The Nightmare Chronicles

Masterlist

Books

Paradise duology: The lady of darkness - Adventure/Portal Fantasy

Black Sugar - The call of the Wilderness - Dark/Animal Fantasy & Paranormal Quest (FSK 16)

CPs

11 pm - Mindfuck The house by the lake - Atmospheric/Mindfuck Single-part - Different genres

It had attacked them. It hadn’t even needed to chase Fina — she had practically run straight into its claws. Princess had turned and run, but the creature had leapt over her in a single bound and struck her head with its claw‑armed paw. After that, it had gone after Sugar. Now it had knocked all three of them down — yet it didn’t eat them. Thoughts, questions, images, speculations drifted through Princess’s mind. It hurt, and she could barely grasp any of them. Predators killed to eat. Why else go through the effort? Why else spend the energy to chase and catch prey? Did the thing hunt for fun? Was it driven by the pure joy of killing? The way Princess’s father had enjoyed tyrannizing his herd? But the monster had none of Freedom’s self‑righteous, sadistic nature. It didn’t seem pleased. It didn’t seem to feel anything at all. But then why did it kill? That is not its purpose. It wasn’t a thought — more like a feeling. Princess didn’t know how she knew, but somewhere deep inside she sensed that this creature had been created for one purpose only: to torment. Its sole function was to spread terror and fear. That was the meaning of its existence. Not survival — just torment, without gain. Because that was its task. She shouldn’t think so much. Thinking hurt. She should use the strength she had left. She should get up and run before the beast changed its mind for the first time and decided to kill her after all. But her body felt so far away. Princess felt as if she were somewhere else entirely. She no longer felt the body that lay paralyzed in the sand. Her mind wandered restlessly, searching, questioning, philosophizing. Why did this thing exist? Where were they? Why had her mother run straight into the monster’s arms? Only the headache remained. The creature made no sound as it left them. It simply turned around and walked away. Princess didn’t follow it with her eyes. She felt strangely numb. Her thoughts drifted on, but her emotions had fallen silent. She wasn’t relieved that the creature was gone. She wasn’t afraid it might return. She didn’t worry about her mother or Sugar, who weren’t moving. She didn’t fear dying here. Inside, she felt strangely empty. The headache grew worse. Princess felt it pushing her out of the present, bit by bit. I’m going to lose consciousness after all, she noted calmly. It didn’t scare her. Nothing scared her. Scared… the sand… gray… the sky… Sugar... Fina… thinking… thoughts… Princess’s thoughts slipped away from her, and then the world went dark.

“Dude, chill! I’m fine!” “Don’t call me dude!” “Yeah, okay, okay. But I’m really fine.” Chill. Sometimes Fina simply couldn’t make sense of her daughter. Sure, foals couldn’t judge danger properly yet — but no fear at all? That was dangerous. Fina limited herself to an irritated flick of her tail. She didn’t want to argue now. This was not the place for it. And Princess had pointed out something Fina hadn’t thought about yet. How had they gotten here? “Well, I fell and…” Sugar seemed to search for words. “Yeah, no idea, I just ended up in the sand.” Fina eyed him skeptically. “And how did you end up next to me? I just kept running until the ground turned into sand, and then suddenly you were beside me again.” “No clue. None of this makes no sense at all.” …makes no sense at all. Poetic masterpiece, Sugar. But he was right. It didn’t make sense. “And— khh, khh, khh — what do we do now?” Princess’s cough still hadn’t improved. “Find a way out,” Fina decided. “If you can get in, you can get out again. And maybe we’ll even find some water,” she added, glancing at her coughing daughter. And so they set off. They didn’t really have a destination, so they simply walked in the first direction that seemed reasonable. Fina didn’t believe they would magically end up back in the forest. But none of them could think of anything better than walking. For horses, that made sense. They could worry about what this place was, or how they had gotten here, once they were safe. At home. If home still existed.

Sugar felt increasingly uneasy. At first, their sudden… change of location had unsettled him surprisingly little. Since his escape from the slaughter, he had seen so many new and terrifying things; this bleak desert simply hadn’t surprised him anymore. Now it was different. There was nothing edible here, no water, and no sign of a way out. None of them knew how they were supposed to escape this place. They would die of thirst. As if the desert had heard Sugar’s thoughts, the sand around their hooves began to stir. It curled upward in drifting clouds, even though there was no wind, and laid a diffuse veil over the world. Fine as dust, the grains crept into Sugar’s nostrils. His throat felt like a dried‑out, cracked riverbed. He needed water. Desperately. But instead, more sand came, clogging his throat. As if someone had stuffed sandpaper — or the entire earth itself — down his windpipe. Sugar had to cough. At this rate, dying of thirst would happen faster than expected. “We should get out of here,” Fina gasped through the swirling gray haze. Get out was an understatement. Sugar would have preferred to run to the next universe. Away from this cursed desert with its non‑air. Away from this disgusting gray sand. Just run. That had always worked before. But running had brought him here in the first place. If they had just gone deeper into the forest when the dragon spotted them… it could never have followed them through the trees. If they hadn’t stormed into the heath, maybe they would never have ended up here. Maybe running wasn’t the solution to every problem. Right now, it would only increase their need for water. No — running was not a good idea at the moment. Sugar took a deep breath. He almost expected more sand, but instead clear air flowed into his lungs. Still strangely non‑airy, but at least no warm sand stuck to his bronchi. Even his vision began to clear. The windless sandstorm faded. Even the dryness in his throat eased. As if rain had finally come and brought the riverbed back to life. And that, even though he still hadn’t drunk anything. Maybe the non‑air had regenerative properties. Breathing freely again, they continued walking. What else could they have done? There had to be something in this desert. Anything. Some trivial little thing they could use as a clue for… whatever.

