The horse stood in the field, his coat dirty and rough, his breath clouding the cold air. He was free now, alone in a place where no one could touch him. The open land stretched out before him, but he felt trapped, like this freedom was some cruel joke. Every corner of the earth was an empty space, a place where he was meant to die. He couldn't run from that, no matter how fast he went.
He had been wild once, long ago. He had run through forests, kicked up dirt on rocky hills. But that felt like someone else's life now. That horse, that wild thing, was long gone.
The night was his only companion now. The stars above him seemed distant and uncaring, no different from the ground he stood on. Nothing ever cared about him. A few crows circled overhead, but they didn't make a sound, as if even they knew better than to approach.
A cold breeze stirred the dead grass. His hooves scraped across the dirt, echoing through the silence. The field stretched out forever. Or maybe it didn't. He wasn't sure anymore. The world had always been too big, too small, and too empty. There wasn't a single thing that made sense. But it didn't matter.
His heart beat in time with the wind, each thump feeling like it meant less. He had been running for so long, but the chase had stopped. There was no finish line anymore. It was just him, and the space, and the silence that screamed at him with every breath.
Then he heard something, a sound so faint at first, he thought it was just his mind playing tricks. But then it grew louder, the softest scrape against the earth. Like claws in the dirt. His ears flicked forward, but he didn't move. There was nothing in front of him, nothing behind him. Just the dead sky, the dry air, the wind.
And then, there was a shift in the land itself. The ground moved, as if it had woken from its long sleep, a shiver running through it. The crows had stopped circling. There was nothing. No birds, no wind, no life.
A sound broke the silence, sharp and sudden. It was the crack of bone, the grinding of metal against metal, a deep, violent scrape. The horse spun around, his hooves skidding, the earth beneath him like glass, fragile and cold. His heart pounded, each beat harder, faster, until it hurt.
A figure appeared in the distance. It wasn't human, and it wasn't animal. It was something else. A thing, a shape that didn't belong. It seemed to be crawling toward him, dragging itself through the dirt, getting closer, closer with each movement. The air grew cold, but not from the wind. From the thing.
The horse wanted to run. He wanted to escape, to gallop as far as he could, but his legs wouldn't obey. They were frozen, stuck in place. His breath came in short bursts, his body stiff with terror.
The figure crawled faster, now so close that the horse could smell the rot in its skin, the stench of death. It hissed, a sound so unnatural that the earth itself trembled.
The horse turned, but there was nowhere to go. No way out. The field had closed in, and the thing was too close now. Too close to escape.
He fell to his knees, the last of his strength gone. He was ready to die. Ready for it to end.
Then it reached him. And the ground beneath him cracked open. The last thing he heard was the scrape of metal against bone. Then everything went black.