A fire crackled in the night, the light cast the shadow of five men on the ground, a sixth stumbled his way to one of the logs from the bushes. He placed his hands in front of him and let the fire warm his cold digits. The air was brisk and the fire helped fend off the cold, snow had yet to fall in the mountains. 

“Aye Jimin, we was worried ye ‘ad fallen off the cliff side” one of the men said. 

“No no. Jus’ a long piss.” He replied

“Did ye wee piece fall off an’ roll away?” one of the other men asked which got a good laugh from everyone.

“Almost.” Jimin laughed along with them as one of the men turned the spit over the fire. Their meat for the night was rabbits. 

The men had traveled the woods as a group of five for a long while until Jimin showed up two days prior. They had been hearing sounds of howling and oddest of all, roars in the night previous to jimin’s appearance. With his arrival the sounds of the night went back to normal. He earned his keep at the fire on the first night by trapping a deer. They had been on a day without catching anything substantial, so they ate like ravenous kings with the meat in front of them. 

They exchanged tales each time they ate, Jimin had let them each have their turn, he heard tales of giant forest creatures, the Monster of the Mountain, the Caves of Renator, and the Jade City. He had heard all of these stories before so he was not affected by any of their scary stories as he had heard many more terrifying things.

“Jimin, Ye’ve voided tellin stories. It be of time ye shared!” another of the men said. Jimin looked around at the group, they were all dirty scoundrels in which he felt a sense of home with. 

“So it be.” He cracked his knuckles and the men looked at him expectantly. “Have ye ‘eard of The Silence?” The answer from the five men was that of a resounding no. 

“Good, after tellin that, I’ve got nother story for ye.” Jimin set about telling them of The Silence. How he had come across a town that it had passed through recently. He had met a group of looters that explained the scene to him as they had found it, but only after they decided that he wasn’t going to interrupt them and that he explained he was just passing through. All of the people’s bodies were decomposing once they got there, some had outside forces of trauma but others had just seemingly fallen over dead with dried blood in their ears. 

The men around the fire looked shocked, one had heard of a tale like that but he told them to continue to listen to his story. They quickly quieted down as they dug into their food. He explained that as the looters explored farther out they found a small shack like house with an old deaf woman as the only occupant. She looked as if she had seen many more terrors than any of them. The deaf woman spoke in a broken manner to where she had to write things down for them to understand. She told them how The Silence had made the town’s slow demise feel like an eternity. She felt the weight of The Silence but it spared her. She was worried that the next terror would not, she told them of The Pack, a story that she heard when she was but a young girl and they all listened closely. 

The men around the fire were eager and pressed him to tell, this was his second story and he knew that they would be shaken by this one. She told them all of how after The Silence passed there was something usually not far behind. The looters asked what she meant and she pointed to the woods and asked if they had heard howling, if they’d heard roars, and or baying. The looters nodded with wide eyes and the woman started to laugh. It was too late for them. It was too late for her. She told them that once the sounds of the pack died down, they didn’t have much time left. The Pack was silently hunting them and they would only know that the pack was upon them once the sounds were upon them.

“Fek off Jimin!” one of the men said as he threw another log in the fire

“Don’t need’ta scare us like that.” another shook his head and Jimin smirked. He wasn’t done with the story. He went on to tell how he helped the old woman get farther from the town and Jimin noticed something odd, she started to look around as if she saw something and then she started to laugh. He told them how he ran away and how her laughing turned into howling and then the sounds of The Pack came from all around. He ran away from that town and didn’t stop until he found his current companions. 

“And that be my scary stories.” He finished off his tale and looked at the men as the fire started to die down. The woods around them had gotten much quieter than they would have liked

“Ohhh it be The Silence” one of the men laughed to break the mood and the others joined in. Then The howling started, the men couldn’t tell if it was coming from Jimin or the woods around them.