The relief didn’t last long. At first, it was barely noticeable. Above them stretched an empty, pale‑gray sky. Even though no sun was visible, the desert lay in an ashen twilight. But the farther they walked, the darker it became. The sky remained unchanged — gray like sun‑bleached granite. But somehow… the light was fading. Not like dusk; it felt as if something were sucking the light away. As if someone had held a vacuum cleaner over the desert. Or as if the light were being diluted, like syrup in water. Sugar stopped abruptly when something appeared in front of them. It simply manifested out of nothing. Its body seemed made of pure darkness. It was nothing but wavering tendrils swirling around a pitch‑black core. The desert darkened even further, as if the mere presence of the thing pushed the light away. Sugar, Princess, and Fina stood frozen as the thing began to change shape. The black mass sprouted legs and a long neck until it looked like a monstrous ghost‑horse. The black tendrils wrapped around its body. They wove themselves into chains, grew into spikes, sharpened into thorns. Like a spiked suit of armor. It had — once again — no smell. It was more like a phenomenon, a shadow, a bogeyman. A nightmare made real, unfinished and spectral. The shadow‑horse threw its head back, its chains cracking through the air and the sand. Like ash, the sand was hurled upward and rained down on them in a grainy shower. The thing was physical. It could hurt them. That was the starting signal. Calm and reason were all well and good, but now — now was the time to run. Sugar, Fina, and Princess bolted, and the shadow‑horse charged after them. Sugar heard its heavy steps behind him. It sounded like an approaching thunderstorm. He tried to move his legs faster, but with every gallop he seemed to sink deeper into the sand. He tore his hooves free, hurled himself forward, yanked his legs upward. Again and again. The rumbling behind him grew closer. Sugar stretched his body as far as he could. His forelegs dug into the sand. He yanked his hind legs up. At first he had only sunk to his fetlocks, but now the sand reached his chest. He heaved himself up, forward, up again, forward, up, forward — like in water that was far too deep. Only that the sand fell endlessly, felt heavier. Behind him the shadow‑horse thundered, and Sugar was certain he was going to die of fear. Just fall over and be done with it. Beside him, one of the chains slammed into the ground. Gray sand sprayed into Sugar’s face. Shit, shit! Behind him something cracked like a stiff joint. Then something appeared in the corner of his vision. It was blurry, but it was dark — and it was growing. It grew larger and larger. Sugar wasn’t running anymore; he was only flailing. He had to get away, but the sand was so deep, so heavy. It held him fast. Sugar fought. Forward — he had to get forward, damn it! He had to get out of here. The sand reached up to his flanks. Sugar pulled, but he couldn’t free his legs from the gray mass. Away, damn it! Away! Black metal, forged from darkness, slammed against Sugar’s head. There was a crack. Sugar’s vision blurred. His field of view tilted and spun sideways. For a moment, a bright, roaring pain flared in his skull — then everything went black.

Princess’s head was pounding. She felt paralyzed. Only her mind was still active. It wandered restlessly while Princess watched the scene with a strange indifference. The beast had struck her, dragging one of its claws across her head. Princess had seen stars and collapsed. Her body felt numb and foreign, yet her eyes did not close. She lay half‑dazed in the sand, watching the monstrosity that prowled between her, Sugar, and her mother. It didn’t eat them. It had simply grown out of the ground, as if lifted upward on a platform beneath the sand. A large, hideous beast. It resembled the mutated bear that had attacked her — but it was bigger. Much bigger, with matted, shaggy fur and a huge maw full of massive teeth. It looked like something torn straight from a nightmare.

Your imagination paints bogeymen. They frighten you. But deep inside, you know they’re only bogeymen. They can’t hurt you. But what do you do when the ghosts become real? When they can hurt you? What do you do in a world where your fears are real? Run away? But where to? Where do you run in a world made only of terror? Or do you fight? Against the fear, against the ghosts? To one day find happiness again. But until then, you have to fight. Fight to avoid dying like all the others before you.

Fina didn’t know what had happened. She had run. She had seen the dragon and she had run. Her mind had shut down, and her thoughts seemed trapped in a dark, narrow tunnel. Always along that one straight path. Farther, faster. Always running. She had barely registered what was happening around her. The ground in front of her — that had been important, that her brain had processed. So she wouldn’t stumble. That had been important. At some point, Sugar and Princess had disappeared. Fina hadn’t understood it while fleeing, but now she remembered. Sugar had fallen behind her at some point, and then he was gone. Princess had been to her left — and then she wasn’t. Fina didn’t know where they had gone. She didn’t really know anything anymore. She had run, kept running, endlessly running. The ground had changed beneath her — stone and heather had turned into sand. Gray, warm sand. But she hadn’t understood that at first. She had only run. At some point she had stopped. Her instinct told her the dragon was gone. Sugar had been lying beside her, his chest and head buried in the sand. A faint voice somewhere in the back of Fina’s mind had wondered how he could be next to her when he had fallen behind. She had seen Princess a few meters away, and for a moment everything else had vanished. Fina had rushed to her, and for a moment she had felt nothing but relief. Relief that her daughter was still alive. But now the relief slowly faded, and for the first time Fina truly began to take in her surroundings. It felt as if lightning had struck her. They were standing in a desert. Or at least, this was what Fina imagined a desert to look like. Gentle hills of sand stretched all the way to the horizon. Fine, gray sand, speckled with tiny black dots. Like ash. And it was silent. No wind, no crunching sand, no animals. It wasn’t like the silence before a storm. The world wasn’t trying to make no sound — there simply were no sounds. The only noises reaching Fina’s ears were the ones Sugar, Princess, and she herself produced. Nothing else. Fina thought she could smell the grainy, slightly earthy scent of sand in her nose — but when she sniffed more carefully… there was nothing. Her brain was inventing the smell, but in this wasteland there was nothing. No trace of other animals, no plants, the air didn’t even smell sterile. It simply smelled like nothing. The sand in which Fina’s hooves sank was warm. That was the only tangible sensation in this place. The air, on the other hand, was again… nothing. It was neither warm nor cold. Fina didn’t feel any wind either. It sounded absurd, but she believed she couldn’t even feel the air pressure. If someone had asked her to describe it, she wouldn’t have known what to say. She could breathe, but the air didn’t feel like air. It was simply a nothingness, an empty space. A vacuum. “How did you even— khh — get here?” Princess still sounded as if her vocal cords were made of sandpaper. Hopefully that wouldn’t leave any damage. “What do you mean?” Sugar asked. He sounded surprisingly calm, considering their situation. “Well, the dragon dragged me here…” “The dragon did what?” For a moment, Fina thought her heart stopped. Then it continued beating — painfully, pounding hard.

