...

Last updated: 12/28/2025

Disclaimers and Warnings

This entry contains themes of mental health, stalking, extreme violence, death and murder.

Please note that Phoenix’s disorders are not addressed by any sort of medical name; I am not a medical professional, I am just a teenager, so I am unable to provide her with an accurate diagnosis.

Context

This story takes place in my main universe, going by the name of Thadrofinica. Just laterally adjacent to the global belt of the Twistwoods (the enigmatic belt of forest that spans across the globe at the same uniform latitude,) sits a town known as Pentworth. Pentworth is one of the northernmost towns of the Second Continent (name pending,) with many of its backroads and outskirts dropping off directly into the thick, mysterious woods.

Pentworth is not a particularly extraordinary town in any regard. While it is not the safest town to live in, it is also not the most dangerous. It may not be the most lustrous or charming of places, but it is also not the most dilapidated or unpleasant. It’s the sort of place where sketchy things are bound to happen, but if you watch your back, you’ll be just fine.

Fights, disputes and even gang violence are a common occurrence, but they tend to keep out of sight and therefore out of mind. Despite the undertones of tension and violence in the day-to-day life of a resident, these grim affairs are not normalized and are considered widely unacceptable. The vast majority of Pentworth residents know to keep to themselves, and would advise against any involvement in conflict.

Because Pentworth is so close to the Twistwoods, lots of folklore and superstition has settled into the societal eye of the population. Locals have plenty of stories of fae, spirits and just about everything supernatural; for good reason, too, as the town was built on the brink of the most mysterious region in Thadrofinica. Strange things are bound to happen in a town so close to the unknown.

However, not every resident shares the same uniform opinion; plenty of them dismiss strange stories as nothing more than fictitious rumors or folklore. There are also plenty of residents who swear by what they have allegedly seen or heard. Either way, every resident of Pentworth will have a view on the local folklore, one opinion or another.

North Pentworth is where this story starts, closer to the Twistwoods, and inevitably closer to the heart of the unknown.

Story

In an unremarkable northern Pentworth neighborhood, there lived a young couple known as Mr and Ms Mac Cool. They were a relatively fortunate couple, able to live their simple lives without much concern for financial stability. They kept well to themselves, though weren’t at all asocial or unfriendly if approached. Eventually, the Mac Cool couple decided they wanted to raise a family together. Their daughter, Phoenix Mac Cool, was born and raised as an only child in their very neighborhood.

Unfortunately, out of nothing more than poor luck, Phoenix was born with a plethora of genetic disorders. After a lengthy proceeding of diagnostic observations, most of her disorders were determined partway through her childhood.

Phoenix’s disorders include a form of chromosome deletion, affecting the genes responsible for the bodily sensations of hunger, fatigue and pain, inflicting her with full-body numbness and rendering her unable to feel the need to eat or sleep. She is also susceptible to hallucinations, delusions and paranoia, and she exhibits a peculiar blood disorder characterized by her body’s tendency to over-produce blood in its proportionate form - this disorder is not limited to one blood integrant (such as plasma or blood cells) or another. This makes her susceptible to high blood pressure, common bleeding from her orifices (such as heavy nosebleeds,) heavy menstruation cycles, and having a particular resistance to blood loss and bone trauma.

Her upper digestive tract, most primarily the regions including her esophagus, stomach and duodenum, is also affected with a bizarre blood-related disorder. These regions behave like bone marrow, producing blood material into her stomach as though it were part of her circulatory system. Blood material is not very digestible, so it lingers in her stomach like residue. This residue accumulates in her stomach, much like a hairball would, and is expelled via vomiting when the residue grows large enough to cause significant issue.

Outside of her very medically involved lifestyle, Phoenix lived a relatively normal life. Of course, she needed to be heavily medicated, and she frequently visited specialists regarding particular disorders; otherwise, she lived the life expected of an ordinary young girl. Phoenix attended regular day school like everyone else her age, and she had a particular fondness for art and drawing as a hobby.

