Unstitched

[Chapter 1: The Boy and the Grave]

It was the hottest day of the year.

Eli Cross was digging a grave behind the house with his grandfather’s shovel—an old, half-rusted thing that rang bitter against rock. The ground was dry clay, stubborn as bone. Each strike made his blisters deeper. The sun poured down without mercy. His shirt was long gone. Sweat traced lines through dirt on his chest. A shallow grave yawned at his feet—too small, too crooked.

There was no one else to do it.

The body lay off to the side, wrapped in a wool blanket already buzzing with flies. Eli didn’t look at it. He just kept digging.

In the trees, something watched.

Eyes low to the ground, fire-colored and still. A shape too black for daylight. The wind passed over it like it wasn’t there. No scent, no shadow. Just silence wrapped in fur and hunger.

The boy had a scent like wet iron and ash—grief, yes, but something stranger beneath it. A soul unstitched, like a seam opened too soon. Mire—the dog, the watcher, the thing once called a god—tilted his head.

He had been forgotten by towns like this one. They used to leave him things: salt circles, coins, blood. Now there were fences, weedkiller, satellite dishes. No prayers. Just stories parents used to scare their kids. Don’t go past the woods or the dog’ll take you.

He hadn’t taken anyone in a long time.

The boy paused to wipe sweat from his brow. His hands were cracked and raw. The shovel fell with a tired clatter. He crossed to the body, crouched, and dragged it by the ankles to the pit. It fell in awkwardly—blanket folding wrong at the shoulders. No words. No rites. Just dirt, one scoop at a time, falling with soft thuds until the form disappeared.

Still no name spoken.

No goodbye.

That bothered Mire more than it should’ve.

The boy stepped back and stared at the mound. His chest rose and fell too quickly. The silence stretched—dense, full of something unsaid.

Then, without turning, he said:

“I know you’re there.”

Mire froze.

The boy turned around. Slowly. His eyes didn’t flinch.

“You gonna eat me?” he asked.

Mire stepped forward once, just enough to be seen.

The boy didn’t move. Just sat cross-legged in the dirt and pulled a small, folded map from his pocket. Crayon or pencil. A child’s drawing: a forest, a river, a house. Next to the house, one word written small:

“god?”

Mire blinked.

“My grandpa used to talk about you,” the boy said. “Said you watched the edges. Kept things from crossing. Said if you ever talked, someone was going to die.”

The boy glanced at the grave.

“He didn’t talk much at the end. But when he did, it was you. Not Jesus. Just the dog.”

Mire opened his mouth.

Only when heard.

“Only when heard,” he said aloud, voice like coal breaking.

The boy sat upright, startled only a little.

“I’m not scared of you.”

“That’s not always good.”

The boy looked down. “He told me to bury him here. Said they’d take him to a church if I didn’t. Said he wanted to be close. Said—he’d rather be where someone remembered the stories.”

Mire looked at the grave, then at the boy.

“He remembered,” he said.

“Yeah,” the boy whispered. “He did.”

Mire took a step closer.

The boy stood.

“I want to see it,” he said.

“See what?”

“The place where the old stories live.”

Mire turned toward the woods.

And the boy followed.

[Chapter 2: Where the Forest Thins]

The woods swallowed them whole.

Not suddenly—just… fully. One moment Eli was stepping past the rusted fence behind the house, and the next, the sky had vanished. Leaves above, loam below. The air changed. It cooled, but not kindly. Like walking into a house where someone had just died.

Mire moved ahead, his paws soundless on the moss. Eli followed, keeping just enough distance to show he didn’t belong here, but wanted to.

“Is this where you live?” Eli asked.

“No.”

Eli looked around.

“But you’re here.”

“I walk. I watch. I feed.”

Eli nodded slowly. “So you’re a predator.”

Mire’s ears flicked. “I take what’s already leaving. Or what needs help leaving.”

“Are you gonna take me?”

“Are you already leaving?”

The boy didn’t answer.