“Oh my God, Princess!” It was her mother’s voice. Princess heard hoofbeats, muffled by the sand. A strange crunching sound. She saw two shapes above her and felt her mother’s breath as she sniffed her anxiously. “Are you alright?” “Khh, khh, khh.” Speaking wasn’t happening yet. “Princess? What’s wrong with you?” “Just… khh… swallowed… khh.” Princess thought she might suffocate as she forced those two words out. Speaking was even harder than breathing. Her joints slowly began to ache, so Princess laboriously pulled her legs beneath herself. She almost toppled forward as she pushed herself up, but somehow she managed to get back onto all four hooves. Luckily, she wasn’t injured. The sand seemed to have cushioned her fall well. Speaking of sand… For the first time since her crash landing, Princess looked around. At first, she didn’t understand what she was seeing. The dragon, the flight, the fall — it had all been too much. And it had happened so fast. Her mind was still foggy, and she simply couldn’t grasp what she was looking at. Inside her head, everything was swirling, and at the same time there was a yawning emptiness. One single thought seeped through the chaos into her consciousness: Now I know why there’s so much sand here. The realization made her feel small. Small and afraid. At home, in the forest and the heath, the ground was rocky. There was no sand there. But here, there was sand. Because they weren’t home.

Sugar’s instinct had taken over. It crushed his reason, broke through the paralysis. And it screamed only one word: Run! And Sugar ran.

Princess had never run this fast in her life. Wolves, bears, pumas, mutants — nothing had ever driven her like this. But now, now she ran. As fast as she could. Her thoughts had stopped the moment she saw the creature. Inside her head, everything had gone silent. Now she ran. Out. Into the open. She didn’t think it — she knew it. Horses fled into the wide open. They ran. She knew that. And so she did what her centuries‑old instinct told her to do. The dragon had stopped droning, but now the wind roared in Princess’s ears. Faster, farther, away, faster! Was that a flap above the rushing wind? Didn’t matter — farther, faster, farther! Princess ran, blind and deaf to everything, driven by an ancient instinct. Her chest began to cramp. It felt tight, squeezed shut. No — she had to breathe! She needed air! Air! Princess fought back. She forced the air into her lungs. She needed it! If necessary, by force. But her ribs met resistance. A barrier. Like a warm, thick grid. For a moment, Princess wondered. Then the air was forgotten. Her hoof had stepped into emptiness. There was no ground beneath her leg. She was going to fall! Princess tipped forward. She fell! God, she was falling… away from the ground. She fell higher and higher. Further and further into the air! Her other legs lifted off, she was floating. She would escape the dragon! She would just fly away. Fly… Since when could horses fly? Warm, bony fingers holding her. Long claws pressing into her belly. The stench of carrion and that flap, flap, flap. Oh shit, oh shit, shit, shit, SHIT! The dragon had her. It held her in its claws — and it was flying! With her! She had to get away! It would eat her! She had to get away! Away, away, away! Princess thrashed. She struggled. She fought. Away, away, away! She would break her neck on impact. But it didn’t matter — just away! Princess writhed. She threw her head around and twisted her upper body. Tried to free herself from that warm grip. It was warm with life. And yet so dead. The world began to spin. Faster and faster, more frantic every second. Princess fought even harder. And the world spun even harder. Princess fought. And the world spun. It spun and spun and spun. And Princess hit the ground. She rolled, she tumbled over herself. She swallowed sand. She came to a stop. She coughed. Breathe! She couldn’t breathe! She was going to suffocate! More coughing. Air! She needed air! And suddenly it came. The air. It rushed through Princess’s throat, into her lungs. It was rough like sandpaper, but it was air! She could breathe! And Princess breathed. She lay there and— Wait. She was lying? Yes, she was lying. On her belly. Slowly, the world stopped spinning and Princess’s thoughts returned. It had all happened so fast. The dragon had grabbed her. It had lifted her into the air and flown with her. She had tried to break free, she had writhed. And then the world had begun to spin. Or was it just her head? The dragon must have dropped her again. Maybe she had struggled too much. Or she had been too heavy. Or… it had wanted to bring her here. That would explain why it was nowhere to be found now. Princess had crashed to the ground. Onto sand. She had tumbled and swallowed sand. That explained the sandpaper feeling in her throat. But sand? There was no sand here. The ground here was rocky.

