The moon hung high over a quiet town, its pale light illuminating streets that no longer bustled with life. The world had grown too quiet. The air had a strange stillness to it, an absence that hadn't been there before. People stopped talking. The laughter of children faded. Babies, infants barely a year old, began to vanish, disappearing from their cribs and beds in the dead of night.
It started small. One or two infants gone, but then the numbers grew. A mother in a small village woke to find her baby gone, the crib still warm, the blanket still twisted where the child had slept. Panic spread. Newspapers reported the disappearances, but there were no answers. No evidence. No tracks.
The authorities were at a loss. There were no suspects. No one saw anything. And then it spread. From city to city, country to country. Children vanished in silence, no trace left behind, no warning. But the most terrifying part was the bodies found afterward. They didn't look like babies at all anymore.
It was impossible to describe them. Deformed, skeletal remnants of what once were living, breathing children. Their skin, tight and stretched, as if it had been peeled too tightly over a frame too small. Their faces, once soft, now etched with grotesque, haunting expressions. The eyes were wide open, empty of life, as if something had sucked every ounce of it out, leaving only hollow shells.
Megan, a young woman with a child of her own, had thought she could escape it. She moved to the countryside, away from the cities, away from the growing fear. The villagers spoke of the disappearances, their voices low, wary. They didn't trust the authorities anymore. No one knew what was really happening. But they all knew it was something bigger, something far beyond what any human had ever encountered.
Megan lived in a small house on the outskirts of town. Her son, Ethan, was only a few months old, but already, he had begun to show signs of the same brightness every child showed before the world turned cold. Megan had kept him close, locked inside during the nights when the fear was the strongest. But that didn't seem to matter. It was always in the back of her mind, this creeping dread that never let go, no matter how far she went to try to escape it.
One night, as she rocked Ethan to sleep, the house fell unnaturally quiet. Not the usual silence of night, but a deep, suffocating quiet that seemed to press against the walls. The wind had stopped. There were no crickets. No animals rustling in the bushes. Only the thick, oppressive stillness. Megan felt it settle on her shoulders, a weight she couldn't shake. She tightened her grip on Ethan and whispered a soft lullaby, but even the soft, familiar tune felt wrong.
A noise at the window startled her. A tapping. Soft, almost imperceptible. It was the only sound that had dared disturb the silence, and it chilled her to the bone. She stood, cradling Ethan in her arms, and moved toward the window, her eyes darting nervously around the room. The tapping came again. Closer. A steady, rhythmic sound, like claws against glass.
Megan's breath caught. She froze for a moment before edging closer to the window, her pulse quickening. The wind had picked up, howling through the trees, but the tapping remained. She pulled the curtain aside and peered out into the darkness. There was nothing. No movement, no figures, just the night.
Her heart thudded in her chest. It was insane. There was nothing out there. But the tapping... it didn't stop. It grew louder, more insistent, until it felt as though the sound itself was coming from inside her head. She backed away from the window, clutching Ethan tighter, and took a slow breath to steady herself. Then, she heard it again. A low, crooning voice. Soft, melodic. Almost a song.
Her eyes snapped to the door, to the sound that crept in from the hallway. The voice was clearer now, threading through the dark like a thread of silver, twining itself around her thoughts.
And then, it stopped.
Silence.
But the silence wasn't what she had known before. This silence was different. It was unnatural. Deep. Like the world had stopped turning. The air felt thick with something... something that wasn't right.
A low creak came from the hallway. The floorboards groaned under the weight of something moving. Megan's pulse pounded in her ears. She took a step backward, still holding Ethan close, trying to breathe evenly.
Another creak. Louder.
Something was out there. Something wasn't human.
The crooning started again, but now it was joined by a low hum, like the distant drone of a hornet's nest. The door in front of her trembled under the weight of whatever stood beyond it. The handle rattled. Slowly, it turned. Megan's heart skipped a beat. The door opened just a crack, and a flicker of pale, sickly light spilled into the room.
A figure, tall and unnaturally thin, stepped into the doorway.
Megan's breath hitched as she saw its features, twisted and deformed, as though shaped by a thousand nightmares. Its skin, sickly pale, stretched tight over a skeletal frame, and its eyes glowed faintly in the dim light, too wide and too hollow to be human. Its mouth hung open in a silent snarl, the edges of its lips curled in something that might have been a smile. But it was not a smile meant for a human.
The figure's gaze turned toward Ethan, and for a split second, Megan thought it would be over. That it would take him from her, like the others.
But it didn't move.
Instead, it tilted its head, studying them both. Megan's blood ran cold. The figure seemed to know everything about her. Everything she had feared. The way it looked at her, with such unnatural understanding, made her want to scream.
But she couldn't. Her throat felt tight, and her limbs were frozen.
And then, the figure spoke. Its voice was like the rustling of dead leaves, sharp and hollow, and it sent a chill crawling down Megan's spine.
"The Fae do not play with mere mortals," it said, its voice a rasping hum. "You should not have brought a child into this world."
The words hung between them. An icy truth. A recognition of something that had been happening across the globe. The Fae had come to claim the children, to wipe humanity away one soul at a time. They fed on fear, on the helplessness of a mother.
Megan felt a shift. She knew, without a doubt, that it was already too late. She could feel the heavy, cold presence creeping in around them, filling the room with a darkness so deep, it swallowed every thought, every breath. The Fae were here to take what they wanted. And they would leave nothing behind.
The figure stepped forward, its eyes still locked on Ethan, its mouth stretching into a wide grin that could never have been called human. Its long fingers reached toward the child, its talons gleaming in the low light.
Megan screamed then, but her voice was lost in the dark. There was no one left to hear.
The Fae took Ethan, its fingers curling around his tiny body, and in that moment, Megan understood. This was the end. The world would be left with nothing but silence, broken only by the occasional crinkle of paper, the brittle sound of bones. A world where humanity would slowly disappear, a memory fading into nothingness. The Fae would claim every last child, every last shred of life.
And when the last child was gone, the Fae would leave behind nothing but shadows and dust.