She was seen as artistically inclined by those who knew her, as well as slightly shy, quiet and awkward. Phoenix was never able to find many friends, alienated by other children due to her bizarre disorders. Not that she minded, though, she was usually satisfied filling her lonesome time with drawing and art.

As Phoenix grew up, anxieties regarding her disorders and the complexities of growing up naturally came to her. The more she developed the intelligence to truly understand how alarming her conditions really were, the harder it became to manage her mental health. She turned to her artistic endeavours to cope, distracted by self-imposed workloads to keep her anxiety at bay. Her lack of friendships didn’t help, as she had no interpersonal affairs to occupy her free time instead of working. Her tendency to work always remained in a relatively healthy margin; at this age, she didn't have the capacity to truly overwork herself.

One notable attribute about north Pentworth is that there are semi-yearly/bi-yearly disappearances; they are not common enough to be actively investigated, but they happen often enough that it is noticed by the neighborhood locals. Most attribute the disappearances to gang violence, but there has always been a folkloric explanation floating around town via rumors and gossip.

It’s said that the disappearances are due to parasitic spirits of the forest seeking sustenance in the form of new hosts - Body spirits, to be precise. The folklore states there are four body spirits; the bone spirit, the organ spirit, the tissue spirit and the blood spirit. It is thought these spirits are the avatars of disease. Each spirit seeks a host to feed off their respective part to maintain their spiritual strength - the bone spirit feeds off bone, the organ spirit feeds off organs, the tissue spirit feeds off soft tissue, and the blood spirit feeds off blood. The spirits would seek a new host after their old one wastes away, which explains the occasional unexplained disappearances.

There is no concrete evidence that this folklore is true; it is only folklore, after all.

Or so it was presumed.

One day, around the age of 12, Phoenix noticed she was being followed by someone. Gradually, over the course of several weeks, she began to notice the same stranger more and more out of the corner of her eye. Every time she stepped outside, like a bad omen, she would see a tall shrouded figure at one point or another. Initially, the occurrences were exclusive to public spaces, so there was not much to make of the phenomenon repeating.

At first, Phoenix tried to dismiss the figure as coincidence. She saw plenty of the same people all the time, she must only be noticing this stranger because of the strange way they dressed. . .

They did, indeed, dress strangely. Every time she saw them, they dressed the exact same way. They wore a worn out black trenchcoat that hung from their body like a curtain. An equally tarnished black hat sat on their dishevelled dark hair. Wrapped around their neck was a large red scarf, which looked quite dull in the same way furniture lost its color when covered with a layer of dust. The scarf was large enough to block the figure’s face, but Phoenix was not eager to approach them for a better look. They also seemed to be wearing worn out gloves, but they weren’t worn out in the way gloves normally were. They didn’t appear to be worn out from use - instead, they seemed to be worn out by age, like the figure had left them on for years and never once used their hands.

Phoenix, unsettled by the figure’s repeated and unchanging appearances, decided to refer to them as ‘the stranger’ in her mental notes.

It started to get worse when the stranger began to appear in places more and more personal to Phoenix. Around her school, around her neighborhood, and eventually around her street and house.

Sometimes, usually around dusk or dawn when few people were out and about, Phoenix would spot the stranger outside her window. This was the closest the stranger has ever come to her; they were close enough that she could make out every detail of their appearance. Their skin was sickly and pale, not unlike the color of off-white clay. It was really only visible around their sunken, bloodshot eyes, outlined by dark circles and heavy eye bags. Even more disturbingly, their skin looked taut and translucent, like it had been pulled far too thin. The stranger’s blood vessels proclaimed their presence as faint roots of color in pale flesh. Phoenix was always thankful for the sheets of glass and sturdy brick walls that separated them when the stranger came this close.

The stranger looked sick. Horribly sick, but they never seemed to get any better or worse. They seemed stuck in a stagnant state of illness.