Flap, flap, flap. Any moment now it would appear between the treetops. It would dive through the pine branches toward them. It would grab them, and then it would tear them apart with its sharp beak. Rip them to pieces until nothing of them was left. Flap, flap, flap. “That’s not a vulture,” Sugar whispered. He didn’t even need to try to whisper — the fear was choking his throat shut. No one was surprised. They had all known it wasn’t a vulture. It was simply too big, too wrong to be a bird. But it had been such a comforting excuse. It had kept the fear small. The droning started again. God, Sugar hated that sound! It seemed to squeeze his already too‑small chest even tighter and sent pain through his skull. His eyes felt as if they were bulging from their sockets, the noise was so loud this time. So piercing. The trees began to sway again. Branches crashed against each other, needles rained down, and cold snow slapped against Sugar’s neck. He barely felt it. Could his eyeballs really fall out of their sockets? It felt as if his eyes were being pushed out of his skull. Overwhelmed by a mad, suffocating fear, Sugar squeezed his eyes shut. He felt like a foal. If I close my eyes, the monster can’t eat me. His instinct screamed at him to lift his eyelids again, to look, and to run, run, run! But Sugar forced the panic down. His instincts weren’t made for something like this. They were useless here. Please go away! Please go away! Please, please, please! The droning stopped. Just as suddenly as last time. When his eyes finally stopped feeling as if they were about to roll out of their sockets, Sugar cautiously opened his lids again. For a moment, the white landscape was painfully bright, and Sugar wanted nothing more than to close his eyes again. But they had to keep moving. There was no other choice, was there? They couldn’t stay here — the urge to flee was too strong. A soft pattering sounded as more needles fell around their hooves. With a wet slurp, more snow slid from the branches above them. Strange — Sugar no longer felt any vibration in the ground. So why were the branches still shaking…? All three of them had the same thought and looked up. What they saw made Sugar forget everything. His fear, the tightness in his chest, his stiff legs — all of it vanished. He could only stand there and stare. It was perched on one of the thick branches, and it was no vulture. It wasn’t a bird at all. It was… Blue. It was twisted, scaly, and blue. Incredibly long claws. Two crumpled legs. A thin, hairless body. Bones jutting out. Two skinny, leathery wings in baby blue. It looked almost absurdly childish. Except for the yellowish spikes along the wings. They looked like… fingernails. A narrow torso. A long, spiny neck. An absurdly small head. A crest of pus‑yellow spikes. Tiny, black bead‑eyes. A massive horned beak. And those eyes… Sugar had never seen anything so uncanny. Those eyes radiated something. Something terrible. This creature was evil to its core. The creature looked ridiculous, with its absurd colors and wrong proportions. It looked like a bad joke of nature. But its gaze made it clear that it wasn’t one. The creature — the dragon — opened its mouth. A disgusting stench of death, decay, carrion flooded into Sugar’s nose. Inside the mouth lay a thick, blood‑red tongue. It writhed and vibrated as the droning began again. It came from its mouth. It was its voice! Sugar wanted to stay still. He wanted to scream. He wanted to die. But his body decided for him.

Tense, she lifted her eyes and ears upward. Sugar and Princess did the same. And so they all saw the dark shadow gliding slowly over the branches. It was enormous. The trees looked small beside this gigantic monstrosity that drifted over the forest — slowly, almost majestically. It made no sound now. Had it not produced the droning earlier at all? Or had it created that sound with vocal cords? Did it have a language? Through the fir’s branches, Fina couldn’t see what it was. But it was gaunt and twisted. Bony, spiky, gristly. And it had enormous wings, covered in skin so thin she could see the gray sky shimmering through them. And it stank. The smell of rotting flesh and sweet decay followed it. Like a vulture. Or as if it were carrion itself — decaying, suffocating, and yet not dead. The creature was almost too much for Fina’s nerves. The sounds, the appearance, the smell… it was all too much. Too many sensations, too many contradictions. How could something be loud and silent, majestic and hideous, graceful and reeking all at once? It was so unnatural, so wrong. The creature didn’t notice them. Maybe it didn’t even look down. It flew on, straight toward the heart of the forest. “Slow,” Fina whispered once she guessed the shadow was out of earshot. “Very slow. Stay under the trees at all times.” Her instinct was screaming by now. It wanted her to run. Out of the forest, into the open plains. There they were fast, there they could escape. But whatever was circling in the sky wasn’t a bear, wasn’t a puma, and wasn’t a wolf. This was something else. Something her ancient instincts had no answer for. All she had left was her mind. “Mama, what is that?” Princess asked quietly as they followed the edge of the forest, keeping as much distance as possible from the creature. Fina saw the fear, the panic, the terror in her eyes. And she saw how Princess fought it back — forced it down inside herself so she wouldn’t lose control. Fina hadn’t known her daughter could be so grown, so strong. “A vulture, sweetheart,” Fina answered, deliberately calm. “Just a big vulture.” They all knew it was a lie.

Flap, flap, flap. The sound still echoed in Sugar’s ears. His chest felt too tight for his lungs. His legs felt like stiff sticks. The fear was unbearable. And even worse was holding it back — not bolting blindly. His stiff legs probably wouldn’t carry him anyway. Flap, flap, flap. Dear God, walking had suddenly become so hard. His legs seemed to grow stiffer and stiffer. They would give out. He would fall, and the vulture would take him. Flap, flap, flap. He wanted to run. He wanted to stand still. He wanted to scream. He wanted to disappear. None of it made sense, but fear didn’t have to make sense. Flap, flap, flap. These weren’t the right thoughts. And yet Sugar couldn’t stop them. He searched desperately for a thought to hold on to. But everything slipped away from him. Like water. Flap, flap, flap. For a moment, Sugar no longer knew where his legs were. They didn’t belong to him anymore. They were just two sticks someone had shoved underneath him. Flap, flap, flap. Were the intervals getting shorter? Was it coming closer? No — the flapping was only the echo of his memories. Flap, flap, flap. Or maybe not… “I think it’s coming closer,” Princess whispered. Fina lifted her head and turned her ears in every direction. Then she stepped sideways, blocking Sugar and Princess from moving forward. Pressed tightly together, they stood beneath the snow‑laden branches of a pine. Flap, flap, flap. No, he wasn’t imagining it. Flap, flap, flap.

