"Erlkönig"

You slumped low in the saddle, cloaked in a fever that gnawed at the edges of your consciousness like a slow, smoldering fire. Your breath came in shallow bursts, every inhalation thick with the earthy musk of rotting leaves and damp bark. Sweat traced rivulets down your temple, mingling with the grime of the journey, as your hands trembled where they clutched the reins. The horse, a weary gray with eyes rimmed in white, plodded forward with the mechanical obedience of a creature long past exhaustion. _ You had entered the forest hours ago—perhaps longer—but time had begun to unravel. The sun, though it had been shining when you crossed the tree line, was nowhere now. Overhead, a tangled cathedral of gnarled branches blocked the sky, letting through only the faintest silver of dying light. Moss coated the trunks like velvet skin, and the undergrowth whispered in brittle sighs beneath hooves and wind. The silence pressed in with a breathless weight, broken only by the occasional creak of leather and the distant snap of something unseen among the trees.

_ Then—softly, sweetly—came a voice. _ It did not speak so much as unfold, blooming in the fever-sick hollows of your mind. It was music without instrument, words without language, a sound woven of warmth and promise and something impossibly ancient.

“Come,” it coaxed, the syllable drawn out like silk across skin. “Come away from pain. I know your name. I know what you carry. Come, and be still.”

You stirred, lifting your heavy head. Your vision pulsed at the edges—darkness swelling and receding with each heartbeat. Through the shifting veil of mist that drifted between the trees, a figure stood. _ No—a presence. Not quite solid, not entirely air. He was tall and elegant, draped in shadowed finery that shimmered like dew-laced spider silk. Antlers crowned his brow like living bone. His eyes—ancient and opalescent—held the calm, cold beauty of deep water. He smiled. _ The Erlkönig. _ Even the trees seemed to lean toward him, their twisted limbs bending as if in homage. The voice came again, no longer distant, now as intimate as breath at the nape of the neck.

“You are tired. Let me carry your burden. Let me cool the fire that burns in your blood.”

And though every instinct within you screamed to look away, to spur the horse onward through the gloom, your body remained rooted. The reins loosened in your grasp. The horse stilled beneath you. _ The forest held its breath.