Phoenix’s life was quickly overtaken by fear. This was not a coincidence anymore. Something was following her, and it no longer made this a secret.

Phoenix tried to tell someone about what was happening to her. Once certain she was being followed, she repeatedly attempted to inform her parents and teachers, insisting her experience was authentic. Her efforts were met with little success; instead of getting involved, her teachers would simply inform her parents, and her parents weren’t immediately convinced Phoenix’s claims were true. Out of suspicion she could be describing a disorder-induced delusion (rather than a real experience,) Phoenix’s parents asked her to provide any evidence she could to support her claims. While they were concerned, Phoenix was prone to paranoia and delusions, after all. Phoenix soon realized she had no means of obtaining adequate proof - she never interacted with the stranger outside of observation, and no tangible evidence came from witnessing something alone.

From then on, Phoenix did her best to direct her parents or peers' attention to the stranger whenever she spotted them. Unfortunately, the stranger only ever appeared when Phoenix was alone - whenever she called anyone over to confirm what she was seeing, the stranger inexplicably slipped out of sight. Many attempts were made to pursue them post-retreat, but they always seemed to disappear without a trace.

While the adults she consulted were patient and understanding, fellow children found Phoenix’s behaviour frightening, weird, or alarming. Phoenix became further alienated from other children her age, as most tended to avoid her during her spiral of paranoia and obsession.

Phoenix’s parents were patient, granting her a substantial period of time to gather any evidence she could. She was never successful, so her circumstances were chalked up to delusion and hallucinations. They suspected Phoenix’s delusions were induced from frightening rumors of the disease spirits; spook-stories had been circulating far more than usual the past couple months, after all. As the end of the year approached, so did the predicted due-date of the biyearly disappearances. Gossip was inevitable, especially with such a grim occasion looming on the horizon, so of course Phoenix would feel anxious about it.

This conclusion didn’t end the stranger’s stalking. As the stalking worsened, Phoenix’s mental health continued to decline. Phoenix grew inattentive to her own health-related needs, as she was constantly distracted by the stranger's disturbing omnipresence. She grew more dissociative and unaware of anything except the stranger's inevitable company. With no physical sensation to indicate when she needed to eat or rest, paired with the fact she could no longer concentrate on her own basic necessities, Phoenix gradually lost weight and grew sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation impaired her cognitive abilities, swaying her further towards irrational thoughts and behaviour.

She desperately attempted to convince herself her parents’ hallucination hypothesis was true. Although her dosage was upped, Phoenix eventually stopped taking her medication; if the stranger was merely a hallucination, and her prescription was doing nothing to change what she was seeing, then her medication wasn’t working properly. There was no point in taking them if they didn’t work.

Phoenix grew increasingly unstable as the autumn season passed on by. She beheld her peers and surroundings with constant fear - the type of desperate terror adorned by a cornered prey animal. She knew she was eventually going to be done running. She knew she was eventually going to be caught. By what, she didn’t know, but she knew it was inevitable. And she was terrified to face that unavoidable fate - she would fight until every last muscle in her body failed if it meant she could survive. Her mind was broken and scared, but her body compensated with preparation. Every muscle in her body was tense like a loaded bowstring, ready to launch lethal retaliation at the first sign of weakness. Phoenix prepared for something she couldn't quite place - the impending fate she felt coming, but couldn’t predict the nature of.

She desperately continued to search for evidence, mostly on her way walking home from school, since that was when the stranger most typically showed themself. She scoured every corner, every street and every alley of her northern neighborhood for anything that could prove she wasn’t imagining it. Anything that could prove she wasn’t insane.

In the midst of her dissociative state, Phoenix felt more alone than she ever had been before. No one believed her, so she was left to fend for herself against whatever horrible thing approached her day by day.

Phoenix was not hallucinating.