“I know, but it’s true!” Princess grumbled and tossed her head in annoyance. “You’re frustrated, I can see that,” Sugar tried again. “And I get it. But yelling helps us least of all. We already talked about that. And about the humans… honestly, I’m not so sure. The last time I had contact with humans, they tried to kill me.” And? Are you dead? But of course she didn’t say that. “And what’s your suggestion then?” He didn’t understand. Neither of them did. But how could they? They had lived their lives sheltered and safe. They had never felt what it was like when the whole world collapsed around you. When you lost everything. When everything fell apart and nothing was left but loneliness and fear. They simply couldn’t know how helpless a lone horse was. Or how important a safe herd was — no matter how much it restricted you. Humans locked their horses away, but fences and stall walls meant something else too: protection. And damn it, they needed that now more than ever. Sugar opened his mouth to answer, but a sound drowned out his words. It sounded like an impossibly deep bass. So low you could barely hear it, yet it swallowed every other sound around them. A pressure built in Fina’s ears, as if the noise were too… thick, clogging her ear canals. She felt it in her body as well. Her blood seemed to surge, and her bones felt as if they were vibrating — almost as if they were answering the sound with a rhythm of their own, something eerie and wrong. Fina could feel the noise beneath her. It pulsed through the ground like a massive, dark heartbeat. The trees around them trembled, their branches beginning to sway as if in a storm. Snow slid from the heavy crowns. Needles rained down on them. A dead branch crashed to the ground. Then it was over. The sound stopped abruptly, but its echo lingered in the air. The droning in Fina’s ears faded only slowly, replaced by a high, piercing tinnitus. The vibration — the pounding in the earth — lasted longer, underscored by the clatter of branches knocking together. The trees, too, needed time to recover from the shock. “What was that?” Princess finally dared to say. Her voice sounded as if it had to push through syrup to reach Fina’s ears. “I… I don’t know,” Sugar stammered, uncertain. Fina felt an urgent need to protect the two of them. But she had no idea how. She held her head high, ears swiveling in every direction. She hadn’t been able to pinpoint the direction of the sound. It was as if it had come from everywhere at once. But now everything was silent. The trees had stopped swaying, and it felt as if the forest were holding its breath. “Mama,” Princess whimpered softly. Fina had never heard her daughter sound so frightened. “I don’t know, sweetheart.” Fina spoke quietly. Her instincts told her not to disturb the silence of the forest. All the fear, the arguing, the weakness — all of it had vanished in an instant. Gone, just like that! It had happened so fast that Fina could barely grasp it. Now the fear was only a dull throb in her skull. Her mind had switched into survival mode. No time for breakdowns. Deep inside, Fina was grateful to the sound for that. Her eyes scanned the surroundings, alert, but it was her ears that heard it first. It sounded like a distant rushing. A whooshing, broken by a flap, flap, flap. Like a large bird. A bird… It was above them. It was flying. “Under the tree,” Fina instructed quietly. Her instinct told her to run, but Fina forced it down and herded Princess and Sugar beneath the branches of a massive fir. Whatever was flying up there, Fina hoped it wouldn’t see them beneath the heavy green boughs.

They circle above your head, spiraling. Like vultures. Like vultures, they lie in wait. Waiting for it to pass. To be over. Waiting for the moment you can’t go on anymore. Waiting for your defenses to crumble. Waiting for you to die. So they can feed. So they can satisfy their hunger with you. But are they really vultures? Those things circling up there in the sky? Or are they too big? Too dark, too twisted, too wrong? There is something out there. Something that wants your life. And once again, you have to fight not to die like all the others before you.

Sugar’s lecture from a few days ago hadn’t really improved the mood. They all tried not to start any more arguments, but the tension hung over them like the heavy silence before a thunderstorm. And all they could do was hope that this storm would never break. But besides this crushing atmosphere (and the mutated monsters that seemed to lurk behind every bush), there was something else that unsettled Fina: They were alone. Completely alone. She had tried so hard to find protection for all of them. The safety of a herd — even if Sugar and Princess simply didn’t understand that. Then they had found the remains of Luca’s herd, and one thing had become painfully clear to Fina: No one was safe. There was no protection, no safety, no shelter. Nothing could shield them from those things out there. Shit, goddamn shit. They were completely helpless. “Maybe we should head toward a human settlement.” Fina knew how absurd the suggestion was. But she was running out of ideas. And the thought of safety — solid fences, thick walls, a real home… And she had to protect Sugar and Princess. No matter what happened to her, they had to be safe. Nothing should happen to them. Not again. “Why do you always want to submit to someone?” Princess grumbled. “A stallion, humans… can’t you think for yourself?” A crackling, hissing sound filled Fina’s ears. Smoke stung her nose. She felt the burn in her eyes and the heat on her skin. That’s over! You’re here now, that’s the past, it’s all over! She was here. It was cold, there was snow, everything was wet. No fire. That was the past, that was the past! This was the forest. The silent forest. Uncannily silent… But Fina had no room in her mind for that. “That’s not what this is about, Princess!” “Oh yeah? Then explain it to me.” Then explain it to me. She had tried. More than once. But no one ever listened to her. “You don’t understand. Neither of you.” Then tell them. Take the weight off your shoulders. They’re strong — let them help you. No. She would rather die. “Oh right, of course, we’re still independent, thinking beings. We can act on our own!” “Princess!” Please. Please understand. Fina had never imagined raising a foal would be this hard. She felt her hindquarters give way for a moment. She felt her façade cracking again. It wanted to break out — all of it wanted to break out. She wanted to scream, rage, cry, collapse. No! No, she had sworn she would never let that touch her foal. She had endured so much to spare Princess from that. She would not break. Never! She tensed her muscles, forced her legs to keep carrying her. Hopefully Princess hadn’t noticed. “Princess here, Princess there, NOTHING PRINCESS! I’ve had enough!” Fina wanted to reprimand her daughter, but a sharp “Shh!” cut her off. “You’re getting too loud again,” Sugar warned. The scene felt absurdly familiar to Fina. They had stood at this exact point so many times in the past days. And yet nothing had ever changed. And she hated it. She hated the arguing, her fear, her weakness — she hated everything about it. But the alternative… That was even worse.