Mire turned his head, briefly. The trees here were thinner, taller, all leaning slightly toward one another like gossiping men. Shafts of evening light broke through in slanted gold ribbons, but the warmth was gone. Every step deepened the silence.

“I thought you’d be taller,” Eli said.

“I have taller forms.”

“But you chose this one?”

“It’s the one people remember.”

Eli stepped over a patch of mushrooms and paused. “What happens if no one remembers you?”

Mire didn’t answer right away.

The path narrowed. They ducked under a fallen branch, and Eli reached out, dragging his fingers along the bark. There were old carvings there—not words, but loops and cuts. Symbols. Faint.

“You vanish,” Mire said finally. “Or change. Or rot.”

“That’s what I thought.”

They walked a little further. The ground sloped downward. Eli noticed how quiet the birds were. He held the little map in his hand, now damp with sweat.

“My grandpa said you could smell when someone’s soul was crooked.”

“Yes.”

“And mine is?”

Mire stopped walking. The boy almost walked into him.

“Yes,” he said again.

Eli folded the map and shoved it back in his pocket.

“I don’t want to die. Not exactly,” he said.

“I know.”

“I just didn’t want to bury him alone. And then sit in that house. And listen to the silence like it was waiting to eat me.”

Mire tilted his head.

“I’ve never met someone who wanted to be claimed,” he said. “Most souls fight. Or beg.”

“I’m not asking to be claimed,” Eli said.

He stepped forward, now just beside Mire. “I’m asking if you remember anything. If there’s still meaning in any of this.”

“There was. Once.”

“And now?”

“I’m still here.”

The trees thinned again. A clearing lay ahead. Stones arranged in a circle, long since toppled. A post—broken off at the top, black with age. Something once sacred, now just half-sunken in moss.

Eli stepped into it. His breath caught.

“This is it?” he asked.

“No,” Mire said. “This is what’s left.”

Eli turned slowly in the space, seeing nothing move, hearing nothing stir. And yet something was there. A feeling, low and heavy. Like stepping into a dream you’d forgotten the shape of.

He turned back to Mire.

“Would it hurt?” he asked. “If you took me?”

“Yes,” Mire said.

“Would I stay in the forest?”

“Some part.”

“Would I forget?”

“Most do.”

Eli knelt in the center of the circle. “Then I don’t think I want that. But I don’t want to go back either.”

Mire stepped beside him.

“You don’t have to be consumed,” he said. “You can be… filled.”

Eli looked up.

“You mean like you?”

“I mean like what comes after me.”

[Chapter 3: A Gun and a God]

The circle had just begun to hum—soft, deep in the soil—when the sound of boots snapped the spell clean.

“Eli?”

The voice cut through the trees like a thrown axe.

Eli stood sharply, eyes darting toward the treeline. Mire stepped between him and the sound without thinking, low to the ground, ears flat.

Sheriff Vern Halley emerged with a grunt, sweat already staining his collar. A pistol hung at his hip—not drawn, but twitching with every step.

“Jesus, boy, I’ve been yelling for twenty minutes. What the hell’re you doing out here?”

Eli opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Halley’s eyes shifted—past him. Into the clearing.

And locked on Mire.

“What the hell is that?”

Eli stepped in front of Mire.

“Don’t,” he said.

Halley pulled the gun.

“Get away from it—whatever it is.”

“He’s not—”

But the gun was already rising.

Halley wasn’t thinking anymore. His hand shook as he aimed. Mire could feel the man’s heart stammering—fear, not bravery. A coward’s panic.

“I’m gonna count to—”

Crack.

The shot split the air.

Eli staggered back, clutching his side. Red bloomed across his ribs.

He dropped to his knees.

The pistol was rising again.

Mire did not wait.

He moved faster than sound—no howl, no warning. Just teeth and weight and silence.

When he struck Halley, the man had only just realized he’d missed.

Then he was on the ground. Eyes wide. Mouth frozen mid-word.

Mire opened his jaws and breathed in.

Not air.

Not scent.

Soul.