Though it never became known to anyone in her story, the spirits of disease were real, and the last host of the blood spirit was stalking her. The supernatural attributes of its appearances are easily classified as hallucinatory, but in reality they are just properties of the blood spirit itself. It was particularly interested in Phoenix due to her genetic disorders and abnormal abundance of blood. She would be a highly sufficient resource with an immensely substantial amount of blood to feed off of; it aimed to stalk and eventually kill Phoenix to claim her as its next host.

One late afternoon, Phoenix was stumbling her way home from school in the midst of heavy rainfall. The terrible weather had been teeming since the early morning, so the streets were completely drenched and rather vacant. Phoenix hardly paid any mind to the rain as it pounded down; she barely felt it, anyhow, and was too swept up in the paranoid thoughts thrashing around her sleep deprived head. Of course, Phoenix wouldn’t miss the opportunity to search for any evidence, even on the most miserable of days. So she staggered off to investigate whatever rain-soaked public spaces were nearby.

Phoenix wound up on a semi-obscure commercial street, somewhere in the backroads around her school’s area. Out-of-the-way places like this usually had some occupants, though certainly not as many as the main roads. It was well known that passerbys should be cautious in the backroads of Pentworth, even in commercial streets like this - these parts were home to the sketchier side of the population, so it isn’t a particularly safe place to be. Lucky for Phoenix, the rain had long since washed any of the usual company out of the street.

The street was very empty. It wasn't a very busy place to start with, so the weather had left it completely vacant. The buildings and roads were slick with rainwater, glistening sharply with reflected light from the suspended business signs. Without the usual bustle of people’s shadows to dampen the brightness, the glare from the business signs was especially powerful. Phoenix kept her head low, squinting her eyes as she dragged herself down the road. She pricked her ears for any sounds that broke through the pouring rain, attentive as she could manage.

Fear and foreboding gnawed at her gut as she trudged through the bright, rainy street. But she was used to those feelings by then, and pressed on despite her anxieties.

Then it finally happened.

The stranger finally attacked her. She hadn’t noticed them standing in the shadows of an alleyway between two of the street’s buildings, but the deep pit of dread that opened in her stomach when she heard the patter of rain on a hat’s brim told her all she needed to know.

Phoenix was hardly granted a second of realization before she felt cold, gloved hands close tightly around her arms. Before she had the chance to suck in any air to scream, it yanked her into the alleyway, throwing her into a wall to stun her quiet.

Panic. Immediate, white hot panic burst into Phoenix’s chest as she tried to recover from the shock. This was the first time the stranger had been so close to her without a window in the way. This was the first time the stranger had touched her. And she hated it. She hated it more than she ever hated anything before.

Phoenix opened her mouth to scream, but the stranger shoved the palm of their hand over her lips to muffle the sound. They pressed down hard, pinning her against the wall by her jaw while simultaneously keeping her quiet. It slowly, sluggishly hauled its other hand up to its neck, teasingly and lazily pulling down its red scarf to expose its entire face in all its wretchedness.

Phoenix stared at them in terror. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. She just hung there by her muffled mouth, trembling with horror she had no idea she was capable of feeling. Nothing compared to the tsunami of dread that washed over her when she saw their unobscured face.

Their skin was all too translucent, just as it had been before. Their dark, bloodshot eyes stared her down with a malicious glee - a look that chilled Phoenix to the bone more than the cold rain ever could. Every vein, artery and capillary stood out in their skin like colorful branching cracks, proudly visible especially so up close.

They smiled at her. They smiled at her. The sight of their teeth through their smile filled Phoenix with overwhelming despair - enough to bring her to the verge of tears. The stranger seemed to notice, only smiling wider as they sensed her distress. They expected this to tip her over the edge, but Phoenix was too frozen to cry. She just continued to stare, too shocked to bring herself to move.

The worst of all, though, was what she saw when they let their scarf hang loose. Two raw, deep holes sat agape on either side of the stranger’s throat. Where their carotids and jugular should have been were just. . . holes, like someone had gouged them clean out of their body.