Stallions were shit, all of them together. Arrogant, stuck‑up, aggressive, pushy, delusional… just every negative trait bundled into one. Princess couldn’t understand why her mother always wanted to follow that kind of guy. Princess wasn’t stupid — she understood the safety a big herd could offer. But why did you need a stallion for that? Why not a herd of mares and geldings? The mood would definitely be better. But no matter what Princess thought of Freedom and Luca, without them things were much harder. Ever since Luca had driven them away, they had run into those bizarre creatures several times — and each time they had escaped only by a hair. Princess, for her part, was slowly getting used to them. As a foal, her worldview wasn’t as fixed as that of the adults. She was constantly learning, didn’t fully understand the world yet, saw new things every day — a few mutated bears and wolves weren’t anything special. Only their uncanny appearance and their… wrongness unsettled her. That eerie mixture of madness and deep, festering malice shimmering in their cold, black eyes. She might have gotten used to living with such creatures — but she certainly didn’t want to. Sugar seemed to handle the situation much like Princess. To some extent, he was just a foal too — constantly learning new things and chronically clueless. Out here, he had even less experience than Princess. For him, life out here was nothing but constant discovery, learning, adapting. Only Fina saw things differently. Every time they encountered one of those “animals,” she completely lost her composure. As if the world were ending because of it. And the only salvation, in her mind, was the big, strong stallion with his submissive harem of mares. Princess had reached all these conclusions during the hours her mother had spent ranting about their helplessness. She had no choice but to flee into psychological analysis and philosophical thoughts — otherwise her mother’s hysterical nagging would have driven her insane. But eventually, everyone’s patience snapped. “Do you want us all to die, or what?” It was always the same. They escaped one of those creatures, and afterward Fina acted as if the world had ended — and tore poor Sugar apart the moment he said a single word. And if he stayed quiet, she tore into him for that instead. And Princess didn’t always manage to tune out. Sometimes her mind felt wiped clean, and she paddled through thick, sticky emptiness, desperately searching for a thought that could pull her out of reality. And sometimes her head just felt… locked. Today was one of those days. “I didn’t even say that…” “Yeah, and? My God, you two stand around like life is just some kind of game! As if dear God himself will show up at the end and fix all your problems!” Fina worked herself further and further up. Her ears were pinned flat, her eyes narrowed, her neck stiff. If only she had ever stood up to Freedom like that. And it was that brief, flickering thought that made something snap inside Princess. She threw her head up, ears flat, nostrils flaring. “My God, Mom! Get a grip already!” “You stay out of this!” “No, I won’t! Your constant whining and nagging and screeching and complaining is driving me insane! Has it changed anything? No, of course not! And have we died yet? No, we haven’t, even though you keep acting like we will any second! So stop crying already, it’s annoying! We can’t change the situation, it is what it is — so just shut up for once!” It felt so good to finally let everything out. To finally shout back after all those years of ducking and bowing. To finally push against all the scolding of the past days. To finally yell, scream, insult — to finally tell her everything that had been bothering her. Fina jerked her head up in alarm. For a moment, her entire body language fell apart. Anger and surprise tangled together, creating a wild display of flicking ears, twitching muscles, and wide, startled eyes. She shifted nervously from hoof to hoof. Not out of anger. Out of fear.

Then Princess’s mother struck back. “Stay out of this! You don’t know anything! You just tag along, make a mess, let others clean it up, and now you’re complaining!? Who do you think you are? Keep yourself alive for once! Organize your own life! If you think you can do it better, then do it yourself!” Those were not the words a child ever wants to hear from its mother — but Princess’s anger drowned out every trace of fear or hurt. Her tail lashed back and forth. She was so sick of it. Always the same complaining! I do this, I do that, I have it so hard! When in truth she did nothing. Nothing but complain, complain, complain! “Hey!” The word cracked through the air like a thunderclap. Especially because it came from such an unexpected direction. “Both of you, be quiet!” Princess had never heard Sugar speak so forcefully. And it worked. The words stuck in her throat, and for a moment she even forgot her anger out of sheer surprise. “If you yell like that, you’ll just attract something again,” Sugar continued, calmer now. “And fighting won’t help us either. Yeah, the situation is shit — there’s no other way to put it. But losing our nerves won’t get us anywhere. We’re here now, and we can’t change that at the moment. And if we fall apart, it’ll only get worse. The only choice we have is to stick together. That’s what a herd is, right? Trust, unity, and all that. And that’s what we need now if we want to survive this.” Sugar would never become a poet in his life, but for now he had calmed the waters. Princess felt as if her anger had literally evaporated. Only a few smoke‑scented wisps remained — and those she could ignore. At least for now. Maybe they had all needed that short fight. To vent, to let everything out once. A good blow‑up, and then you move on. And for a while, things actually did move on quite well. They slowly learned the quirks of their new reality and avoided the horrors lurking out there. A faint sense of normality even began to creep in. For days, the forest had grown quieter. Unsettlingly so. Like the calm before the storm. Fina still insisted they should join another herd. Supposedly because they needed horses with more experience. They needed a stallion — even if Fina never said it out loud. The very thought made Princess’s ears twitch. Stallions. Ugh. Princess still thought those arguments were nonsense, but she forced herself to keep her mouth shut. Because in one thing Sugar had truly been right: a loud fight would only attract unwanted visitors. Fina’s opinion became irrelevant the moment they found Luca and his herd again. Bloody. Gutted. And dead as dead can be. Princess didn’t look closely at the bodies. The thing they had found under the snow some time ago had been more than enough for her. But Luca and his herd had demonstrated one thing with brutal clarity: Even the most experienced wild horses were not safe from whatever was roaming through the forest and the heath.