It came loose with a sound like a match going out.

Halley’s body twitched once. Then stilled.

The forest responded.

The circle groaned low. Moss darkened. The trees leaned inward. Something very old stirred.

Mire turned back to Eli, who lay on his side, breathing ragged, his hands slick with blood.

“You killed him,” Eli whispered.

“Yes.”

The boy coughed once. “Good.”

Mire stood still, his chest heaving. The power from Halley’s soul crackled under his skin—sharp, electric, wrong. Too fresh. Too loud.

He stepped to Eli’s side and lowered his head.

“You’re not dying yet.”

“I thought you only took the ones already leaving.”

“I do.”

Eli blinked up at him. His lips were pale. “Then why’re you still here?”

Mire didn’t answer.

He lifted the boy gently in his jaws—carried him the way wolves carried their young, careful not to tear the flesh.

And turned deeper into the woods.

[Chapter 4: The Inheritor]

The forest changed as Mire walked.

It breathed deeper. The soil thickened. Roots pulsed faintly beneath the moss, as if remembering something they hadn’t felt in centuries. The old stones rose from the ground like teeth in sleep, moss sloughing off their faces.

Eli stirred in Mire’s jaws—bare chest blood-slicked, breathing shallow, eyes barely open.

Mire laid him down in the hollow between the stones.

The boy’s hand closed around a tuft of grass, then let go.

“You said… I’m not dying,” he murmured.

“You’re not,” Mire said. His voice cracked.

The air around them shimmered faintly. A warmth not from sun or fire, but attention. Something old watched now. Not a creature. Not even the forest. Just the weight of long-forgotten order.

Mire stepped back.

The pain came in waves now. Not from the soul he’d devoured—though it roiled inside him, raw and wrong—but from the weight of ending.

He was unraveling.

Every breath he took felt less anchored. He was smoke again. Almost ash. His paws no longer left prints in the soil.

The boy’s blood called to him. Still warm. Still soul-bound. Still half-unstitched.

He could take it.

One bite.

One pull.

He’d be full again—for a while.

The forest would remember his name.

He would not vanish.

Eli opened his eyes.

They weren’t brown anymore.

Not quite gold, either. But shifting—like river-stone catching firelight.

“Why didn’t you take me that first day?” he asked.

“You were already choosing.”

Eli’s breath hitched. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Mire circled once, slowly.

The trees leaned in. The light thinned to a copper hush.

Eli sat up with effort, pressing a hand to his ribs. His fingers came away slick, but he didn’t flinch. He looked down at the circle of stones, then back at Mire.

“Is this what happened to you?” he asked. “Someone gave you their soul?”

“No,” Mire said.

“Then how—?”

“I was made from a different world. One with rules and gods and borders. I stood where things frayed.”

“And now?”

“Now I fade.”

Eli frowned. “Why me?”

“Because you buried your dead with your own hands. Because you came looking. Because you believed something might answer.”

Eli laughed once—sharp and bitter. “I didn’t believe in this. I just didn’t want to be alone.”

Mire took one last step forward.

“You still can say no.”

Eli looked down at his hands.

“No, I can’t.”

He reached forward—not far, not even touching—and Mire leaned into the gesture like a dying animal, pressing his head near the boy’s knees.

“Do I have to eat someone?” Eli asked.

“Only the ones the world is done with.”

“And the rest?”

“You watch.”

Eli nodded once.

And Mire exhaled.

The sound was long and hollow. A wind not of lungs, but memory.

His shape loosened at the edges.

Then more.

His eyes dimmed, and the fur pulled into smoke.

He faded like he had always come from fog.

Not violently.

Just… gone.

The air didn’t stir.

The trees didn’t shake.

But the forest knew.

Eli sat still for a long time, bleeding into the roots.

Then, slowly, he stood.

He did not fall.

He did not cry.

He looked down at the stones.

The moss had grown thicker.

The circle more complete.

He stepped outside it.

The woods let him pass.

And somewhere, far off, something new began to watch.

[END]