Nitkim

"RUN AWAY, SWEETHEART, DADDY WILL KEEP YOU SAFE, BUT YOU RUN HOME, OKAY?! RUN, BABY, RUN!"

— A missing father

Dread

The air lies heavy when the nitkim are around, the very earth shying away at their presence. With every step they take, the grass, the flowers, the life of the earth, it all wilts in their path. Their claws reaching down past their knees before they stretch out towards you, beckoning you to get closer and closer.
The dark grows closer, the faint flicker of hope that you carry within you suddenly...disappears.
They aren't the bearers of death or the darkness, they hold your fears. Every fear within you, from the spiders you hate to see crawling near you, to that primal fear of being caught in the night, all the way down to the deepest, darkest fear you hold buried in chains within your soul, they all crawl up your throat, begging to be released, begging to be set free once more. They beg to tear your mind and soul apart, to make you succumb to their nightmares, to make you become nothing but fear.

Hopelessness

The very bodies of the nitkim incite terror, their limbs stretched thin, their claws long and dripping with shadow, their faces dark and emaciated. Their hollow eye sockets piercing through to your very core, their jaw hanging open with barely threads of black muscle keeping it from falling entirely.
They are born from the collective fear of everyone across the Eight Lands, and summoned in the darkest corners of the darkest places. You can never kill a nitkim, you can only return it to its summoning place, just as you can never kill fear.
You may banish fear, for a time, but it will return with a vengeance, over and over again. Its strength builds with your resistance, its aggression heightens with your panic. The more you fight it, the less you can survive. The claws of the nitkim and of fear itself will drag across your chest, wrapping around you, pulling you into the shadows and plunging you into a world with no light, a world born of fear.

Lifespan

∞

Average Height

6 - 8 feet

Average Weight

Unknown