Phoenix knew how blood worked by then, even at her naive age. She had been to many medical specialists over her lifetime for her conditions. This was not possible. She knew how fast and how messily someone would bleed out if those blood vessels were severed, let alone missing. There was no way for sufficient blood to arrive at the stranger's head. How were they alive? Where was their blood?

Phoenix stared at the holes, confused and borderline delirious with horror. The stranger smiled wider - or so it seemed at first. Her eyes returned to their face, which looked like it'd split itself in half from how wide they were grinning. Phoenix would’ve shuddered if she weren’t petrified - could their smile have gotten any wider? There’s no way it could’ve.

But it did. The pit in Phoenix’s stomach tore itself even deeper as she watched the stranger’s jaw begin to shift. Their teeth began to swivel and their gums began to churn, all as their mouth dropped wider and wider in a sickly echo of what once was a gleeful smile.

All at once, the stranger's maw dropped out of their head like their mouth had flipped itself inside-out. Two large extrusions of gums and teeth hung from their jaws like talons. Every one of their teeth curled inwards like claws; a perfect configuration for gouging.

The stranger’s eyes were full of excitement and satisfaction. This was the transmission ritual of the blood spirit from one host to another - a ritual the spirit had completed many times before.

The stranger's free hand dropped to Phoenix’s collar, pulling it down with a hooked finger to expose her neck. Before she understood what was happening, a horrible incisive pain shot through her neck on either side of her throat. The stranger closed their teeth around her neck, and attempted to press them as deep as they possibly could.

Phoenix screamed. She finally screamed, even though the stranger's hand muffled the sound from piercing out through the rainfall. But she screamed. The pain had snapped her out of her frozen state, and she screamed.

Her trance wasn’t the only thing the pain finally broke.

With a strangled gasp, Phoenix grabbed hold of the stranger’s teeth with both her hands. She grabbed hold of them with every ounce of strength she could muster, and she tore them out of her throat. The teeth already had a good grip, though, so she only ripped a handful of their gums off. It was enough to make the stranger gasp and loosen their hold from the unexpected damage.

Phoenix didn’t stop. Handful after handful, Phoenix tore the stranger’s gums out of their inverted mouth. She tore their teeth out of her neck. She tore their teeth out of their mouth. The two of them collapsed to the ground, and Phoenix didn’t stop attacking. She didn’t stop screaming, tearing into the stranger with all of her pent up terror. All her pent up fear, and all her pent up resentment.

The stranger feebly tried to fight back, but they were too stunned to do any significant damage. A frail, depleted vessel could only do so much against a fresh host. Their attempts only made Phoenix shred their body even more. She ripped those hands that trapped her to frayed fibers around bone. She ripped the face that haunted her to pathetic pieces. She tore and tore and tore. She ripped, she splitted, she shredded, handful after handful of cold wet flesh until the stranger was finally still, hardly even distinguishable against the hard, rain-slick floor of the alleyway.

It took Phoenix around 20 minutes to finish her job. She slowly stood up from the shredded body before her. Her chest was heaving, and her hands were sticky with thick, too-dark blood.

It was over. The stranger was dead.

Only then did the pain in her throat hit her. She gasped, cupping her hands around her bleeding neck, before hurrying her way home through the chilling rain.

Phoenix was rushed to the hospital upon returning home, where she received care for her injured neck. Phoenix’s parents assumed that she had gotten into a very bad fight - fights weren’t uncommon in Pentworth, and Phoenix was unstable in the days leading up to the event. Phoenix didn’t reject this explanation. She didn’t disclose any details of what happened, simply describing it as 'a fight.'

The blood spirit only partially managed to succeed in embedding itself in Phoenix’s body - Phoenix interrupted the process before any significant portion of its essence was truly infused. She still retains a fraction of the blood spirit’s essence, though. It manifests as the bloodmoon phenomenon, which is discovered in her story far after the following described events.

