The lullaby was a ghost in Elara’s throat, a phantom melody that tasted of iron and rot. It was the only thing her mother had left behind, a final, whispered legacy before the Gloomwood had swallowed her whole ten years ago. Hush, little one, the branches will see. Hush, my love, the roots will know. Close your eyes, the Grimm will feed. In Blackwood, such verses were not mere nursery rhymes; they were warnings etched into the very marrow of the town, a quiet prayer and a dreadful prophecy all at once.
Blackwood was a town perpetually draped in twilight, nestled at the crooked finger of a valley. It existed in the shadow of a forest so ancient and malevolent it had earned its name: the Gloomwood. The towering, skeletal pines and black-barked oaks choked the sunlight, their gnarled branches clawing at the sky like the hands of the damned. It was a place where folklore was history, and nightmares were neighbors. Elara felt its presence every day, a low thrum of dread in the air, a weight on her soul. She saw it in the eyes of the older folk, in the way they never turned their backs to the forest, in the charms of woven elder branches that hung over every doorway.
Tonight, the annual Tithe-Eve festival was in full, dissonant swing. It was a celebration born of terror, a tradition to mark another year the town had been spared. The townsfolk, in a macabre display of defiance, donned grotesque masks carved to resemble leering beasts and forest spirits. They paraded through the cobbled streets, their forced laughter a brittle defense against the oppressive quiet that seeped from the forest’s edge. They celebrated the “pact,” the legendary bargain struck by the town’s founders with the forest’s guardian, the Grimm. In return for prosperity—mines that never ran dry and harvests that never failed—the Grimm demanded a tithe. A life. The festival was meant to honor the sacrifice, but Elara knew it was a frantic dance to forget the price. The last tithe had been her mother.
Elara, now twenty, found no comfort in the revelry. She stood apart, near the stone arch that marked the formal entrance to the Gloomwood, a place no sane person would step through after dusk. The chilling melody of the lullaby was a constant hum beneath the surface of the festival’s noise, a cold counterpoint to the fiddles and drums. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of pine, damp earth, and something else, something cloyingly sweet and corrupt. It was the scent of the Gloomwood. The scent of the Grimm.
A cold dread, sharp and sudden, pricked at her skin. She clutched the silver locket around her neck, a smooth, worn oval her mother had given her. It felt ice-cold against her palm. A child, no older than seven, his face painted with the swirling patterns of a firefly, broke away from the crowd. His laughter, pure and high, echoed eerily as he chased a flickering insect toward the treeline. His parents, lost in the chaotic joy of the square, didn’t notice.
But Elara did. She saw the way the shadows seemed to deepen around him, pooling at his feet like thick ink. She saw the way the branches of the nearest black oak seemed to twist, their leaves rustling without a breath of wind, reaching. The very air around the boy seemed to thin, to shimmer with a sick, colorless light.
The lullaby in her mind screamed, the final line a crescendo of terror. The Grimm will feed.
Without a second thought, she broke into a run, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. “Leo! Get back here!” she yelled, her voice raw with a terror she hadn’t felt since the night her mother disappeared.
The child, startled, turned. And behind him, from the inky blackness between two ancient pines, a pair of glowing, amber eyes blinked open. They were not the eyes of any wolf or bear. They were ancient and intelligent, burning with a cold, patient hunger. The shadows coalesced, rising from the forest floor. A shape began to form, a being of woven branches and living shadow, crowned with antlers that seemed to tear at the fabric of the twilight sky.
Elara didn’t stop. She scooped the boy into her arms, the smell of ozone and decay washing over her. She spun around, shielding him with her body, and ran blindly back toward the festival lights, not daring to look back. The sound that followed was not a roar, but a low, resonant crackle, like a great tree splitting in a winter frost. It was a sound of profound disappointment.
She stumbled back into the square, gasping for breath, the child sobbing in her arms. His parents finally rushed over, their faces a mixture of confusion and annoyance that quickly melted into fear when they saw Elara’s stark-white face.
“Keep him away from the woods!” she gasped, her voice trembling. “It’s not sleeping. It’s watching.”
The town elder, a man named Silas with a face like crumpled parchment, pushed through the crowd. He placed a hand on her shoulder, his grip surprisingly strong. “The Grimm is bound by the pact, child. It has been fed. It will not hunt again in our time.”
“I saw it!” Elara insisted, her voice rising. “It was going to take him!”
Silas’s eyes, dark and knowing, held hers. He glanced nervously toward the forest arch. “You are your mother’s daughter,” he said, his voice a low whisper meant only for her. “You see shadows where there are none. Go home, Elara. Do not speak of this.”
His words were meant to soothe, but they were a bucket of ice water on the embers of her fear, igniting them into a cold, hard rage. He wasn’t dismissing her; he was silencing her. He knew. They all knew. They chose to forget, to dance and drink and pretend the monster at their door was a distant fairy tale. But Elara couldn’t forget. Her mother was gone. The lullaby was a permanent scar on her memory.
That night, sleep offered no escape. She dreamt of a forest of bone-white trees under a black sky. She walked on a carpet of dead leaves that whispered her name. The lullaby was the only sound, sung in her mother’s voice, but it was distorted, weeping. She saw her mother at the edge of a clearing, her back to Elara. She called out, but her mother didn’t turn. Instead, she slowly raised her arms, and from the ground, gnarled roots snaked up, wrapping around her legs, her waist, her neck, pulling her down into the earth. As her mother’s head disappeared beneath the soil, the lullaby stopped, and a new sound began: a deep, guttural chuckle that vibrated through the very ground Elara stood on.
She woke with a gasp, the sheets damp with sweat, the final notes of the phantom lullaby fading in her ears. In the oppressive silence of her small room, a decision crystallized, hard and clear as winter ice. Silas was wrong. She wasn’t just seeing shadows. She was the only one willing to look at them. The town could hide behind its traditions and its lies, but she would not. She would find out what truly happened to her mother, and what the Grimm truly was. Her investigation would not start in the town archives, filled with the founders’ lies. It would start with the only two things her mother had left her: a locket and a lullaby. And it would end in the one place she feared most: the Gloomwood.
