The Cult Revealed

Smoke and moonlight blurred the shapes beyond the trees, each breath catching harsh in Harper’s throat. They moved in a silent knot—Mia stumbling, Tori whispering, Danny pale and blazing with fear. The bloody trail behind them was fading in darkness, but something—someone—was still coming closer. The woods pulsed, every shadow alive.

They almost tripped into it: a harsh, orange flare drew Harper’s eyes through the branches, and then firelight painted grotesque figures onto the trunks. Not a campfire—bonfires, throwing up smoke that reeked of burning sweetgrass and something raw. The woods opened around a clearing raked bare, hemmed in by a lopsided ring of standing stones. At the center, looming under the rage-red moon, stood an altar built from stacked timber and animal bones, stained with fresh blood.

Harper yanked Mia down, pulling the others behind a tangle of fallen logs at the edge of sight. Breath held. Tori pressed shaking fingers to her lips, eyes wide as saucers. Danny crawled beside them, his hands ground into the dirt so hard his skin split and bled.

The clearing churned with motion—at least a dozen, maybe more, masked figures in black and ochre robes. Their masks—animalistic, hand-carved, all wild grins or fangs—reflected the bonfire’s shifting light. One stood taller, crowned in a stag skull glistening with paint. The leader’s guttural chant carved through the hush, each syllable carried and echoed by the mob.

"Is that—" Mia started, voice strangled by terror.

Harper shook her head, shushing her silent. The cultists moved in patterns, raising twisted objects: sticks ringed with hair, blades that caught the bonfire’s gleam, bowls brimming with viscous red. At the altar’s base: objects unmistakably out of place—Lex’s muddy lighter, Tori’s friendship bracelet, the bent iron ring Danny wore.

"They’ve been here, waiting," Tori breathed. "That’s my—oh god, that’s mine."

Someone screamed. Not Lex—sharper, shorter. A figure in a grey hoodie—another captive, maybe?—was dragged to the altar, limbs kicking. Their cries were muffled by masked arms as two cultists pinned them to the blood-wet wood. The leader lifted a knife—crude, bone-handled, sickeningly real. The chant rose. The group froze, Harper’s heartbeat pounding so loud she was sure the cult would hear.

Danny inched backward, almost tumbling over the log. Branches snapped. Harper tried to catch him, but his foot caught, kicking up soil and snapping dry twigs like firecrackers.

Three of the masked figures jerked around—alert, searching. Harper clawed Danny down beside her, but his face reflected the bonfire, panic-blank. One cultist’s mask—a wolf’s snarl—cocked right at them. Silence. Scratch of bodies moving through leaves. Then:

A hand seized Danny by the collar, yanking him upright. He yelped—a raw, choking spasm. Cultists converged, two dragging him toward the open mouth of the clearing, toward the altar. Tori stifled her scream behind both hands; Mia went white, eyes locked on Danny as he clawed at the ground, fingers raking furrows in the dirt. His sobs cut quick and desperate, swallowed by the chanting.

Harper’s mind scrambled. There were too many, all moving in a rhythm—no hope for a straight rush. She scanned—the fire’s halo barely masked a sliver of dark at the clearing’s far end, a skinny line marked by bent branches and animal prints, almost invisible but undeniably a path.

She yanked at Mia’s sleeve, shoving close so Tori and Mia could hear. "Look. There. A trail. Maybe it’s—maybe it curves out. We could—”

Tori shook her head. "Danny. We can’t just—"

Mia whimpered, torn, knuckles white in the soil. Danny’s shouts—now pleading, gurgling—spun through the night. The cult’s leader raised the knife, a reflective mosaic of red on white bone. The group’s own keepsakes, arrayed like trophies, circled the altar: toothbrush, old sock, broken phone.

"We'll die if we stay," Harper hissed, feeling each word tear her insides. "If we try to get him, we die. But if we go—maybe we bring help."

Mia’s face crumpled.

The path yawned in darkness, the woods pressing close. The cultists chanted, voices roaring. Danny’s shape was held between two masks, his head forced down against the altar. Blood, not his yet—but Harper’s mind already saw it spilling.

Harper’s body moved without her consent—she slid sideways, yanking Tori by the elbow, hauling Mia close. A snap, a hush, the risk of being seen. Every instinct screamed at her to turn back—she saw Danny’s eyes, wide and wet, meeting hers as the darkness swallowed her from view.

The animal path was barely a depression in the ground, lined by shattered ferns. Each step was agony, the night pressing into them, the bonfire's roar chasing after. Behind them, a scream spiked the sky and cut short. Harper didn’t let herself look back. She couldn’t. Not if she ever wanted to save any of them at all.