Put simply, it is the phenomenon that happens in the event of a bloodmoon - Phoenix’s jaw locks, and she experiences an insatiable urge to ‘experience’ blood in any way she can - she tries to overwhelm her senses with blood. She needs to see it, she needs to hear it, she needs to taste it, she needs to smell it, and she needs to feel it. As much as she possibly can. This is the only lasting remnant of the blood spirit Phoenix is involved with.

Once Phoenix was discharged from the hospital, she returned to her ‘normal’ life, although monitored by her parents and adult chaperones. Of course, Phoenix was immensely traumatized by her final encounter with the stranger - she experienced tremendous post-traumatic stress and continuous paranoia, despite the fact she was certain they were dead and gone.

Phoenix’s instability yielded plenty of symptoms; worsening disassociative gaps in her memory, intermittent amnesia, immense paranoia, and prolonged emotional shock are some notable examples. Phoenix became quite aloof following her visit to the hospital. She was clearly unwell, though she refused to disclose any details of the event to a single soul. She provided brief, uninsightful responses when asked about the state of her mental health. Her withdrawnness rendered her chaperones relatively incapable of truly helping her recover.

To distract herself from her anxiety, Phoenix turned to her artistic endeavours, filling every second of her free time with something to work on. It gave her something to do other than sitting with her overwhelming thoughts.

Phoenix's life filled itself to the brim with nothing but work. Schoolwork, artwork, physical work, creative work, any sort of work. She was unresponsive to her body’s signals to stop; she wasn't capable of feeling exhaustion or hunger, and only ate or slept when instructed by her parents or chaperones. She also continued to neglect taking her medication, thoroughly convinced her perscription did nothing to help her.

She continued to work. Day after day, like a soulless machine, she pumped out one piece of work after another. Anything to fill the time. Anything to distract herself.

Phoenix worked until she couldn’t anymore. Eventually, her body began to retaliate against the mistreatment and neglect. Gradually, her memory gaps worsened, approaching the point of dysfunctionality. Amnesia became common, and her ability function gradually deteriorated as her body demanded rest and recovery. Phoenix ignored her declining health, pushing through it and continuing to work. Anything to keep the feelings at bay. Even if it made her sick.

Her parents and chaperones attempted to regulate her schedule. However, she often ignored their instructions to rest, continuing to work in secrecy. They didn’t understand how she felt. She needed to do this - she had to keep those awful feelings at bay. She couldn’t take sitting with those feelings. Even if it made her sick. She’d rather be sick than sit with those feelings.

Phoenix felt she could do it. She survived that monster, after all, so she could survive this. Nothing was going to stop her.

Phoenix’s hubris didn’t bring her very far. If she was going to ignore her body’s demands for rest, then so be it. If her body was going to be allowed nothing, then so was she.

It took everything from her.

One morning, Phoenix woke up with severe amnesia - worse than it had ever been before. She was unable to remember anything. She couldn’t remember what day it was, where she was, what had happened to her, or even who she was. The few fragmented memories she could recall weren’t enough to deduce any of the information she’d forgotten.

The only vivid thing that remained in Phoenix’s mind was the overpowering envelopment of pure fear. Everything she had been working so hard to distract herself from. All her paranoia, all her anxiety, and all her drive for violence. In the midst of her disorientation, fear and violence was the only thing she could act on.

She was confused - she didn’t remember what she was scared of. She didn’t know where she was or who was in that house with her. She didn't know what she needed to fight.

She was terrified; of what, she didn’t know. But she did know one thing.

Violence protected her once; it would protect her again.

She would get to whatever it was before it got to her first. And she would kill it. She would kill whatever was so horrible it made her feel like this. She would kill it before it killed her.

Phoenix killed her parents that day. She killed them with the same brutality she'd shown the stranger. Once they were dead, having no idea what to do next or where to go, Phoenix fled into the Twistwoods and has remained there ever since.

As Phoenix immersed herself in the Twistwoods, her mental health deteriorated more than it ever had before; her psyche crumbled to dust of complete instability. Extreme violence ensued by her hand, worsening in severity as time marched on.

