Eyes of the Wendigo

Prologue

The snow fell like it always did, heavy and relentless, turning the world around Robert "Rob" Mercer into a frozen wasteland. His breath came in sharp, ragged bursts, the cold slicing through his lungs like shards of glass. Every step felt like a struggle—each footfall sinking into the deep drifts, the soft crunch of the snow beneath his boots a lonely, rhythmic reminder of how far he'd come. But he didn't know where he was going anymore. That sense had left him hours ago.

The trees loomed tall, black spires against the white canvas of the world, their branches weighed down with thick layers of snow. The forest was eerily silent, save for the occasional groan of a distant tree under the pressure of winter's burden. Rob felt that weight in his bones. The cold had seeped into his skin, burrowed into his muscles, and gnawed at his insides. He had no memory of when the cold had started, only that it had never let up.

He paused, squinting through the swirling white fog that was both snow and sky. There was nothing out there but the oppressive silence, the ever-present weight of isolation. Somewhere, deep within his chest, panic clawed its way upward, but Rob forced it down. He had to stay calm. Panic would only make things worse. He glanced around, his breath steaming in front of him. His eyes darted from tree to tree, each one blending into the other, their snow-covered trunks creating a maze with no visible way out.

The village of White Pines was out there, somewhere, buried in the same blizzard that had swallowed him. It had to be.

He forced his legs to move, trudging forward, arms hanging limp at his sides, his rifle long forgotten. His mind felt as numb as his body, clouded by the frostbite creeping into his fingers and toes. His thoughts came in slow, broken fragments. Images. Faces. Memories that didn't quite stick. He tried to hold onto something—anything—but his mind wouldn't let him focus. His only thought, the one that repeated like a sick mantra in his head, was the name. Wendigo.

It had started as a whisper, back when the snow first began to fall heavier than usual, when the hunters returned from the woods with stories of missing men and strange sightings. Rob hadn't believed it, not at first. None of them did. They were men of the wilderness—men who understood the land, the animals, the harshness of survival. But something had changed. The forest, their hunting ground, had turned against them. It wasn't the wildlife, though. It wasn't even the cold, though the winter had come early and hit hard. No, it was something else, something no one could quite explain.

And now Rob was out here, lost in that same forest, the Wendigo's name on his lips.

He stumbled, his knees buckling beneath him, sending him sprawling into the snow. For a moment, he lay there, his face pressed into the cold, wet blanket beneath him. The numbness spread, but he welcomed it. Maybe if he stayed down, it would all go away. Maybe he would sink into the snow and disappear. Maybe he'd never have to stand up again.

But then he heard it. A sound, faint but unmistakable. A rustling in the trees. His pulse quickened, a sharp jolt through the haze of exhaustion and cold. Rob's fingers twitched, instinctively reaching for the knife at his belt. He pushed himself up onto his knees, squinting through the falling snow. His breath caught in his throat.

There, between the trees, something moved.

He froze, heart pounding in his chest. At first, he thought it was just another hallucination—he'd been seeing things for hours now, shadows where there were none, flickers of movement just out of sight. But this... this was different. It was real.

The shape was wrong. Tall, too tall, standing on two legs but bent at odd angles. It moved with an unnatural, jerking motion, as if its limbs didn't quite work the way they should. Rob's mouth went dry, his heart hammering in his chest as the figure grew closer, the outline becoming clearer with each step it took toward him. It was close enough now that he could make out details—a twisted, gaunt figure, its skin stretched tight over bones, eyes sunken deep into its skull.

He tried to speak, to shout, but the words wouldn't come. His mouth opened, but nothing emerged but a shallow gasp, the air freezing in his throat.

The thing paused, its head tilting unnaturally as it regarded him. For a moment, Rob was certain it wasn't human. It couldn't be. But then its face caught the light, and he saw something familiar in its hollow gaze. His breath hitched. He knew that face.

"Rob...?"

The voice was a whisper, a broken rasp that barely carried through the snowstorm. But Rob knew it. He knew that voice. It was his voice.

The figure staggered closer, and Rob's mind splintered under the weight of recognition. He was looking at himself. The thing standing before him, twisted and wrong, was him. The face was his face, though gaunt and skeletal, the eyes hollow and empty.

"No..." he muttered, backing away on his hands and knees, the snow seeping through his clothing. "No... no..."

The other Rob—the thing—took another step closer, its head twitching unnaturally, the same way Rob had seen animals do just before death. He tried to crawl backward, but his limbs wouldn't cooperate. His legs were too weak, his body too cold.

The thing crouched down, its face inches from his own, its breath a sickly, warm stench that cut through the icy air. Rob gagged, his vision blurring, the cold and fear overwhelming his senses. The thing opened its mouth, and from deep within its throat, Rob heard a word. Just one word.

"Wendigo."

Rob screamed.

The sound barely made it past his lips, swallowed by the snow and the wind and the terror that gripped him. His mind fractured, shattered by the impossibility of what he was seeing. The thing grinned, its teeth jagged and yellow, too sharp, too wrong. Rob tried to scramble away, but it lunged, pinning him to the ground, its cold fingers wrapping around his throat.

The last thing Rob saw before the world went dark was his own face staring down at him, empty and hollow, as the snow continued to fall.

Rob wasn't found for another three days. By then, the storm had passed, leaving behind a bitter, frozen silence. The village of White Pines had sent out search parties, hunters and trappers familiar with the wilderness, but the snow had made the search almost impossible. For days, they found nothing. No tracks. No clues. Nothing but an endless sea of white, broken only by the dark spires of the trees that stretched toward the sky like skeletal hands.

It was Elias Conroy who found him. Elias, the oldest and most experienced hunter in the village, had known Rob since he was a boy. He had led the search party, pushing deeper into the forest than the others had dared, despite the warnings from the elders. He didn't believe in the legends. He didn't believe in the Wendigo.

But when he found Rob, his beliefs faltered.

The body was frozen, stiff and contorted in a grotesque position. Rob's eyes were open, wide with terror, staring up at the sky. His mouth was twisted into a scream that had never made it past his lips. The snow around him was undisturbed, as if he had simply fallen and died on the spot. No tracks. No struggle. Nothing.

Elias knelt beside the body, his breath a mist in the frigid air. He reached out, hesitating only for a moment, before closing Rob's eyes. The sight of them—the frozen terror etched into his features—made something twist in Elias' gut. He had seen death before, more times than he cared to count, but this... this was different.

He didn't know what had killed Rob. The cold, maybe. Exposure. But something about it didn't feel right. It wasn't just the way the body was positioned, or the eerie stillness of the scene. It was the absence of anything. The emptiness. As if the forest itself had swallowed Rob whole and spat him back out, leaving nothing behind but his frozen shell.

Elias stood slowly, his knees creaking with the effort. He looked around, his eyes scanning the tree line, searching for something—anything—that could explain what had happened. But there was nothing. Just the wind, whispering through the trees, and the distant sound of his men calling out for him.

He turned back to Rob's body, staring down at it for a long moment. Then, almost without realizing it, his lips moved, and he whispered a single word to the empty forest.

"Wendigo."