[Redrum] Bleed You Dry

Redrum lingered at the grove’s edge, his golden eyes unblinking as they devoured the odd beauty of the blood trees. The crimson resin oozing from their bark gleamed, like fresh wounds left open to fester. The grove was steeped in an unnatural stillness, the brittle grass snapping softly under his paws. The air was heavy, suffocating. Discomfort clung to him like a second skin—intimate, familiar, and entirely ignorable.

His body twitched as a tremor rippled through his frame like a shuddering breath he couldn’t quite control. It wasn’t fear—it never was—but something far more unusual. As he crouched, his movements remained slow, his shallow breaths stirring the dust beneath him. His nares flared briefly at the sensation, but his focus was elsewhere. On her. A stranger on the horizon.

She moved through the grove with a ferality, every step steepled with barely restrained violence. The low growl vibrating from her chest made the fur along his spine prickle, but not with fear. Instead a dark, twisted thrill coursed through him, a predator acknowledging a predator.

His gaze locked onto the glistening strands of saliva hanging from her jaws, and the thought struck him—rabid. She could be rabid. But then again, so could he. Hadn’t others recoiled from his twitching, his halting movements, the unnerving pauses in his speech? He couldn’t fault her if she embodied what he so often projected himself.

His claws flexed into the hardened soil, planting him as his muscles tensed and quivered, ready to react. She wasn’t prey—far from it. She was something else, something angry, something different. And Redrum felt the familiar churn of conflicting urges within him: to approach, to retreat, to do something he could neither name nor resist.

He began to move, his form slinking in a slow, distant semi-circle around her. His steps were soundless, calculated, though the sparse cover made his eventual discovery inevitable. He didn’t care. The act of circling her, of studying her every movement—the ripple of her muscles beneath her coat, the sharp glint of her eyes—consumed him. His breath hitched, shallow and steady, as though he feared that even the rhythm of his lungs might give him away. Not yet. Not yet.

His gaze remained unbroken, a predator’s intensity tempered by his own innate awkwardness. The whites of his eyes visible as he stared, and there was hunger there, cold and calculating, along with strange fascination. Her visage burned into his mind—a pale, green fire flickering just beyond his grasp.

As he prowled closer, his tail dragged low against the soil, ears pinned tightly to his head. He wasn’t here to confront her, not yet. No, he was here to watch, to feel, to dissect. And if she turned her fire toward him, he would be ready—not to flee, but to meet it head-on.

"Murder"