Hollow Creek has one rule everyone in town repeats like a nursery rhyme: don't go past the treeline on the night of the full moon. Tonight is your eighteenth birthday, and for the first time in your life, that rule feels less like superstition and more like a dare.

The porch light behind you hums. Somewhere down Main Street, your parents think you're asleep. The forest at the edge of the yard breathes with wind that smells like pine and something colder underneath — something with a pulse.

You tell yourself you're only going to the treeline. Just to look.

Your feet decide otherwise.