Luca examined the foal with that arrogant, dismissive look Evening Star despised so much. In moments like this, he thought far too highly of his so‑called “wild horse ancestry.” “But you can’t manage on your own either, can you?” he asked. There was a subtle threat in his voice — one the foal, however, seemed completely unfazed by. “Well, as you can see, we survived just fine without a stallion.” “It’s just that three horses are too few for a herd,” the palomino mare tried to soften her daughter’s words. “Under the… current circumstances, a larger group is simply safer.” The poor mare shifted her weight nervously from hoof to hoof, as if the ground beneath her was burning. She chose her words carefully, but Luca’s assertive posture seemed to stir a deep, simmering fear in her — one she barely managed to keep under control. “Current circumstances? You mean the winter, or those… creatures?” “A bit of both. But mostly the creatures.” The wind carried a scent Evening Star couldn’t place. Sweet. Rotten. Too warm for snow. The mare wasn’t wrong. Something was happening out here. And it was dangerous. Luca eyed her skeptically. “And what do I get from the three of you?” The mare exhaled in brief relief, caught herself and held her breath in shock. “More horses means better chances, right? More eyes, more ears, more noses and all that.” “Aha.” For a moment, an uncomfortable silence settled over them. Luca studied the three horses. The mare looked as though she might melt from sheer fear. Her daughter, on the other hand, stared back boldly, and the gelding didn’t seem to notice the tension in the air at all. He still held himself back — they had probably agreed beforehand that the mare would be the one to speak. “Well, at least you won’t be competing with me for the mares.” This time Luca looked directly at the gelding. “I don’t know what you want from me.” Either the black horse had the patience of a saint and an impressive amount of self‑confidence, or he simply hadn’t understood Luca’s implication again. Whatever it was, he had apparently said the right thing. The strangers couldn’t know it, but Evening Star knew her stallion. She knew every tiny twitch of muscle and exactly what it meant. Luca seemed to be slowly relaxing. His assertive edge softened, leaving room — alongside a great deal of arrogance — for acceptance. The strangers actually had a good chance of finding a new herd. “More horses are also easier to spot, Luca.” At the sound of that high, sugary voice, Evening Star wanted to squeal and kick in every direction. Not because she cared about the fate of these strangers. No — she simply hated that artificial squeaking. And the owner of that dreadful voice. “Ebony isn’t entirely wrong,” Luca said. “And what exactly is your intention? Why did your stallion just let you go?” Evening Star's ears twitched. She would’ve loved nothing more than to pin them flat against her mane and give the black mare beside her a hard bite in the ribs — simply for existing. Ebony always had something to complain about. Always without reason. And always while sucking up to Luca. Evening Star hated her for it with every fiber of her being. Especially because Ebony’s sugary flattery worked far too often. “We’re not property!” the filly shot back again. “It’s not our fault the jerk was a shitty leader!” “Princess!” her mother hissed. She was about to smooth over her daughter’s words, but Luca cut her off. “That’s enough. Ebony is right. Go discipline that foal, then you can come back and maybe I’ll reconsider. Until then, ciao. Get lost!”

Stallions were stupid. Princess had never had an opinion on the matter, but her encounter with the strange herd had changed that. She had thought all stallions were like Sugar (she still didn’t understand the difference between a stallion and a gelding) and that Freedom had just been an odd exception. But this Luca had taught her otherwise.

But when the snow came, the animals became… different. Their bodies began to change. They seemed to twist and knot themselves, their fur turning shaggy before falling out. And their jaws seemed to grow. Wildly. By now, even the native animals were changing. Luca hadn’t seen real wolves in ages. Only eerily twisted mutants that sounded like a choking dinosaur — or at least how Luca imagined a dinosaur would sound, after Ebony had once told him a hair‑raising story about them. You weren’t supposed to see bears at this time of year — they should have been deep in hibernation. Should have. In reality, the heath was overrun by a horde of stump‑legged, torn‑open giant monstrosities that looked very much as if a bear had once wandered into their family tree. For weeks, Luca had been breaking his head over how they could escape this plague before another member of his herd met the same fate. Like Cicero… Luca’s desperate brooding was interrupted when a foreign scent hit his nose. Accompanied by footsteps. Hoofbeats...

