The Beast of the Hollow Needle
"Silver bright, silver cold,
Leave it there and do as told.
Step too close, the dark will call,
And you’ll come back… but not at all."
The Hollow Needle does not belong to this world.
The land raised it against its will, forced it skyward when the Agriss Mountains buckled and broke, tearing through the ancient veins of the earth. It is not a place of worship. It is not a ruin of some forgotten people. It is something else. Something older. Something that was never meant to be found.
No trees grow near it. No animals nest in its crevices. The wind bends around it in unnatural ways, carrying no sound of its own. Only echoes of things that should not be remembered. When people speak of it, they do not call it by name.
They say only this. It is watching.
The first to set foot inside were miners, drawn by greed. They had no fear of old stories. They had no time for the nonsense of frightened shepherds or the vague warnings of elders who refused to explain themselves. Arin Silver was rumored to run deep beneath the Needle’s base, and where there is silver, men will follow.
They did not make it far.
The tunnels inside were too smooth, as if something had moved along them for a long time. Passages that should have curved doubled back on themselves, swallowing light in ways that defied understanding. Some men swore they heard echoes before they spoke. Their own voices came back wrong, stretched out, unfinished. Others reported the feeling of being studied. Not followed. Not hunted. Observed.
Then the first man vanished.
The second was found days later, sitting against the stone. His face was slack. His breath stilled. His fingers curled around something that was no longer there. The third was never found at all.
The miners left. The silver did not matter anymore. But some things do not care if they are abandoned.
It does not need to chase.
That is the worst part.
Stories tell of the creature inside, though no two accounts are ever the same. Some call it a beast, a thing of muscle and hunger, its limbs twisted into shapes that do not belong to any natural predator. Others claim it is a shadow, something that flickers along the walls of the Hollow Needle, watching, waiting. A few, only a few, say it is neither. They say it is something that wears the shape of those who stray too close.
And sometimes, they say, it walks away.
There have been sightings. Never close. Never long enough to be sure. Figures moving through the fog. Walking too smoothly. Too carefully. As if remembering how to move. Travelers found wandering, confused, unable to recall where they had been. A merchant once stumbled into a village at dawn. His clothes were torn. His skin pale as death. He sat by the fire, silent for hours, staring at his hands as if seeing them for the first time.
He did not speak again.
That night, he was gone. His boots remained by the door. His coat was still folded at the hearth. There were no footprints leading away.
When his name was spoken, the wind did not carry it.
There are rules.
No one who knows the old stories enters the Hollow Needle. Those who must pass near it do not call out to lost travelers. They do not answer when a voice, not quite right, not quite wrong, calls from the dark.
They leave offerings of silver at its base, though no one remembers why. Some say Arin Silver keeps the thing inside at bay. Others say the silver is not protection. It is a bargain. Proof that the traveler still belongs to the world of the living.
But above all, they do not turn around.
If they see something, just beyond the firelight, they do not look too long.
Because if it was truly someone lost. Truly someone returned.
They would have called out first.
"We found the remains of the trader last night. Or what was left of him. I hesitate to use the word body because that implies it was something that had once been whole. The bones were not broken so much as misplaced. Arranged. Some still had muscle stretched over them, but it was wrong. Pulled in directions the joints do not allow. The head was missing. Not torn off. Not severed. Just... gone. We followed the trail as far as we dared, but it ended at the Hollow Needle. And before you ask, no. We did not go inside. I know what the old stories say. I know what the others think they hear in the wind. But I also know this. There were no signs of a struggle. No blood. No footprints leading away. Whatever did this, whatever moved him like a doll and left him in the grass, he never fought it.
"The Hollow Needle is not like other mountains. It does not erode. It does not shift. It does not breathe with the wind. It stands apart, watching. The air is thick here. The silence too deep, as if sound itself is swallowed before it can take shape. I have seen no animals. No tracks. Not even the bones of those who came before me. Only smooth stone and the unsettling sense that I am not the first to walk this path. Only the latest. I have left my silver, but I do not think it cares. I have called out, but the mountain does not answer. And yet I do not feel alone.
"It wasn’t a wolf! Wolves don’t watch you while they kill!"
terrifying utterly terrifying.
thank you <3!!!!!
the stats are so cool.
These took a lot to work out. This was a 2nd Edition convert.