During the cold month of November, an artist lived in his derelict cottage on the edge of the town of Acadea. He was a solitary person, only interacting with the locals to buy food from the local market. He lived in recluse, and people thought of him as an eccentric person, but nothing to be frightened of.

The artist took much pride in his work. He often spent days without sleeping in order to finish one painting, and afterwards he would immediately start a new one. During these times, letters from his family and friends would often pile up beneath the mail slot at the foot of the door, for he often ignored them in order to pursue his work. Today, he looked over at the many letters and decided it was about time he read them. He opened the first letter and it was from his mother. She complained about how he rarely wrote back and that she and his father were worried. The letter left a pit in his stomach. He started to think about his old home, and he quickly became homesick. He hurriedly shook these feelings away. His parents did not understand the brilliance of his work and he should not let their ignorance invade him and cloud his judgement. After reading the first letter, he no longer thought it was worth his time to shift through all of them, so he hurriedly wrote a repsonse and mailed them.

The cycle of tireless work repeated itself until one day, the artist found himself unable to gather inspiration for his new artwork. He was distraught, for what would his purpose be if he could not create new art? He sat in his cottage, tapping his foot against the ground trying to think of a way around his problem. Finally, he reached a decision. He gathered his supplies and ran out into the adjacent woods in order to gain new inspiration.

The woods were infamous in the town of Acadea. Stories and folktales were often shared between the denizens. Stories of ghouls and demons prowling within the darkness of the shadows and within the crevices in the ground. This did not deter the young artist, for as he walked down the unkempt path he looked only towards his goal. Whilst he was walking, he started day dreaming. He dreamed about the glory he would attain when he showed the public his art pieces. He dreamed about the legacy he would leave behind like those of Da Vinci and Van Gogh. He soon became lost in his dreams, and before he knew it the sun set and the woods became bathed in a dark veil of black.

The poor artist stopped walking and looked around. He realized he was lost. He called for help, but his voice was swallowed by the endless shadows. He panicked, his heart thumped loudly within his chest. He collapsed onto his knees. His paints spilled everywhere and his brushes clattered loudly onto the ground. The artist began to sob. His cries and pleas for help echoed between the tall trees and reached the ears of another being.

The pathetic cries piqued the interest of this entity, and it began to make its way towards the sobbing man. The being finally reached him and stepped closer to the artist. It bent over his pathetic stature and watched as he sobbed and cried, and it began laughing. It laughed, and laughed, and laughed, until the artist stopped crying and looked up to see the tall entity standing above him. He saw the gleaming yellow eyes that it had and how most of its body was obscured by leaves and foliage. The only shape he could make out in the darkness was that of its large antlers. The entity stopped laughing and looked down at the man. And the artist saw. He saw the large maw of the monster open up and speak to him.

Oh, poor little artist the being said, An artist that cannot draw is not much of an artist, isn`t he? Its mouth curled into a smile and laughed.

A being that cannot fullfill their purpose. . .

The artist felt a sharp pain cut through his wrists and he screamed once again. The entity laughed loud, his laughter overlaying that of the artist`s screams of agony. He looked up, to beg the entity, to scream at it and ask it why, but he saw that the entity had gone. And the artist weeped louder.

Deep within the woods, the entity set the severed hands onto the soil. The hands melted into the soil. The being disappeared into the bushes, never to be seen by the eyes of men for many years.

At the crack of dawn, the dirt where the hands have corroded began to move. An arm shot up from beneath the earth and clawed the rest of its body out. The body crawled out from underneath the soil and looked up into the sky, bathed by hues of orange and blue by the sunrise, with its glowing yellow eyes.

The townspeople murmured amongst themselves. Anthony pushed the crowd away to make a way for himself to see what all the commotion was about. When he got to the front of the crowd his eyes widened and his mouth went agape. There, at the edge of the woods, lay the body of the artist, however his hands have been amputated off, leaving only clean stumps.

Acadea did not rest well. Despite the artist being regarded as a recluse and eccentric, it was still a shock to the small town to see him die in such a peculiar way. A young girl stared out of the window of her bedroom, pondering the oddity, and watched as four crows fly out from the woods and cry as if mocking the townspeople and cursing the town.