Conifer trees stood guard like silent sentinels, casting a comforting gloom which rang with the rustlings and muted calls of scuttling creatures. Dense shrubbery coated the forest floor in a shroud of mottled green, livening up the otherwise monotonous brown hue of the loamy earth that bore so much life. Bird calls rang, sharp as knives slitting the throat of the otherwise relative silence, and causing sensitive ears to be pressed tightly to a blue-black skull. He moved like a wraith twixt the tree trunks, slippery as liquid mercury and stirring barely a leaf with his passing. Each pawstep was calculated, every movement preordained as though the dancer knew precisely what ripples a misstep would cause and reacted accordingly. Even the watchful, listless forest did not notice his passage, its inhabitants too busy going about their day to utter the briefest of alarm calls. On another such afternoon, and with another such beast, this fact may well have been their undoing. However, the silent stalker was not hunting this day but, instead, he was running. Not, perhaps, in the physical sense of the word, but his invisible soul was fleeing fast as it could, hoping it would at last be able to outrun the spirits that haunted its daily existence and clouded its vision with vapors. Perhaps silence was key, and the scents of a strange land filled with strange wolves would cloak him from the daily torment. At least, these were the thoughts running through the listless mind of the warrior rogue as he ghosted his way towards an uncertain future.

Before too long, his nostrils filled with the rich scent of tepid water and he froze, discerning the source as somewhere to his right. Glancing in the direction, he noted the beginnings of a steaming marshland, its greenish surface dappled with shadow. In between these dark, cool voids, he made out dust motes dancing just above the surface where the light broke through. At first he was struck by the majesty of such a sight, but the awe dissipated swift as sweat evaporating on a summer's day, for it was in that place that they found him again.

“why did you run?”
“did you think we wouldn't find you? You should know by now that we cannot leave you alone. You're fated to us, as we are to you.”
“Don't listen to him, you have a choice. A simple decision, a slow descent into darkness. It would be quick, and then we'd all be free!”

For a moment, he was horrostruck, jaws agape and eyes rolling with trepidation. The spirits only smiled back mockingly as they always did, rolling above the murky waters as if there were no place on earth they'd rather be. He shivered, suddenly cold despite the warmth of the air around him. The ghosts only laughed and floated closer, a motion he greeted with a desperate warning snarl. Unsurprisingly, the mist paid him no heed and he dropped his head to his chest in defeat.

“We knew we'd find you, funny how easily you think you can escape, and then how easily you give in. You're like a coyote, a mangy coyote at a bear kill.”

The wolf shut his eyes in a vain attempt to banish the voices, but still they flung themselves around inside his head until he thought he would go mad. He had been plagued by the specters since he had come of age. One day they had arrived and from that moment on he could never be free of them.It was about that time too that his voice had vanished, dried up like a well in a desert.His father had been happy to see the tail-end of him after that, and so he had become a nomad, moving constantly in the hopes of finding rest. Yet wherever he went, the ghosts would follow and always he would be forced to move on. This time, however, he had promised himself that, spirits or no spirits, he would settle wherever his weary pawsteps brought him. This was the reason he greeted their arrival with such dismay, for it had been his last hope of evading them and now it was gone, leaving behind an anguish so raw that it festered. Alas, no matter his inner emotions, life always continued regardless, and he had either to catch the wave and ride with it, or fall into the ocean and drown, his very memory vanished with his last breath. A warrior by nature, he had chosen the former and, instead of moving into the dark heart of the marsh, he turned his back on his unwelcome companions and began to head in the opposite direction.