Evening Star wasn’t quite sure what to make of the three horses that had crossed their path. There were horses who wouldn’t even call such a tiny, utterly directionless group a herd. That mess, a herd? Pff. What nonsense. As for Evening Star herself — she didn’t really have an opinion on that. Live and let live, that was her motto. A lesson the life she had spent almost entirely out here had taught her well. Evening Star let her gaze drift over the three. Live and let live aside — but they really weren’t a herd. No cohesion, no structure. Just fear, defiance, and cluelessness. The mare looked reasonably capable. Her half‑long, tangled mane suggested a wild horse. Or a now wild horse — Evening Star couldn’t quite tell. But she had definitely been bred by humans, and not for this climate, judging by her thin coat and pitiful shivering. She had a foal with her, which she tried — unsuccessfully — to hide behind herself. But the little filly had no intention of hiding. Curiously she pushed forward, eyeing the strange herd with the confidence of someone who had just conquered the world. Very unlike her own Conny, who always buried herself under Evening Star's belly the moment she saw anything unfamiliar. The strange filly had her mother’s coat color, but her build and long hair clearly came from her unknown father: sturdy, short legs, a square body, and thick, abundant mane and tail. Not bad genes for a wild horse. The herd was led — or rather “led” — by a black gelding. And yes, he was a gelding; Evening Star could smell that. And no, she didn’t find that ridiculous. She had been born in captivity so the concept of a “stallion without stallionhood,” as Luca liked to say, wasn’t foreign to her. And two overly sensitive testicles didn’t make a leader anyway, Evening Star knew that well enough. Reproductive ability was a different matter… “We’re all alone out here,” the mare was pleading at that moment. Luca lifted his head, ears pricked forward, nostrils flaring. A warning shiver ran down his back. “Why are you alone? Don’t you have a herd? Where is your stallion?” He shot the gelding a meaningful — and slightly spiteful — look, but the black horse didn’t seem to understand the implication. The flaxen mare tried to speak again, but her foal cut her off: “He was a miserable tyrant and on top of that dumb as a stump! Really dumb. Even a rabbit would’ve had more sense. No animal with a shred of self‑preservation would’ve stayed with him voluntarily.”

The world out there is an unpleasant place. Full of death, fear, suffering, decay… full of cruelty. Merciless, dangerous. And from that danger you seek protection, like a child. If you’re not alone, the monster can’t get you. Then it won’t come. Then it stays away. The group protects you. The group is there for you. But if the group doesn’t protect you, isn’t there for you, doesn’t want you — then you have to fight. Fight so you don’t die like all the others before you.

Snow meters deep, swallowing every step and making progress difficult. Frozen lakes, trapping precious water inside their sharp‑edged shells. Clammy wetness that weighed down the coat and stiffened the limbs. Icy cold that gnawed through protective fur and settled deep in the bones. And all of that even before the nightly storms. It was going to be a hard winter. Luca did his best to shield his herd from the harsh conditions. But that was difficult when everything edible lay buried under meters of dense, heavy snow, and their only source of water was the wet snow that chilled them from the inside out. Thick fur and warm air pockets offered no protection when the cold came from within. For Luca, none of this was new. He had been born out here, under the blue sky. He had grown up in the heath, knew its moods and its whims. And he knew it was having another bad one. Real, true wild horses were rare. Most of the animals came from humans. They had run away, been abandoned, or simply left behind. They were used to warmth, hay, and safety — constants that were as foreign to Luca as full‑time jobs and gross domestic products. He had never met a human and only knew them from romanticized stories. But even those sugary, soft‑washed tales hadn’t exactly made him appreciate humanity. Selfish, stinking creatures who left their so‑called “companions” in the forest the moment they lost interest in them. Luca was glad he had grown up wild. Free, unbound, owned by no one. He loved this life. At least that’s what he told himself. On days like this, it sounded like a lie. Because in particularly harsh times, when life was being extra unfair again, in his darkest moments, even Luca wished for a warm stable and a mountain of hay. When he hadn’t found anything decent to eat for days, he longed for a big bucket of grain and an automatic waterer. And right now was one of those moments. Not only was this harsh, merciless winter wearing them down — no, the land had also blessed them with a plague of hideous predators. Luca had never seen anything like it before. Grotesque monsters whose bodies twisted as if they couldn’t bear themselves. Too many teeth, too much hunger, too much of everything. They tore apart anything that crossed their path. Just like poor Cicero… No. He couldn’t think about that now! He had more important things to do. And yet Luca’s thoughts kept drifting back to that day. To the images. Blood on cream‑colored fur, blood in the snow, blood on that maw… Blood. Everywhere blood. Enough! Cicero was dead, that was simply how it was. That was life out here, and Luca never tired of insisting how much he preferred this life to a cramped stall and a tiny paddock — despite all its disadvantages. But those animals, those things, just wouldn’t leave his mind. They were a danger to his herd. And especially to him. His pale coat was like a beacon that seemed to draw them in. Humans called the color isabell. Luca called it bullshit. Far too bright, far too conspicuous. As if he were wearing a glowing sign around his neck that read: Hey, eat me! Among the trees he felt even brighter. Even more visible. Even more vulnerable. And those twisted predators seemed to like that especially. Cicero had proven that all too clearly. At the beginning, they had still looked normal. Luca had never encountered such creatures before, but they had seemed natural enough — just a few beasts that had escaped from a zoo, a wildlife enclosure, or some private garden. Nothing more. Luca had heard that humans had a fondness for locking all sorts of animals up in those places.

Her heart stumbled, skipped, lost its rhythm entirely. Her vision narrowed into a gray tunnel in which only the steaming red existed. Something cold crawled up her spine, slowly, like a snail made of ice. Her body grew numb, heavy, foreign. Then everything went numb. A new kind of terror washed over her — a deep, bitter dread that blurred the world around her and turned her body into dead weight. It wiped out all her thoughts and left her suspended in the void between fainting and consciousness. The remains were still there, but Fina didn’t see them. They stank, but she didn’t smell them. They were warm, but she didn’t feel them. Princess and Sugar were talking, but Fina didn’t hear them. She perceived nothing at all, so horrifying was whatever had seized her. She knew instinctively that this was really, really bad. This blood had been buried under the snow for weeks. Weeks. And it was warm. That wasn’t possible. Nothing that had been under snow for weeks should be warm. Nothing should be steaming. Why hadn’t it frozen into the icy slush? Why was it still a puddle? Why hadn’t it cooled? Why was it still so… alive?