Phoenix felt safe after killing her parents. She thought she escaped whatever was out to get her. The overwhelming dread disappeared upon the murders, so she assumed she had successfully killed the culprits.

But eventually the paranoia crept back in, and she once again felt she was in danger. She hadn’t killed it. Something was still out to get her, and it wasn’t dead. But it disappeared after she killed those two catfolk, didn’t it?

There was only one explanation. She’d scared it off, and now it was back again. It wasn’t scared anymore.

And so, Phoenix proceeded to enact violence as swiftly as she could, scouring the woods for her next victim and viciously attacking them to satisfy her bloodthirsty delusions. It worked to chase the dread away, but that peace only lasted so long. With time, it only crept back in again.

This cycle ensued countless times, and has continued to the present day.

Eventually, finding and torturing random strangers to appease her paranoia evolved into real sadism. As genuine enjoyment and euphoria in violence festered in her mind like infection in a wound, her motives for bloodshed shifted from self defense to malicious indulgence. She developed an extreme obsession with violence, dedicating every moment of her time to brutality in one way or another.

The longer Phoenix lived in the twistwoods, the more vicious she became. At first, Phoenix was feared as a dangerous beast, closer to a wild animal than something that could be considered evil. Over time, however, as her obsession with violence grew, Phoenix became more deliberate with her atrocious acts. She learned all the horrible ways she could make a victim’s experience substantially worse. She paid close attention to tiny torturous details, implementing every little intricacy into her performance to tear into her victim’s psyche as deep as she possibly could.

At first, she hurt fellow inhabitants out of fear. Nothing would come after her if she proved she shouldn’t be messed with, after all. But as obsession took control of her life, her fearful delusions devolved into hateful, competitive and compulsive unrealities. The world doubted her abilities - no one thought she was capable of true cruelty. She wanted to be the best at being the worst. She needed to be the best at being the worst. No one feared her the most. There was always something scarier than her - something better than her. She wasn’t the best at being the worst, and she was in danger because of that. The world silently judged and challenged her every move, and she hated it.

She found every way to prove it wrong. Are you running away from her? That's a challenge she can't catch you, and she'll prove you wrong. Are you trying to fight her? That's a challenge she can't fight you, and she'll prove you wrong. Are you trying to avoid her? That's a challenge that she won't find you, and she'll prove you wrong.

It felt euphoric to prove them wrong, after all.

Phoenix grew from being beastly to being evil. Beasts do not make their cruelty deliberate. Beasts do not orchestrate other’s suffering. Beasts, while they are violent, are not inherently malicious. Evil is deliberate. Evil is calculated and intentionally inhumane. Evil is malicious, just as Phoenix became. Just as she continues to be.

Phoenix dedicates herself to becoming the worst thing anyone could possibly encounter; On top of general strength and endurance conditioning, she has also self-mutilated to optimize her capacity for violence. This includes whittling her knuckles into points, repeatedly tearing her own cheeks asunder to increase her bite size, and many other unsightly endeavors. She refuses to carry any permanent weaponry, and punishes those she comes across who do. A true hunter should be feared for being themself, not feared for their weapons and how they may choose to use them. This is Phoenix’s ultimate goal - to be feared for being her, not what she chooses to do. She aims to be the true evil - not just her actions.

Phoenix spends her present days in a borderline delirious state, stalking the Twistwoods and searching for her next victim. She attacks just about anything and anyone, no matter their business in the woods, attempting to torture said victims whenever possible. She can hardly recall any pertinent memories, haunted instead by only the feelings of fear, malice and bloodthirst. Alone with no way to handle her hardly functional mind, Phoenix is left to stumble about in pursuit of carnage and torment, lapsing between states of consciousness and emotional being. Phoenix will continue to leave her bloody mark on the Twistwoods as one of the most feared monstrosities to ever have the misfortune of encountering.

There is no definitive end to her story as of now.