Day 2,433

Its antlers grew like a diseased tree - black knot and black rot warping slender branches into burnt and decaying clumps that looked more like a handful of used matches than the forest's own crown and how the forest wept to see it stride. Every plant it passed bowed with remorse and each leaf it brushed by spilled sap like a widow's tears.

It was a kind of living memory, if you could call such an existence a life. All it seemed to do was wander and any animal unfortunate enough to witness it died soon after, the same diseased antlers sprouting from their foreheads regardless of species.

You could easily trace its path for the antlered corpses it left behind and the widow's sap that flowed so freely from the land around them. Now whilst nobody in their right mind would want to follow a creature more death-cursed than any banshee still alive, it was always helpful to know where it had been as it never seemed to retrace its steps.

So long as you didn't see the beast itself, the woods were safer than any town or city.

So long as you kept your head down and minded where the bodies lay.

So long as they weren't too fresh, you were safe.