent, was no longer a myth. It was a reality.

And soon, others would seek it too.

#

Exciting news! My book, "Cumberland Chronicles" is now available at Books2Read! If you enjoy the supernatural, horror, and the weird, I’d love for you to check it out. Even if it’s not your thing, a quick share would help me reach the right readers. Thank you for the support!