Samuel was fifteen when the nightmares began.

They always started the same way - he'd find himself walking through the old village, long abandoned and cloaked in fog. The trees loomed taller than he remembered, and the wind carried a familiar, dreadful rhythm:

"Tik? tik? tik?"

In the dreams, he would see her - the Tiktik - not in the sky, but among the shadows. Watching him. Smiling. Whispering his name.

He didn't tell his parents at first. He didn't want them to worry. But one night, as he woke in a cold sweat, he found three long scratches down his back - fresh, red, and burning.

It was no longer just a dream.